Technoflash

September 11, 2018 Volume 53

Sixty-one teachers joined us on August 29-30 for the first two days of their six-day BPS BlendED Professional Learning training. It was so fun to feel their excitement as they began this exciting learning journey. They are thrilled to be the next 1:1 iPad classrooms in the district and eager to transform their classrooms. They will return in September for days 3-4 of the training and again in October for days 5-6. At the end of the training, the new Apple Teachers will receive their class sets of iPads, a 55” TV/DVD cart, and an Apple TV! As they return to their classrooms, they begin their on-the-job training with their blended learning coach as they continue to learn and implement new workflows. It was a wonderful two days and we look forward to days 3 and 4.

As we continue to move toward a 1:1 district in Bellevue Public Schools, Schoology, our Learning Management System (LMS), provides a lot of opportunities for you to connect with your students and share content. All students have access to a Schoology account and can access it at school, home or on the go using their phone or other personal device.

• Add your assignments for the week in Course Updates so if students forget they can look online.

• Upload a video of the lessons you are teaching or concepts that students are struggling with in each unit. Students can then listen at home or in a study hall to review the material.

• Add events to the calendar such as quizzes, tests, field trips, spirit days for students to quickly locate.
  

Looking for a great way to assess your students’ learning? Try some of these new enhanced question types in Schoology Assessments.

• Standard Question Types

• Multiple Choice

• True/False

• Matching

• Ordering

• Fill in the Blank

• Short Answer/Essay

• Enhanced Question Types

• Fill in the Blank Dropdown

• Fill in the Blank Drag and Drop

• Label Image

• Highlight Hotspot

• Highlight Text

• Math Short Answer

• Number Line

• Chart

The Test/Quiz version is still available, but will eventually go away so we are encouraging any creation from this point forward to be in Assessments rather than the Test/Quiz. Learn how you can convert your old test/quizzes to assessments here.

We are in our second of three years in moving to the updated, web-based PowerTeacher Pro (PTP) gradebook. We will include tips in the TFlash each month to make your transition easier!

Andie Maupin added a customization that will help teachers who need to see grades/schedules of the students they have in GPS, ADVISORY, Study Hall, etc. Using this new customization will avoid having to use the Quick Lookup screen which has a glitch requiring constant toggling between tabs to see grades/schedules/attendance.

1. Select the Student Info icon ("backpack") from your PowerTeacher Start Page

2. From the Select Screen menu, pick Teacher Dashboard

3. You will see the Quick Lookup Grid

4. You also get the student's Current Schedule

5. Historical Grades (from current school) are visible

6. Remember you can set a default screen by going to the Start Page and picking "Personalize"

7. From the menu, select Default Student Screen

8. Choose Teacher Dashboard. Now, whenever you use the backpack icon, the screen will be the dashboard

Last year the NETA Board launched a new mini-grant opportunity for Nebraska public and private school teachers.

The grant is called the Virtual Field Trip Mini-grant Program and it allows for teachers to be reimbursed for the purchase of Virtual Field Trip program experiences for their students, when procured from either Nebraska non-profit content providers, through an ESUCC Nebraska Virtual Instruction Source (NVIS) Virtual Field Trip provider (https://nvis.esucc.org/VFTList.aspx), or any national content provider listed within the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (https://www.cilc.org/Interactive-Content/Search-Content-Provider-Programs.aspx) .

Applications will be “continuously rolling”, which means that teachers can submit requests at any time. However, each teacher is limited to a maximum of five VFT programs per academic year, or $500 of reimbursement per academic year, whichever comes first.

More information about the program and a link to the grant application is located here.

If you have additional questions, feel free to contact Julie Moore, NETA Executive Director, executivedirector@netasite.org and/or Tom Rolfes, NETA Executive Liaison, tom.rolfes@netasite.org.

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. The first chat this year will be tomorrow, Tuesday, September 11. Take a look at the questions below. 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.

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

TED Talks

TEDTalks Education

Articles

Blended Learning - eSchool News

Flexible Seating - Edutopia

Blogs

Students authoring books in Pages

EdCamp

EdCamp Omaha, November 3, 2018 at ESU 3. Edcamps provide organic, participant-driven professional learning experiences for educators created by educators. Anyone interested in education is welcome to attend. To register, click HERE.

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.

If you haven’t subscribed to our blog make sure to click on the link below and click FOLLOW on the right side of the page. This will send our new blog posts directly to your email to keep you up on all the things happening with technology in Bellevue Public Schools.

Click here to access our Technology Tools for Teaching blog!

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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