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