Technoflash

We have so much to celebrate as we start the new school year. This year, Bellevue Public Schools begins with 188 blended learning classrooms. Our district focus is to provide all teachers the professional learning and support through training and job embedded coaching to teach successfully in a 1:1 blended learning environment. We invest in our teachers and students by providing six days of BPS BlendED Professional Learning workshops to teachers and then upon completion, each teacher receives a class set of iPads, an Apple TV, a 55” TV, and a blended learning coach for several weeks!

Students have new opportunities to investigate, create, collaborate, reflect, publish, learn and grow. As student agency increases, students develop skills to become empowered learners, digital citizens, global collaborators, knowledge constructors, and innovative designers.

This summer, our Building Tech Coordinators participated in an online Blended Learning course over Catlin Tucker’s book, Blended Learning in Action. In this self-paced Schoology course, teachers took a deeper dive into blended learning strategies, lesson design, digital curriculum, and assessment in a blended environment. Teachers collaborated and shared ideas in Schoology discussions.

Not only are teachers gearing up, so are our administrators. This summer district administrators attended a full day of blended learning training where they learned the following:

• What is blended learning?

• How does blended learning align with Danielson Framework?

• What does it look like in the classroom?

• What is BPS BlendED Professional Learning?

We are excited to continue the training this year with three more sessions of BPS BlendED Professional Learning and adding an additional 169 classrooms to our BPS #ipadacademy this school year.

Below are the components of a blended learning classroom in Bellevue Public Schools. When three or more of these components are implemented, blended learning is happening in the classroom. Our BPS BlendED Professional Learning focuses on these eight components.

Last year we started our own #ipadacademy Twitter chat. The chat allows our teachers to have an online conversation, share ideas, and be inspired. Our #ipadacademy chats are held on Tuesday nights at 8:00 PM CST. All are welcome so feel free to join the conversation. We are incredibly proud of the #ipadacademy teachers who have stepped up to lead each month’s chat this semester and how they generously share their innovative ideas with others. The archived chats can be found here.

Keep an eye out for the date of our first chat this year!

Research shows that creation leads to higher student engagement and in order to inspire students to be creative Apple is releasing a new curriculum called Everyone Can Create. The curriculum will be released this fall. It is free to use and it guides teachers through the process of integrating drawing, music, filmmaking or photography into any lesson, topic, unit or assignment. It offers a variety of ways for students to use their creativity to express their ideas and develop new skills. Similar to the Everyone Can Code curriculum, Everyone Can Create offers free resources, teacher guides, lessons and examples to help bring creativity to your lessons. Creation is found at the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy for higher learning. The more students create the more they retain.

Apple rolled out the Apple Teacher program last year which provides teachers resources to learn about the iPad and iMac. Our teachers dove right in and we already have over 120 Bellevue Public Schools Apple Teachers! These teachers will be recognized at the start of the school year and receive an Apple Teacher sticker to wear on their lanyard.

Are you ready for the Apple Teacher Challenge?

Apple Teacher is an online training program which provides iBooks with detailed tutorials to help teachers learn the topics. Each topic takes between 30-90 minutes to complete followed by a short quiz. Sessions are available for both the iPad and the Mac.

iPad Online Activities

• Pages for iPad

• Keynote for iPad

• Numbers for iPad

• iMovie for iPad

• GarageBand for iPad

• Productivity with iPad

• Creativity with iPad

Mac Online Activities

• Pages for Mac

• Keynote for Mac

• Numbers for Mac

• iMovie for Mac

• GarageBand for Mac

• Productivity with Ma

• Creativity with Mac

Getting Started

1. Complete the 8 Apple Teacher iPad and/or Mac online sessions by logging in with your Apple ID at https://appleteacher.apple.com
   
   

2. After completing the Apple Teacher badges for either the Mac or iPad, fill out this form to receive your Apple Teacher Sticker for your badge.
   
   

3. Also, tweet out something that you learned while completing your Apple Teacher badges to @appleEDU and to the hashtags #AppleTeacher #ipadacademy and #bpsne.

This section is for self-paced learning. Here you may find podcasts, iBooks, blogs, and videos so you can choose what you wish to learn more about and you can choose your learning modality.

Podcasts

Vrain Waves Educational Podcasts: Teaching Conversations with Minds Shaping Education!

iBooks

Book Creator: 50 Ways to Use Book Creator in the Classroom

Sketchnoting by Reshaun Richards

Blogs

Station Rotation Model: Alternative Group Formations by Catlin Tucker

Edutopia: Flexible Classrooms: Research is Scarce but Promising

Schoology Exchange: 5 Educators Share Their Advice with Anyone New to Schoology

How to find an archived course. Check out this video on how to find your archived course and reuse materials.

How to insert a hyperlink

On a Mac

• Select the word or words you want to add a link to, select Insert item in the toolbar and choose Link from the dropdown menu

On iOS

• Find the insert link tool via the Paragraph (a reverse P) item from top right of the keyboard. You can also select Link in the contextual menu around the selected text.

Drag your Keynote sketches over to photos and it will automatically make them into a PNG with a transparent background. Use the split screen feature to open keynote and pages at the same time. Then drag the image from a slide in keynote straight into photos!

One of the most powerful parts of Twitter is the hashtag! It connects people, ideas, and creates communities within Twitter. It is a unique way for our teachers and administrators to share the amazing things happening in our schools, classrooms, clubs, teams and organizations. Our district hashtag, #bpsne, continues to grow and is becoming a powerful tool that we can leverage as a district to connect all of our teachers, students, parents, and community members. We encourage you to continue sharing the great things happening in your classrooms. Here is a list of all of the Bellevue Public School educators on Twitter. Let's create the 2018-2019 Bellevue Public Schools story together!

Use Twitter to connect with others from near and far! If you are someone who is already tweeting, remember to tag your tweets with #bpsne so more teachers can see what is happening in your classroom. Sharing is the name of the game! Remember there are lots of great chats to explore to connect with others in your content area. Just pull up the hashtag and enjoy the conversation.

Jeanette Carlson

jeanette.carlson@bpsne.net

Twitter: @mrsjcarlson

Chelsea Hoglund

chelsea.hoglund@bpsne.net

Twitter: @choglund87

Ann Feldmann

ann.feldmann@bpsne.net

Twitter: @annfeldmann1

Phillip Loomis

phillip.loomis@bpsne.net

Twitter: @teachloomis

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