Tech This Out

The Tiny Edition, Part 2 We’re back from spring break feeling refreshed and excited about wrapping up the year on a high note. In this week’s tiny update, a reminder about Springappalooza and a better method for leaving audio comments in Seesaw. Springappalooza! Our April focus is rolling forward with a post this week on making sketches from copyrighted images. The original idea is from Brad Cogdell, who has run some great projects with this students with some great results. Don’t forget to leave a comment on the post or on Facebook to be eligible for the limited-edition Springappalooza sticker...

The Early Edition If you don’t remember that show, it was gold. With spring break coming soon, we wanted to make sure we got as many eyes on the update as possible. This week, we wrapped up our posts on videos for the month of March and introduced the April Focus. If you like the megaphone, you’ll love our next Chrome extension. Clips Our last post on using video in the classroom focused on using Clips as a great way to dip your toes into making movies. Take a look at the post for a short how to and some...

The Remote Edition We’re out this week at a conference with the Tech Ambassadors, so today we have a rapid-fire update with several recommendations from the conference to peek at. We’ll do a deeper dive into these (and more) in future updates. Quick Link Rundown Google partnered with LIFE Magazine to create a searchable archive of photos tagged by keyword. Need writing prompt ideas? Here’s an archive you can pull from to use with your students. Ask a question, get a list of answers pulled from books archived by Google. Auto Draw takes your chicken-scratch sketch and suggests icons. You...

The We Were Teased Edition Yesterday’s windstorm was a nuisance, but it was 60 degrees and felt like spring was finally here. We’re back to cold air for the foreseeable forecast, so warm you up, we have reminders today on setting your iPad passcode, using video in learning journals, and adding icons to your Seesaw activities. iPad Passcodes Teachers, it is critical that you keep your computer and iPad secured with passwords. Your accounts have access to items that can not be made public by not having a code on your device. Your computer password is set automatically with your...

The Sun Is Coming Back Edition According to Time and Date, we are rapidly approaching 12 hours of sunlight per day (today is 11 hours and 37 minutes). Spring is coming and we’re feeling good. In this week’s update, a Seesaw sign in change, saving passwords on the iPads for easier sign in, and a reminder about our March blog focus. Seesaw Sign In Tech Services and Seesaw have solved a pesky problem with student sign in. Instead of using the QR code, students can now sign in to all of their Seesaw classes at once with their Google account!...

The 19th Edition The TWIT has been 18 weeks old for one whole week (don’t we grow up so fast?). Last week’s update was big, so we’re going to swing the other way and give just a couple of notes. Custom groups in Apple Classroom? Yes please. Also, a Canvas Mastery Paths idea and a reminder about online PD options. Groups in Apple Classroom Apple Classroom allows you to create flexible groups of students. You can open (or send) specific items to individual groups as well as individuals. This is a great way to manage subsets of students in a...

The Communication ? Edition We’re midway through February already! In this week’s TWIT there’s a reminder about submitting those work orders, a kids audiobook website for elementary folks, our Pages feature for the week, and forget Waldo, let’s play Where’s Brian? Help Us Help You With the new Technology website, it is very important that individuals submit work orders instead of single teachers. Here’s an example: an app all elementary students are using was inadvertently caught in the network filter, so the app didn’t work for anyone. Only one teacher put in a work order while several emailed Instructional Tech...

The ? Edition A delay-turned-snow day followed by another delay couldn’t dampen our spirits this week. We’ve got some love to share in our Pages feature for the week, a recap of the PD on Air we hosted, and a visual literacy example in Keynote you can use with students. February Focus: Pages Our series this month on using Pages with students continues with a post on embedding media right into the documents. We have a full writeup with examples and ideas on how this can help you and your students create interactive pieces right on the iPad. PD on...

The Wow, We Worked a Whole Week Edition A full week under our belt! To celebrate, we have a full TWIT update for you. Below, we have some ChatterPix ideas for teachers, tips on using templates in Pages, and a reminder about PD On Air. App Ideas: ChatterPix This week, we got an email from Karla Doyle, Mary Beck’s Technology Ambassador with some great getting-started materials for ChatterPix. Check out the ideas in this doc and watch the blog for a longer update from Karla soon. (Use the email subscribe on the right to be notified of new posts!) Using...

The Big Thaw Edition Even though we only had school two days, we still have a couple of updates this week. Read on for some tips on easy custom graphics for Canvas or Seesaw and an iBook for teaching vocab with Keynote. Custom Graphics with Canva Our online classes deserve some cosmetic love, just like our classrooms. This week, we wrote up two posts for creating custom banners in Canvas and Seesaw to help spruce up the screen for your students. Taking it a step further, students can also use Canva to create their own graphics for class projects (or...

? Polar Vortex 2: The Revenge Edition! ? My favorite headline this week was, “If You Think it’s Cold Now, We Have Bad News For You.” Frigid temperatures may have an icy grip on the area, but we have some ? hot tips ? for you today. We’re kicking off this edition with a post on making collages with Keynote, followed by a reminder on using Apple Classroom with students. That segues beautifully into a new PD option this semester. Project Tip: Collages with Keynote Jen Smith suggested a great way to use Keynote with your students. Instead of sticking...

The Polar Vortex is Coming! Edition This this week’s TWIT, we have a video on aligning IXL tasks to your students, sharing PDFs with students through the Books app, and some good habit reminders from Tech Services. Assign IXL Tasks by Topic IXL has several textbooks aligned to their tasks. On the IXL website, tap on the Inspiration link at the top, and then go to Textbook Alignment on the left side. Select your content by topic to see aligned tasks. Watch Kat’s video for a walkthrough. Distribute PDFs with the Books App The Books app on the iPad can...

The New Year TWIT Happy New Year! We’re excited to be back for second semester after refreshing for a couple of weeks. We have two updates today: gradebooks and the new technology website. Gradebooks Many of you are working hard on setting up your gradebooks. The same expectation stands for this semester: PowerSchool is the official grade for students. If you are using the Canvas sync to get grades into PowerSchool, remember: You must import categories from PowerSchool into Canvas for syncing to work. Canvas comments do not post to PowerSchool. PowerSchool comments are erased when Canvas syncs scores. If you’re using automatic scoring...