Instructional Tech

We wanted to take a moment to thank all Elkhart community members – staff and students alike – for a great 2022. We faced significant challenges and the way our staff work together to support students is unparalleled. This year, ECS staff were pushed to do more learning than ever before. In total, our staff participated in over 40,000 hours of learning about working with English-language learners, trauma informed care, and ways to de-escalate situations with students and adults. This does not include any of the other voluntary learning options we had during the year. The commitment of ECS employees...

We are excited to invite you to participate in Elkhart’s first Summer DOT Conference taking place on June 1 & 2, 2022. With a focus on Tier 1 Instruction, the Summer DOT Conference will feature Elkhart’s best resource, our own teachers, teaching other teachers. We believe you are the heart and soul of our district, and have amazing ideas and strategies to share. Our hope is that every teacher walks away with one thing they plan to take with them into the 2022-2023 school year.  Interested in sharing your best one thing you do with students to make sure they’re...

Canvas has regular updates and from time to time, we’ll write about those here on the blog so you’re aware of some of the more important changes. This month, there are three small, but helpful, updates we wanted to make you aware of. Gradebook labels As you know, Canvas adds labels to the gradebook automatically. Starting this month, the “Missing” label will automatically be removed when you add a score. This is nice because before, you had to manually change the label. Saved mouse clicks for the win! Splitting First and Last Names There is a new setting available in...

Whether we want to admit it or not, grading is a powerful influencer on emotional wellness. The letter or number on top of an assignment communicates more than performance; to many students, the grade on an assignment communicates value. Standards based grading is a system which allows us to proactively change our grading to promote positive academic and emotional mindsets in students.

Canvas is full of tools you can use to provide rich, timely feedback to students. In this post, we want to break down the three most impactful methods of giving feedback to students through their work. Goal After reading, your goal is to provide feedback that is actionable, specific, and accessible using tools in Canvas. Rubrics Yes, the “R” word again. Rubrics are flexible and powerful in giving students feedback on their work. They break down individual elements of the assignment and give you a chance to score and give feedback on each element individually. Instead of a single score...

After completing Module 18 in SIOP, I’ve been thinking a lot about student engagement. Obviously, we all do our very best to engage students, but sometimes it is very difficult to do. A lot of times we think that how students engage in our classes is common sense, but common sense isn’t always so common! To help my students see exactly what I expect, I made a slide that is always on my board during classwork. A simple slide like this helps direct student energy toward productive classroom habits. I realized that if a student was struggling and needed an...

All accommodations are focused on one thing: how do we make the content accessible to the student? Several years ago, I was challenged to think about an educational Hippocratic Oath. What would be on my list of imperatives as an educator? “Do no harm” is the famous line everyone knows, but a more correct summary of the famous line written is, “As to diseases, make a habit of two things — to help, or at least to do no harm.” Do good comes before do no harm. In other words, we should be focusing on the good of all students...

Each month, the Technology Ambassadors work hard to create resources, materials, and other tools to help you with planning, brainstorming, or getting quick tips. To make them easy to find, we’ll publish the collection here on the blog as well as send an email digest. Don’t forget to check the PD signup page for upcoming workshops. There are new topics added regularly and we’ll continue to send weekly updates about what’s available to participate in. We archive nearly all PD on the Professional Development page. If you can’t make a Meet, head over there to see what’s available for on-demand...

Accessibility has been a main theme this year in our resources and Chrome has added a great new tool to expand usability on websites with the addition of Live Captions. Why does this matter? The obvious benefits are for hard-of-hearing students. Using video and audio without captions excludes them from the experience, so it closes that gap immediately. Beyond that accommodation, giving all students the option to read along while listening increases their reading fluency and comprehension. Enabling Live Captions costs you nothing and provides major benefits to all students. Live Captions vs Closed Captions What’s the difference between this...

Each month, the Technology Ambassadors work hard to create resources, materials, and other tools to help you with planning, brainstorming, or getting quick tips. To make them easy to find, we’ll publish the collection here on the blog as well as send an email digest. Blog Posts The blog was busy this month with posts on chunking instruction, attendance tips in Seesaw, and using EdPuzzle with students, among others. Tips From Teachers: Taking AttendanceAttendance: Something that once seemed so easy with face-to-face learning, has become a daunting task for teachers in virtual settings. Check out our blog post feature tips...

We’re online for the long haul. Even with hybrid teaching, our students are working in a virtual classroom, through Seesaw or Canvas, three days a week. As teachers, a pandemic isn’t a great time to try to learn new things, but we must be reflecting on and considering what we’re asking our students to do in this new environment. Our old habits and methods aren’t adequate in helping students be successful. All things considered, our online classes need to offer more flexibility for students than when we’re in person. Removing time barriers to information is one easy way to take...

To support all high school classes moving online again, the Tech Ambassadors have helped compile a virtual teaching toolkit to help staff get back in the swing of online teaching. It’s a short, seven-slide presentation you can use as a resource moving forward. We have suggestions and resources for five main areas: First day logistics for teachers and students Making your own teaching videos Creating accessible lessons Day to day efficiency Communicating with students View or Download You can take a look at the full toolkit in this view-only presentation. If you want your own copy, you can do that...

Station rotations can be a great way to help students engage with topics or ideas. This post curates some ideas and resources to help you get started.