March 2024 - Instructional Technology Newsletter

South Shore Summer of Learning

It's getting to be that time of year again. On June 6 and 7, 2024, the Indiana Department of Education Digital Learning Team, in partnership with Duneland School Corporation will be hosting the South Shore Summer of Learning event at Chesterton High School.

South Shore Summer of Learning

The event will highlight keynote speakers Thomas C. Murray and Kim Strobel, as well as several other high profile speakers.

There are two ways that you can experience the South Shore Summer of Learning event; you can sign up as an attendee (and earn PGPs for license renewal). Or, if you are feeling daring, you can sign up to present on a topic that interests you (and earn PGPs for license renewal).

Summer of Learning events are a great place to hear from experienced educators and engage with new ideas about the art of educating students.

Google Updates of Note

Google Slides recently added the Speaker Spotlight to the Insert menu. The Speaker Spotlight allows you to insert a live camera image of yourself as you present your slide deck. There were a couple of features for Speaker Spotlight that I found rather interesting. First, when you insert the spotlight, you can choose which shape you want your image to appear in; square, circle, square with rounded corners, etc. Second, when you insert the speaker spotlight, it is only inserted on the current slide. This is so that you are not forced to have it on every slide just by inserting it once. It is inserted on the current slide and that's it. Third, one of the options is to have it inserted on every slide. That way, if you do want it to appear throughout your presentation you can still do that. You can see this feature in action here.

Google is continually updating their tools and apps, so new features can pop up at any time. Here are a few new features that became available since the beginning of February:

• Create shareable video presentations in Google Slides
• Latest improvement for page setup in Google Docs
• Easily drag and drop an image to replace the background in Google Slides
• Playback improvements to videos uploaded on Google Drive

Grants

The MSD of Boone Township has recently partnered with Monthly Education Grants Alert (MEGA) Magazine to give us access to a monthly publication of education related grant opportunities. The publication is filled with grant opportunities; some with specific deadlines and others with rolling deadlines. The publication is searchable using the keyboard shortcut ctrl+f (find), so you can search through the document looking for specific keywords instead of reading through every description. When you find a grant that makes sense, there will be a link to the grant's website where you can find more information about applying.

Low Key PD

I recently finished the set of tutorials for Google Slides. That complete collection of tutorials, as well as all of my other tutorials, can be found on YouTube.

September 2023 - Instructional Technology Newsletter

Recent Updates to Google Classroom

Over the last few months there have been several updates to Google Classroom; some obvious, some not. 

Practice Sets allow teachers to create sets of questions using artificial intelligence (AI). Teachers can either search for questions by topic, type their own questions, or import their own questions.  But the real power behind Practice Sets is AI. The AI can identify appropriate remedial resources that the students can access if they do not answer the questions correctly. Thus connecting students to the right resources at the right time. In addition, it uses the questions that you ask to determine suggestions for the appropriate skills sets to associate with that question. Presently, teachers can ask short answer, paragraph, single select, and multi select questions; with the ability to auto score short answer, single select, and multi select questions. For more on practice sets, check the official Google blog.

There is also a new feature that allows you to attach YouTube videos to your Google Classroom assignments and add questions at various points throughout the video. The new YouTube feature is in its infancy and currently works a lot like a basic version of Edpuzzle, for those of you who are familiar with that tool. I have been using this new feature a bit lately and one thing about it that I really liked was that the videos I used were saved as a separate activity that I could then add to other assignments later. 

Google has also added Grading Periods and Visiting Google Classrooms features that you can read more about by clicking on the respective links.

Massive Archive of Google Resources

Here is an online spreadsheet of all sorts of Google resources. If you'd like to make a copy of this spreadsheet, click here.

Congratulations Are In Order

This spring we had 4 teachers pass the Google For Education - Level 2 exam and earn their Level 2 certification. Congratulations to Brandy Parks, Veronica Siwy, Kristy Stephens, and Melissa Summerville. All four of these MSD of Boone Township teachers have upped their ed tech game. As a bonus, they each received a $250.00 stipend and 15 Professional Growth Points to use toward renewing their teaching license. In order to earn the Google for Education Level 2 certificate, each of these teachers also had to take and pass the Google for Education Level 1 exam before completing the Level 2 test. Speaking of Google certifications, the Google for Education - Level 1 and Google for Education - Level 2 self-paced classes are available again this fall. Email me and I will send you the invite link to join. The test can be taken at no cost with the use of a voucher and there is a $250.00 stipend awarded to teachers who successfully earn the Level 2 certification.

Other Professional Growth Opportunities for MSD Of Boone Township Teachers

I would also like to invite those of you who are interested in exploring The Modern Classrooms Project (MCP) to complete the online training this fall. In the spring, if there are enough teachers who are interested in using some of the strategies in MCP, I would like to put together a pilot program where we can use the strategies and discuss ways to implement them successfully.

Updates to Google Classroom Are the Hot Topic

Almost as if they planned it that way, Google Classroom has received a number of new updates and features just in time for the new school year. Perhaps the most notable feature is the addition of topics. Assignments, announcements, and questions can now be tagged with a topic. Those topics can then be used to filter posts in the Classroom stream, making it easier to sift through your classroom posts.

Parents and guardians may now be subscribed to receive weekly email summaries for their student’s progress in Google Classroom. You can add multiple guardian email addresses in the Students tab.

The classroom code has also been moved to the Students tab. This allows the topic filter box to take a prominent place on the Stream tab.