Digital Safety Tools and GIFs in an email – Week 33

CN Area Elementary Teaching Team:

Here are more tools to enhance your Distance Learning experience:

Week 33 (April 27 – May 1)

Weekly Giggles:                     How does the moon cut his hair?
Eclipse it.

Digital Safety Tools [Part 01]. Back when I was asked to talk about Digital Citizenship as a PD for my sites, I introduced you to several resources that you could talk to parents about: Life360, OurPact, and Circle. Earlier this week I put that content into video form so it can be shared easily. Share if you see fit. Always watch content before you share it, just like book reviews. Be sure it fits your standards and you agree with it. VIDEO LINK HERE.

Digital Safety Tools [Part 02]. That video went a bit long, so I cut the last bit out and turned the last bit into a second video. This video talks about vocabulary and scenarios. In essence, this is the why behind the what. It talks about things like VPN, proxy, using the neighbor’s Wi-Fi for free, or the neighbors using your Wi-Fi for free, and cheating on homework via text messaging. Review this content, and feel free to share if it meets your standards and you agree with it. Much of this video was designed because one of my sweet gems has done some of these things [He sure keeps me on my toes. No Perfect Parent Award for me this year (snort, giggle).]. VIDEO LINK HERE.

GIF in your email. You can actually add animated GIFs to the in-context portion of your email. Here are the step-by-step instructions on how to make that happen. VIDEO LINK HERE.

Always grace,
Melissa Culver

Benchmark on an iPad, Slide Templates, & Zoom – Week 33

CN Area Elementary Teaching Team:

Here are more tools to enhance your Distance Learning experience:

Week 33 (April 27 – May 1)

Weekly Giggles:                Why didn’t the orange win the race?

                                                It ran out of juice.

As you serve families during this transition and help your students navigate online learning, here are a few more ideas to help with your/their journey.

Zoom. You can actually use your cellphone as a document camera and use it during your Zoom session. If you have not checked out the details of how to make that happen, hop over to our Teacher Resources folder to find that PDF.  Or, click HERE for that singular PDF.

If you are curious about how the annotation tools work, check out THIS LINK for more information on how to do that.

If Whiteboard is turned on in Settings, we can turn off annotation for participants under Security. This will prevent your students from annotating on that teaching screen during your lesson.

Benchmark on an iPad. Benchmark has two different apps that are available for iPads.  One is the student user space.  The other one is just the library.  Feel free to share this out via Google Classroom or send it home to parents via Q [Mass Email]. If your families are interested in using these digital tools on a handheld device, this may be helpful. Now, it could potentially work the same for Android devices, I just don’t know.  We have Apple devices here. Video link here. 

Slides Carnival. Do you feel like your PowerPoint and Google Slides presentations look a bit stale? Slides Carnival is a great site with FREE templates.  LINK HERE.

Image credit: LINK HERE.

Student login on staff computers. Just a reminder that students are no longer allowed to log into staff computers. The Helpdesk is getting a lot of phone calls related to this inquiry. Again, children cannot log in on staff computers. Thank you for your understanding

Staff Password. If you get an email from CUSD stating that you need to change your password, rest assured that you can now change that at home.  You do not need to be on a CUSD campus to make that happen.
     * Ctrl + Alt + Delete
     * Change Password
     * Type in your old password
     * Follow the protocol in the email (password complexity and history) to form a new password

Digital Safety Tools.  I’m working on my next series of videos. I hope to have these out soon.  As your parents lean in and talk about screen time and digital tools to limit inappropriate content for their children, what do you say?  I’ve got some videos pending and hope to have them out by the end of the week.

Always Grace,
Melissa Culver

Clever, Default Font, JPG Hack, and Learning Tools – Week 32

CN Elementary Teaching Team:

Here are more tools to enhance your Distance Learning experience:

Week 32 (April 20 – April 24)

Weekly Giggles:                     Why didn’t the orange win the race?

It ran out of juice.

As you serve families during this transition and help your students navigate online learning, here are a few more ideas to help with your/their journey.

Student User on Staff Laptop. This protocol was rolled back.  This is no longer an option.  Sorry.

Wide Open School. Shout out to Gianna Zappettini who passed this gem onto her team.  Way to go, Miner!  This is a one-stop location for quality resource, teaching ideas, and strategies for our present situation.
https://wideopenschool.org/.

Screen capture from website - link above.

Clever. Your site admin may have notified you already, but there is an Analytics button in Clever.  If you need to see how often your students are logging in, stop by here to see their usage data.  Now, students can access Google Classroom by bypassing Clever altogether.  They can go straight to Google.com and login via their CUSD email.  So, this data will be accurate to a point.

Screen capture from Clever user.

Default Email Font. Some of you have had concerns over the size of your default font in Microsoft Outlook.  Here is a quick tutorial that will walk you through the steps to fix that. LINK HERE.

