The First Tech Tuesday Newsletter!

Westfield Washington Schools Tech Tuesday Newsletter February 7, 2017 Hello WWS! This is our first ever Technology Tuesday newsletter. The goal of this newsletter is to provide you with useful EdTech tips and resources and to keep you connected with the comings and goings of technology training here at Westfield. In case we haven’t met yet, my name is Kyle Wilcox and I am the Lead Technology Trainer and a member of the Technology Services Group (TSG). The role of the technology trainer is to help all staff use technology more efficiently in their daily tasks and to help integrate technology into the classroom. App Pick of the Week Padlet https://padlet.com Padlet is an Internet application that allows people to express their thoughts on a common topic easily. It works like an online sheet of paper where people can put any content (e.g. images, videos, documents, text) anywhere on the page, together with anyone, from any device. Think of it like a multimedia friendly, free-form, real-time wiki. There are so many cool ways to use Padlet in education! It’s fantastic for brainstorming and for demonstrating completed work. Here is a great blog post that explores Padlet in education.   Google Tip of the Week   Google Drive Search At the top of your Google Drive web page, there is a search bar. Just type what you want to search for and hit enter. The simplest search is just to look up the name of a document. Sometimes, you can’t remember the name of the document. This where the search gets really good. You can start typing the name of a person and it will show you all the documents that they have shared with you or that you have shared with them. I use this all the time. What I’ve been training on   Google Drive Recently, I have been showing teachers the many possibilities of Google Drive. I have updated the Technology Workshops Page so there are now 7 workshops available. Take a workshop at this link!   Teachers Using Technology   In each newsletter, I will highlight a great use of technology by a Westfield teacher. What will you do to get on the list?   Teacher of the Week: Ann Joseph, WWES 4th grade   Tool: Notability for classroom presentation Technology Items: Projector Desktop computer Mirroring360 software on the computer iPad Notability iPad app Google Drive Ann is using her iPad to transform teaching. By using the Notability app (http://gingerlabs.com/), she is able to import documents and pictures of all kinds from her Google Drive. She then uses Mirroring360 to display her iPad screen on the projector in the front of her room. One specific use for this is importing worksheets from the Ready Math curriculum. This has several advantages. Ann can walk around the room while teaching and holding the iPad. It’s much easier to observe students. Ann can use the zoom feature to focus on a specific math problem and make the text big enough to see from the back of the room. Ann can write and annotate on almost any document directly from her iPad. Ann can set the iPad down in front of a student and have the student work a problem and display their learning to the class. Ann also likes that Notability saves her annotations so that she can pick up the lesson right where she left off in the previous class.  Connect with Ann: Twitter @AnnJ9211 josepha@wws.k12.in.us x7965   Odds and Ends   In this section I will share something that just doesn’t fit in any category. It could be another resource, a blog post, or something I want help and feedback about. Also, thanks for reading. If you got this far, you are among the 10% most committed readers of our newsletter. Access the archive of past newsletters in this shared Google Drive Folder. WWS Tech Tuesday Newsletter Archive