Bits and Bytes Ed Tech eNewsletter
January 17, 2024
What about my old courses?
You have two choices when dealing with S1 courses in Blocksi.
- Keep your old courses - just drag and drop your old courses behind your new courses for ease of access.
- Delete your old courses - this will make it so you just see your new courses. Word of caution - all class histories and data will be deleted along with the course! If you want to keep that data, please do option 1.
Resources
New to Blocksi? Here are some handy resources to get you started!
The Student Experience
Students Will Be Able To:
Create Nearpod lessons using all of the standard types of features and activity options available to teachers at their school or district.
See reports for the lessons they’ve taught
Share and receive lessons with any user within their district, (or just their school if they do not belong to a district.)
Students Will NOT Be Able To:
Access any Nearpod library content or pre-made activities, including activity banks.
Access Nearpod’s video library, including Flocabulary videos (but will be able to upload their own or add videos from YouTube SafeSearch)
Change the lesson settings except “prevent skipping/require responses”
Manage their account (change email, etc.)
Create lessons via the iOS app
The Teacher Experience
Teacher Moderation:
A teacher from our district will need to join lessons that students launch before other students or guests can join.
Students will not be able to launch inappropriate lessons on their own.
On Live lessons, the first teacher who joins will also be made a co-teacher on the lesson. This means, if necessary, that teacher can take complete control of the lesson.
Things to Note:
If the teacher leaves the lesson, does it become “locked” again? No, once the teacher joins, the lesson code remains open for others.
How can students share their lessons with their teacher for approval? At this point, we recommend using the lesson share links to share lessons with teachers. Note If a student generates and shares a code with a teacher that the teacher joins to review, this will in effect “unlock” the lesson for other students to join.
Student Names Automatically Populate
Upcoming How Did They Do That Live
The Time Machine
The Time Machine is a very common course setup and is less complicated than it sounds. Just organize your materials using folders labeled in chronological order.
Why choose the Time Machine course setup?
The Time Machine works in tandem with your calendar, making it mentally easier for you and your students to navigate materials, due dates, and more, with limited adjustment over time. Struggling students can quickly jump “back in time” to revisit past lessons, while advanced students can leap into future ones.
By the Book
By the Book is exactly how it sounds—a course setup that organizes instructional resources around the chapters of a textbook, a series of novels, or other educational content.
Why choose the By the Book course setup?
Aside from being a really straightforward course setup to navigate, By the Book is a great way to align the student experience with your curriculum and scaffold concepts. This method gives you the opportunity to teach students through the relationships between core concepts or literary works and reinforce how they all fit together at a high level.
The Minimalist
The Minimalist is all about keeping it simple. Just organize your course by material type (assignments, tests, etc.) or by subject, as you might in the elementary course below.
Why choose The Minimalist course setup?
If you are just getting your feet wet in digital learning or you don’t plan to rely on your LMS too heavily, you may appreciate The Minimalist’s straightforward and simple setup. There are, however, a few glaring downsides to this approach. For one, it doesn’t really allow you to organize your course in a pedagogical framework. Also, what you gain in setup speed, you lose in the simplicity of navigation as resources are added over time.
Pro Tip: A great naming system is a must if you plan to organize your course by content type or subject.
The Archiver
The Archiver helps you control the flow of content by keeping everything in a few top-level topic- or unit-based folders with subfolders nested within them. You then pull one lesson (a subfolder) to the top level at the most relevant time and then “archive” it after you’re done.
Why choose The Archiver course setup?
The Archiver is an excellent way to keep your courses meticulously clean and organized while making it extremely easy for students to know exactly what they’re learning at a glance every time they log in. And if your naming system is solid, then students can always go back into the “archives” to revisit older lessons or explore new ones.
The Warm-Up
The Warm-Up is an effective way to get students ready to learn. Simply begin your classes by asking them a fun or topical question via your LMS’s updates or discussion features.
Why choose The Warm-Up course setup?
If you want to get your students’ minds primed and ready before diving into the day’s lesson, then The Warm-Up is your best friend. It’s a great way to establish the beginning of class, help students focus, and get a quick read on what they know about your lesson before you even start it.
For this method to work, it’s important to set expectations that every class will begin with a warm-up. Then you just have to follow through.
Group ‘Em Up
The Group 'Em Up method allows you to differentiate instruction by organizing your students into small groups (a.k.a. Grading Groups in PowerSchool Schoology Learning) and curating content accordingly.
Why choose The Group ‘Em Up course setup?
Organizing your students into small groups within your digital course allows you to tailor instruction to their learning speed, level of need, etc.
Pace Yourself
The Pace Yourself setup is the ultimate way to provide students with independence and coach them while they learn. By adding step-by-step requirements for how your students interact with your content, you can pace students individually and track their progress
Why choose The Pace Yourself course setup?