Melissa, how do you make all these image files? Like the one above and below? I use Microsoft Word (or Microsoft PowerPoint) to create these pictures.  I know how to use Photoshop, but sometimes that just takes too much time. Here’s the tutorial on how to make that happen: VIDEO LINK HERE.

YouTube. If you’re looking for good instructional content to up your Google Classroom skills, I recommend a few of the videos you will find in Pocketful of Primary. Check out her work to find some good resources that will help you navigate digital learning/teaching strategies.

Screen capture from YouTube channel - LINK HERE.

Here’s HER VIDEO on designing content for Google Classroom.  When you’re done, she gives you the template for free.  Watch to find out more.

Screen capture from video - LINK HERE.

Stay curious,
Melissa Culver

Enhanced Distance Learning – Week 31

CN Elementary Teaching Team:
As you serve families during this transition and help your students navigate online learning, here are a few more ideas to help with your/their journey.

Week 31 (April 14 – April 17)

Weekly Giggles:                 Did you hear the joke about pizza? 

                                             It was so cheesy.

Student laptops. Kudos to all of the staff who navigated curriculum and technology distribution this week.  That was a huge task.  If your students have difficulties logging into CUSD computers at home, please remind them that they should have CLOVISUSD\ prior to their student login. (Parent email.)

Continued Laptop Issues. If students have connection issues at home, here is one additional fix. The only thing is that they will need to be on a Clovis Unified network to run it. To make it easier to access, have the student head here: tinyurl.com/takehomelaptop. Connect to CUSD wifi. Load that software. Reboot the computer.  All should work splendidly.

Edulastic. Edulastic is now available in the app store as a download.  If this is a tool you use with your students, this may free up some devices at home.  As one child uses a computer, another child can use a phone for an assignment/assessment.

Image Credit: Edulastic Email.

Fresno County Library. In my last update, I showcased that there is now a Fresno County Library app in Clever for your students.  I just published a video to YouTube today that can walk your students through that online portal. If they don’t have borrowing cards, no problem.  They can sign up online via a cell phone number (parent obviously).  From there, they have access to a host of digital books. VIDEO LINK HERE

Zoom. In all new Zoom sessions, there is a forced password protocol.  Please note that update and keep your team informed as needed. Amy Rios had a great idea – If you have your Zoom link tucked into your Clever Teacher Page, just add the password to the name of that link.  Now, parents and students know what it is, and they don’t have to search for it.  High Five, Amy!

Blog. For those of you who don’t usually read my emails, all Technology Highlight emails are archived to my blog for reference.  You can head there to find any information that you may have missed.  And, there’s a tidy search box so you can find content easily.

Resource Links for Students and Parents. Karena Cantrell designed a website for teachers, students, and parents. If you find THIS LINK helpful, feel free to share/use as you see fit.

Just keep swimming,
Melissa Culver

How can I use PDF's in my distance learning classroom? – Week 30

CN Area Elementary Teaching Team:

Have a wonderful break!  Relax.  Spend time with family.  Stay safe.

As you serve families during this transition and help your students navigate online learning, here are a few more ideas to help with your/their journey.

Week 30 (March 30 – April 3)

Thursday Giggles:                            Did you hear about the guy who invented Lifesavers? 

       They say he made a mint!

Encouraging words:

How can my students edit a PDF?  Here are a few options that come to mind: 
ONE: Make the image the background in Google Slides. VIDEO LINK HERE

Image credit from video.

TWO: Create a Google Doc, drop a jpg snip in and let the kids use that Google Doc for the same assignment.
Don’t fill the document with text boxes.  Make it simple.  To see how this works, click on THIS VIDEO LINK for a tutorial.

THREE: Submit the PDF via Google Classroom if it was printed (or a packet).
1) Students can take pictures of the completed work and turn those images in via Google Classroom.
2) Children can create a PDF on a smart phone via QR Reader or Notes or other PDF apps. Then, this PDF can be attached to Google Classroom in the Google Classroom app.
3) Inside the Google Classroom app, there is a camera button. They can actually take those pictures from the assignment page.
4) If a family has access to a printer/scanner/fax machine, they can put a thumb drive into the printer and scan the pages to create a PDF.  That thumb drive can then move to the family computer.  The child can attach that multi-page PDF to the Google Classroom assignment. VIDEO HERE

FOUR: Edulastic may be another option.  You can drop that PDF in and then add some response boxes to that PDF.  Then, Edulastic will grade that resource for you (because you put the answers into the original part).

Fresno County Library. Did you notice we now have a link to the Fresno County Library in Clever?  Yes we do!  If your students have personal borrowing cards, there is a host of eBook materials they can download for free!

Together, we've got this,
Melissa Culver