Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Adios, Picasa!

From "The Gooru"  02/15/16
Picasa, the Google photo organization and storage app, is being retired on March 15, 2016. In an announcement from the Picasa Blog, the Picasa team describes their reasoning for “moving on from Picasa.” In an effort to unite all photo entities, Google is focusing their photo services in Google Photos. Google Photos was launched last May. The free service provides unlimited storage for photos and video files.
The good news for Picasa users is that your photos from Picasa Web Album are already located on Google Photos. In Google Photos, you can access your previously uploaded images and continue to use Google to store, share, and organize your memories. Access to your tags, comments, or captions in your existing Picasa Web Albums are available through May 1, 2016. The storage for Picasa Web Albums will be determined once May rolls around.
For more information on the upcoming changes, visit the Picasa Blog, and to learn more about Google Photos, here is your personal guide.

Tackk.com for Digital Projects or Student Portfolios

If you are looking for a free, easy way to share content with students, parents or other teachers, you should check out Tackk.com.  Tackk is a free digital creation platform where teachers and students can create, collaborate and share content to support in-classroom learning.


If you use Tackk with students, they will be able to:
  • Create digital pages, online reports and assignments building their school portfolio
  • Create a Tackkboard that includes text, photos, video, audio, maps and links
  • Collaborate and communicate with the teacher and other classmates
  • Keep track of project details and share creative work
  • Access Tackk from any computer or mobile device with Internet capabilities and receive notification reminders via email (if of age)

The only information required from students to set up a Tackk account is their name, email and a username and password, or Google or Edmodo login info. For students in grades without Google login info, a teacher could set up classroom Tackks under their account for their students’ use.


Another way to use Tackk is to create digital portfolios for your students.  I have created a Tackkboard for each of my students and I’m using them as their writing portfolios.  At the beginning and end of each writing unit, I scan their pre and post assessments and saved them in on my Google Drive.  For each assessment I created a button on each student’s Tackkboard that included the link to that document on my Drive.  Now I have a digital writing portfolios that I can share with students, parents, current year teachers (ELL, Reading Support, Special Education) and next year’s teachers too!  I was able to set up privacy settings on each Tackkhoard so that it is password protected so it restricts public access on the internet.  


Check out these photos of my students’ digital writing portfolios…

Teacher Tackkboard with student individual Tackkboard portfolios:



Here is an example of a Student Tackkboard being used as a digital writing portfolio.  If you click on a button you are brought to the scanned image of the student’s writing.


Tackk can be used in so many ways!  If you want to try it out and you have questions, I’m happy to help!

Monday, February 15, 2016

FREE Online Poster Tool

Have you discovered the free online poster making website Canva? It is similar to Glogster, but without having students create an account. It is a useful classroom tool when you are looking for students to create a poster-like project. There are paid choices that students need to be careful not to select. One way around this was when students did select these in their poster we ended up taking a screenshot of the final product and printing it. This is only useful when you are not including interactive features.
Check it out: www.canva.com Sample Project: Fifth graders were asked to create a poster of an early colonist living in one the original 13 colonies looking to fill jobs in their colony. They needed to include the skills needed to perform the job and who they would trade their goods with:

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

MORE FREE STUFF! 

 Sign up for a Boston Pubic Library E-Card  http://www.bpl.org/general/circulation/ecards.htm and instantly borrow free digital movies, music, eBooks and more, 24/7 from HOOPLA!   
 Image result for hoopla





The Gale In Context Databases are synced to Google Classroom!

Below are a couple of great videos that demonstrates how to quickly send selected articles and documents from Gale databases to Google Classroom to use with your students and how to save articles and documents to your Google Drive for later use. 




Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Looking for a new app? Tell About This is a great app for creating stories, retelling stories. and fluency recordings.  The apps prompts students  to use complete sentences and dig deeper into their retelling skills.


Recommended for: elementary/middle school students, ELA, Speech, and support for struggling writers of all ages.


Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Axis 360 is HERE! 

The Ipswich Schools are taking part in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ebook and audio book initiative! We have  access to tons of current, popular and best-selling fiction and nonfiction titles for both adults and students. Click here to access . Set up an account by creating a username starting with ipsk12 (for example, ipsk12aconnelly). Any problems contact the Middle/ High School Librarian (aconnelly@ipsk12.net)  and she'll walk you through it!

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

How to Change Default Settings in Google Docs

 How to change your default settings in Google docs:
1. Highlight your text
2. Select the font style drop down menu
3. Select your desired default font (Times New Roman or a font of your choice)
4. Select the "font size" drop down menu
5. Select your desired default font size
6. Select the "format" menu then "line spacing"
7. Select your desired line spacing
8. Select the Normal Text drop down menu
9. Select the arrow next to "Normal" Text and select “update Normal Text to match (see screenshot 1)
10. Select the "Normal" Text drop down menu
11. Select the very bottom “options” menu
12. Select “Save as my default styles".(see screenshot 2)

screenshot 2
 




Monday, February 1, 2016


The 4th Annual Ed Tech Team New England Summit will be held on March 12-13, 2016 at the Marshall Simonds Middle School,  Burlington Ma. This summit will feature Google for Education and brings together educators from around the world to learn and share how they are using Google Apps for Education. If you are interested in attending please email cburke@ipsk12.net. For more information please click here