TodaysMeet: a great way to make your students do the thinking

TodaysMeet.com is a chat platform designed for teachers. It takes very little time to be up and running; just a few minutes to set up a free account and a link for your students. This is a great way to record some "See, Think, Wonder" activities. Project a prompt for your students,give them the link and 3 to 5 minutes to start generating questions about the prompt, it is that easy. The students may start off posting factual questions but before long they are asking higher order thinking questions. It is amazing to watch their thinking start to get deeper and deeper as they feed off of each other. This is a great tool to use as a hook in the beginning of a unit or to extend the conversation and gives every student a voice.

Once you project the prompt, ask students to start generating questions, let them know that you will not be answering questions right away and that you will not be judging the questions.It is just a brainstorming activity of questions.The students do not need an account of their own to use it. As a teacher, you are asked to start a room and may open it to any user or logged in students only. It is a good idea to keep the room open for a year because once you close a room there is no way to reopen it. The questions that students generate are viewed by all and are kept for as long as your room is open. You can print out the questions or just save them. Students are asked to create a nickname to enter the room, if you would like to keep students anonymous, tell them to all use the same nickname.

 Tis the season for goal setting so I thought I would pass along a couple of Educator Evaluation TeachPoint tips:

1.  If you go into TeachPoint and you are concerned that you cannot see any of your files from last year, do not be concerned.  You can access your previous year's files by clicking on the arrow next to "Current Year" and changing it to "Last Year".

2.  A TeachPoint enhancement now makes it possible to attach Google Drive files or links to any form.  For example, if you click on one of the paper clips on the Artifact Form you now have options for Google Drive files and links.

3.  When setting your goals, you no longer need the Goal Setting Form.  Since your goals are also listed on the Educator Plan Form, the Educator Evaluation Committee determined that the other form is redundant.  You can initiate your own Educator Plan Form by clicking on "New".

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask your Educator Evaluation Committee representative.  Since our contract says Educators should submit proposed goals and plans 'on or about' October 1st, our goals are already due or will be due soon.

HS shared folder

1. How to find the HS shared folder
1. In the google drive search bar type file_HighSchool, the folder will pop up
2. Click on the folder below to view content

1. How to Add content to the the file_HighSchool Folder
1. Right Click on the document you want to move to the file_HighSchool folder
2. Click on the “Move to”.. Icon

c. Click the back arrow and select Shared with Me

d. scroll until you find the file_HighSchool folder and click Move Here

Adding a Guardian to Google Classroom

The new guardian feature in Google Classroom helps keeps parents/guardians informed of assignments and class announcments.

First Turn on guardian email summaries

By default, guardian email summaries are turned off, but you can turn them on for your class. 

1. Go to classroom.google.com.
2. Click your class and the Students Tab.
3. Under Guardian Email Notifications (located on the left side of the window), click Include this class to On . 
4. (Optional) Check the box to add all your classes to guardian summaries.
5. Click Add.

Invite a guardian

Google Classroom has a new feature called Guardian.This feature allows you to add a parent/guardian's email address so that they get email notifications about upcoming assignments, missing work, and class assignments. 

If you can’t invite or remove a guardian, contact your administrator for help. 

1. Go to classroom.google.com.
2. Click the class.
3. At the top, click Students.
4. Next to a student’s name, click Invite Guardians.
   To invite additional guardians, next to the student’s name, click More   Invite guardians.
5. In the text field, type a guardian’s email address.
6. Click Invite to send the invitation or Add Another to add another guardian email address.

If an invitation has been sent and the guardian hasn’t yet accepted, you’ll see “(invited)” after the guardian's email address. After a guardian accepts the invitation, you and their student will receive a confirmation email and the guardian’s full name will show next to the student’s name. For privacy, students don’t see the names of other students’ guardians.

Moving Google Files From One Drive to Another

This is the time of year when teachers are retiring or possibly changing jobs/careers. IF you are the person who may be leaving you probably want to bring your Google files with you.

If your colleague is leaving and they have "shared documents" with you then the shared documents will be lost forever when the teachers school Google account is closed. You probably what to get those Google Docs before the account is closed.


"TAKE OUT" is a program that  easily save those documents and allow you to move files from one account to another,

https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout

Great Assitive Technology

Capti is an app and an online platform for universal access to content.
It is the only app that works on Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Chromebooks!
Besides Bookshare, it works with web pages, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.
Capti for iOS is listed among the top accessibility apps on the AppStore.

A recent Fox 5 news feature: https://youtu.be/Z4Yz9SGI410
A few interviews with teachers: https://youtu.be/Ju1quucWaYE

Google Speech Maker

"Read&Write for Google Chrome users have yet another reason to be excited about the literacy support toolbar used by over 4.5 million students and teachers in classrooms across the globe. Today we’re excited to announce several new updates available for immediate use, including the ability to create audio files, customize your toolbar, and more!

Speech Maker
Now students (and their teachers) can select text from any Google Document or Web page and turn it into a MP3 audio file with a single click! 

This is great for students who are on the go, or prefer listening over other methods of consuming text. It is also great for instructional purposes where students are paired with a book and can follow along as they listen through their earbuds."