Tech Tuesday March 7, 2017

Westfield Washington Schools Tech Tuesday Newsletter March 7, 2017 App Pick of the Week Seesaw http://web.seesaw.me Capture Student Learning In Any Form "Seesaw empowers students to independently document what they are learning at school. Students can “show what they know” using photos, videos, drawings, text, PDFs, and links. You can also import directly from most popular apps.” Google Tip of the Week Google Slides: Download as PDF Google Slides is an incredibly powerful and flexible tool. One of the best features is the ability to download the slides as a PDF Document. Just click File, Download as, and PDF Document. This is a great way for you and your students to create posters, newsletters, and eBooks. You can even resize the slides so that they are a normal 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper. Learn more by reading the article, “How to Create an eBook with Google Slides” on the Shake Up Learning blog. What I’ve been training on ActivInspire ActivInspire is a fantastic classroom presentation tool. Two of my favorite features are the ability to import PDFs and the Page Zoom tool. Watch the video below to try it out!   Teachers Using Technology Do you know of a great use of technology by a Westfield Teacher? Share your own technology tip or nominate another teacher! Teacher of the Week: Lauren East, Spanish teacher at WMS   Tool: Google Sites Technology Items: Computers and Chromebooks Google Sites Recently, Lauren’s Spanish students completed an awesome project using Google Sites. In his book, The Innovator’s Mindset, George Couros poses the question, ““In our world today, what is a student more likely going to need to be able to write: an essay or a blog post?” With that in mind, Spanish students took what would traditionally be a poster project to Google Sites instead. While learning Spanish travel vocabulary, students also learned about pages and subpages, how to create and embed videos, and about copyright laws and digital citizenship. Using Google Sites allowed students to share their work with an audience beyond the teacher. Here are two awesome websites created by her students. Un Anticipo de Sevilla y Westfield Westfield Meets Chile Connect with Lauren:  Twitter: @WMS_Spanish   eastl@wws.k12.in.us  x6694   Odds and Ends Digital Badges I’ve been thinking a lot about digital badges. What is a digital badge? Let’s look at an explanation from DigitalMe (http://www.digitalme.co.uk/badges). Like [Boy Scout or Girl Scout] badges, Open Badges communicate a skill or achievement but are displayed on the Internet. They contain comprehensive data including who has earned the badge, its criteria, learning evidence and who has endorsed it. All this information is packaged within a tiny badge image file that can be displayed via online CVs and social networking sites. To me there are two main points here. Badges recognize achievement, which focuses more on what you can do rather than facts you know. Badges are verified with a variety of online technologies. This all happens behind the scenes and most people won’t have to think much about this. You probably don’t spend much time thinking about the verification of your credit card transactions. It’s in the same category. There are many ways that badges can be used with students, faculty, and staff. I am excited to see how badges can promote learning here at Westfield. If you have experience or interest in digital badges, I’d like to hear from you. Let’s continue the conversation in the WWS Tech Tuesday Discussion Google+ Community! Access the archive of past newsletters in this shared Google Drive Folder. WWS Tech Tuesday Newsletter Archive