Some students may come home with sign up information for an app called Remind. What is this, you may ask. Well, it is a great way for our teachers, club sponsors, coaches, and other leaders to communicate with parents, students, participants, and team.
Remind
As you get these codes you can text the number on the paper, follow the directions, and you are set up. There is an app to download to make communicating easy, too. You can sign up to get notifications pushed through your device, texted, emailed, OR all three! Anyone can sign up, not just teachers. Use it for any group you are a member of - book clubs, competitive sports teams, church groups, really anything. All messages are also saved on the website in order to protect users. I hope all of you using Remind love the features it provides. If you would love to see this in your child's classroom or group, talk to their teacher! Also, learn more at Remind.com
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As the new school year kicks off, you may find that your child's classroom has a social media account of some sort. What benefits does a social media account provide to students, parents, and teachers? Here are some great reasons your child's teacher should have social media...
Twitter Accounts
art_in_the_middle - middle school art (This one is SO awesome! I recommend following this for their digital art gallery. See their works in progress.) Search and "like" these pages to follow them.
Hope you enjoy what our teachers and staff have put together on their pages!
Artkive is a really neat app to organize all those pictures that your child does in art class. I remember my mom saving all the artwork I did as a child. I now have my own child coming home with art, and I am not going to lie, some of it gets...recycled. Some of it makes its way into a keepsake drawer, where the pile has been growing over the past 4 years. Artkive allows you to take pictures of your child's work, share it with others, and you can create a book of their artwork! Thinking long term, how neat would it be to have a book of the elementary art your child made? I love this idea! You can even do more than art. Pictures of any work can be taken, so tests, projects, report cards...anything! When you take the photo, it puts a plaque at the bottom where you can put your child's name, the grade they were in, a title, and the date. This app can be found on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. I stumbled across this printable during the week and had it in mind to share with everyone on Monday. This would be a great printable to reference when talking with your children about technology, maybe even hang it somewhere in the house.
I got it from the blog Sunshine and Hurricanes. If you follow the link to the blog, you will see her post on controlling technology, and she has some great ideas! Now that kids are back to school, really keep an eye on their devices and apps. Next week I will do a post on those apps you should be aware of and what they are used for by kids. As students prepare to go back to school, it may be time to set up new expectations at home for electronics. During the summer, we may become a little more relaxed with device usage than we typically are once the school year kicks in. A few things to consider:
Of course, in the end, you are the parent that makes the decision for the child. Choose what works best for you and your family. Even get the kids in on it so that they feel they are helping make a decision about their time. We are all looking forward to a great year at school! This blog post is specifically for our district and the app we have. But if you are not from our district, feel free to continue reading to find out what great things you can have as part of an app. If you have not heard, we have an app you can get on your mobile device that allows you access to all things Hallsville related. Just go to your app store and search for "Hallsville", then download the app! You will be able to:
All of these great things are done through ONE single app! There is no reason this FREE app should not be on your device today. Always stay connected and up-to-date. Khan Academy is a great website for students, parents, teachers, tutors, and just anyone who wants to learn. It is completely FREE and offers many courses. I did a blog post for teachers on this, you can check out by clicking here. Parents, you can create a free login and create one for your child. I recommend also checking with the teacher to see if they have made one for your child, or see if there is time for them to work in th_e classroom on this site. Each of the lessons have questions with videos if the student needs additional help. The videos are great, too. You, as a parent, can go through and view the lessons and courses, too. I think that is a great idea so you can get a feel for how and what the child is learning. Courses have been created for a multitude of subjects, including math, science, humanities, test prep, computer programming, and more! This isn't just for remediation, it can also be used to tap into something your child is interested in learning about. Parents have a dashboard to assign courses and look through their child's progress. Such a great resource. Here are some ways you can use the math portion of the site -
With school starting, I would definitely keep this page bookmarked - there is a YouTube channel, too. I happened across this site while in search of summer slide websites for reading. Florida Education Association (FEA) has compiled some great resources, K-8 (can possibly be used for high school, too), that will be of great help this summer. TipsThe site starts out with a great list of tips to encourage students to read over the summer. Setting goals and visiting the library are just a couple of the great tidbits the site gives. WebsitesFEA also gives some great links to websites to encourage summer learning. They are divided between K-5, K-2, 3-5, 6-8. The sites they give are sites I am, for the most part, familiar with using. They have some great suggestions. Reading ListsThis may be my favorite part of the website! There is a section of reading lists, and I mean lists. There are SO many lists for students to look through in order to find the right ones for them. All in all, this is a great website for students to use that need guidance for reading selections or that need some great websites for learning. Florida Education Association's website is another one to add to your bookmarked list! Over the next 6 weeks, I will spend Mondays focusing on websites and/or apps that will benefit students to use over summer break to avoid that "summer slide". Consider some of these activities that are previewed over the next 6 weeks, as a part of your child's summer routine. Camp Wonderopolis Wonderopolis is a great site in itself. They pose a question each day that is accompanied by a video and typed explanation. Students can learn the vocabulary through Wonder Words, check out galleries, test themselves, submit wonders, and search for past wonders. It is one of the best sites out there right now. A great tool they offer in the summer is Camp Wonderopolis. Starting June 15, 2015, Camp Wonderopolis will begin. You can register your child as a parent and then customize your experience based on what your child really likes. As a Camper or Counselor (recommended for families), you can track your experiences through 6 tracks of scientific exploration. The students can test to earn 42 different Wonder Cards. This experience is completely FREE! You can preregister at their website now. I did some of this with students in summer school last year, and we had so much fun! You can access Camp Wonderopolis 2014 to see what the kids did last year. There are Wonders within each section of science and then some great, easy experiments and activities. Some Benefits of Wonderopolis
With more and more students using Google in our schools, I feel it is important for families to understand what we are doing with it and what it means for our students. What is Google Apps for Education (GAFE) Google Apps for Education (GAFE) is a collection of apps created by Google that schools can use for FREE. We host our domain through them, meaning our email accounts are able to be @hallsville.org, but we are logging into Google. Google Drive Students and faculty have access to the apps offered by Google. These are the same ones you have if you have a gmail account. One of the most valuable we can access is Drive - Docs, Slides, Sheets, Drawings, and Forms. This is a great, free alternative to Microsoft programs. Also, this provides an easy way to collaborate with each other and with the teacher. Students and faculty can share documents, allowing them to work on them at the same time, make comments, and view them from anywhere with Internet access. They can even work on them without access to the Internet, and the documents will sync when they do get access. This eliminates the frustration of "read-only" documents and not being able to get to the documents when you are in another location. They are web-based. Other Apps Students also have the chance to use Maps, Sites, and more! They use these for projects in class. In Google Maps they can create maps that pinpoint locations and make paths. We used them in 5th grade to show where the European explorers traveled and what they encountered on their journeys. Sites has allowed our middle school to showcase their work through eportfolios. Information and Safety Students are not allowed to have Google+ accounts, specifically those under 13. There is no personal information tied to their accounts. Google does not phish through any of their information because they own their information. There are no ads associated with these accounts.
The admins on the account have access to documents created through the @hallsville.org domain. Accounts can be suspended, if they violate the technology agreement signed by all students at the beginning of the year. Students also went through an introduction explaining this is a "professional" account, not personal. The activity on these accounts should be used for things you don't mind a teacher, principal, parent, etc, seeing. Parents, I recommend having your child login and show you what they have been working on in class. They love to show it off! If you ever have any questions, please feel free to contact me at [email protected]! |
AuthorA teacher turned techie with an obsession with Google, teachers that love learning, and students that love life! Archives
May 2016
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