Students learn at different paces and sometimes at different times of the day. The Pace Yourself course setup helps you account for those differences while still making it easy to keep track of everyone’s progress.
What is Google Drawing?
Google Drawing is an online tool for creating diagrams, flowcharts, headers, and other images. Drawing allows you to create and edit pictures by using shapes, text boxes, lines, arrows, tables, other images, and more. Most importantly, it is a cloud based application via the web or a Chrome app. It allows educators and students alike to create and collaborate on projects. When working collaboratively, the users can edit their project in real time. You can insert a Google drawing into a Google document as an image or a PDF document as well as the capability to be embedded into blogs or websites. The possibilities are endless with Google drawings.
Google Drawing Collaboration
Google Drawing Collaboration Benefits
Students get to experience real-time collaboration.
Students use a shared workspace.
Students can work together from anywhere!
Frayer Model Google Drawing Example
You can create a reusable Frayer Model in Google Drawing by utilizing its tools to design four separate sections for definition, characteristics, examples, and non-examples of any concept. Once created you can drop that drawing into any Google Doc!
Step 1: Insert Your Drawing
Click Insert, Drawing, and from there you can create an entirely new drawing or choose one from your Google Drive.
Step 2: Choose A Drawing
If you've already created or used a Google Drawing in the past, you can select it to add it to the doc.
- Schoology Update: PowerSchool Schoology has revamped the grade passback screen to provide enhanced search features such as sorting, filtering, assignment search, and updated statuses. Teachers can save time searching through assignment lists and can find the material they need exactly when they need it. This feature was updated at the beginning of December.
- MagicSchool AI Tool in MCS App Portal Update: Great news! MagicSchool AI remains completely free for you after January 16th. While the complimentary Plus features expire, you'll still have access to all 60+ AI tools and the convenient Chrome extension. Any new tools, prompt revisions, and saved output history will have limitations in the free version, but everything you used and loved before remains at your fingertips. Find out more at AI at MCS Webpage.
Nearpod Student Account Features for Engaging Digital Learning - Vendor Led Webinar *Qualifies for 0.5%
Step into the future of digital learning! In this hands-on workshop, we'll showcase Nearpod's newest student account features designed to take classroom engagement to the next level. You'll get to explore Nearpod's ever-expanding library of interactive lessons and immerse yourself in activities from top publishers. See how Nearpod boosts student collaboration, voice, choice, and critical thinking .
[Online Webinar] Thurs Jan 18th 3:45pm-4:45pm in Microsoft Teams - Registration link
Resource: Nearpod Tech Help Center Webpage
Schoology Setup for Success - EdTech In-Person *Qualifies for 0.5%
Schoology is a learning management system (LMS) that has all the tools your institution needs to create engaging content, design lessons, and assess student understanding. TK-6 Grade Educators will review the Elementary Experience and 7-12 Grade Educators will review the Semester setups for the course and gradebook sync. What this course covers: - New Term - Course Archive - Set Up Grade Sync - Elementary Experience - Import materials from previous semesters - Other Tips and Tricks
[In-Person] Thurs Jan 18th CIPD Building 4:30pm-5:30pm - Registration link
Resource: Schoology Tech Help Center Webpage
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AI Essentials Unleashed: MagicSchool and Beyond for Educators- [EdTech Led In-Person] *Qualifies for 0.5%
Join our dynamic workshop, where you'll dive into the world of AI in the classroom. We'll kick things off by delving into the best practices for using AI to enhance your teaching strategies. From there, you'll get hands-on experience with MagicSchool - an exciting platform designed to make AI accessible to educators. Discover a variety of Magic Tools that can significantly streamline tasks such as lesson planning, differentiation, assessment creation, IEP support, clear communication, and more. Learn how to seamlessly incorporate these tools into your classroom, while also gaining valuable insights into additional AI resources offered by MCS. Prepare to unleash the full potential of AI in education!
[In-Person] Mon Jan 22nd CIPD Building 4:15pm-5:15pm - Registration link
Resource: AI at MCS Tech Help Center Webpage
Design & Implement Student Media Projects with WeVideo - Vendor Led Webinar *Qualifies for 0.5%
From science and history documentaries to personal narratives, student media projects are a great way to increase engagement and enhance learning outcomes across content areas. In this session, teachers will design a media project to implement with students! We’ll share curricular resources and best practices for facilitating each stage of a media project from generating a topic to showcasing student work! By the end of this session, you’ll be ready to implement a student media project that builds academic vocabulary, content knowledge, and literacy while enhancing learning with 21st century skills!
[Online Webinar] [Late Start] Tue Jan 23rd 4:30pm-5:30pm in Microsoft Teams - Registration link
Resource: WeVideo Tech Help Center Webpage