February 2018

Best Practices

Compare Contrast

Compare & Contrast Ideas

We know that students learn best when they are truly engaged in what they are learning, when they have the opportunity to explore, debate, discuss, examine, defend, and experiment with the concepts and skills they are ready to learn.

Give each student a small stack of sticky notes (5-10 notes, depending on how many responses you anticipate).  Present students with a question related to the content. Questions with multiple correct answers or that ask for opinions or votes work well.

Students write one answer or response on each sticky note

Click the link for more ideas http://www.fortheteachers.org/instructional_strategies/#StickyNoteGraph

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Digital DooDads

Super QuizGoogle Sheets Super Quiz Add-on

Super Quiz adds brilliant functionality to a quiz made with Google Forms. By completing the quiz once with an answer key, all future submissions are automatically graded correct or incorrect. What’s more – you can get a break down of class understanding and a list of incorrect students for each question – perfect for intervention!

By filling out a few cells of information, you can also generate personalised differentiated written feedback emailed to students as soon as they submit a response. No need to monitor and ‘re-grade’ – just set-up and go!

Full Instructions here.

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Google Classroom

Google Classroom: List Docs  Add-on

List Docs does what it sounds like it does: it gives you a list of all of the documents students have submitted through Google Classroom. It makes a spreadsheet — one sheet has a list of all of your Google Classroom folders, and the subsequent tabs list all of the documents students have turned in to each folder.

How to use it: Alice’s blog post (and tutorial video) outlines it in detail,

Directions: Open the template here: alicekeeler.com/showdocs. You’ll need to provide the folder ID for your Google Classroom folder (directions are in the link above). Run the add-on called “Show me all the docs” that’s already pre-loaded in the spreadsheet. It will create a spreadsheet with links to all of your docs.

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Professional Resources

Control Alt Achieve

Control Alt Achieve

Eric Curts is a well known tech integrationist and writer. He has a great blog that showcases best practices with technology integration. He is an Authorized Google Education Trainer and a Google Certified Innovator, and has provided thousands of hours of training and consulting for schools and organizations all across Ohio and around the country for more than twenty years.

Visit Control Alt Achieve for more information.

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Social Media – Who to Follow

Jimmy CasasJimmy currently serves as a Senior Fellow for the International Center for Leadership in Education. He is the co-founder and CEO of ConnectEDD, an educational leadership company aimed at organizing world class professional learning conferences and professional development services for educators across the country.

Follow Jimmy on Twitter: @casas_jimmy

*Interested in getting started on Twitter?  Contact your ITS!

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Professional Development
Online Courses (can be taken asynchronously – at your pace):

Online:

Webinars: (Live presentation with a set time – virtual):

Face-to-face Sessions:

TIP: you can always search for professional development opportunities offered by Instructional Technology by browsing the “Online/Web,” “Technology Services,” or “Webinar” categories in Eduphoria.

January 2018

Best Practices

K20 LearnK20 Learning Center: Using Filters

If you need to boost engagement, or need to add higher level questioning/thinking to a lesson, look no further.  K20 has filters you can use to quickly access instructional strategies that can fit a variety of timeframes and group sizes. This is a great resource to help supplement your instruction to ensure you meet or exceed those TTESS initiatives.K20 Filtershttps://learn.k20center.ou.edu/strategies

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Digital DooDads

Aurasma now HP RevealAurasma now HP Reveal

If you are a fan of Aurasma, the augmented reality creation and viewing app, you may have discovered that it’s been rebranded.  HP, the company who purchased Aurasma, has now branded it as “HP Reveal.” The good news is that beyond the name, the app still works the same. Want to learn more about HP Reveal and how you can use it with your students?  Check out their YouTube Channel.

 

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Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams

If you click on Launchpad and find Office 365 there is more to this link than just your email! Here you will find Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams is a great place to collaborate. Chat, make check lists and integrate  meetings, notes, and attachments. Word, Powerpoint and all MS products can be combined for an overall project management experience. https://youtu.be/tAqAtI6K7NY

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Professional Resources

Teachers Pay Teachers

Teachers Pay Teachers

Teacher Pay Teachers Teachers Pay Teachers is an open online marketplace where teachers sell their original lesson plans and other course materials to other teachers. The great thing is there are so many free resources, templates, etc. that are absolutely free. If you filter on the left hand side you can find great stuff for little or no money

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Social Media – Who to Follow

This month, we’re going to take a step back from highlighting individuals to follow on Twitter, and instead showcase Twitter chats.

*Interested in getting started on Twitter?  Contact your ITS!

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Professional Development

TIP: you can always search for professional development opportunities offered by Instructional Technology by browsing the “Online/Web,” “Technology Services,” or “Webinar” categories in Eduphoria.

December 2017

Best Practices

Concept MappingK20 Learning Center

Students explore vocabulary by physically connecting related terms through the use of note cards and lines. Depending on the content and topic, this could be a Venn-Diagram type of arrangement, a hierarchical arrangement, or simple groupings—as long as the organization makes sense to the students.

Consider using coggle.it to create collaborative concept maps. This is a great way to extend the lesson or offer a creative way to review concepts.

K20 Learning Center

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Digital DooDads

GradespeedGradespeed Access from Home

We received a lot of requests recently regarding how to access Gradespeed from home.  Access is a bit different depending if you have Windows 7 vs. Windows 10.  Check out this document to learn how to access Gradespeed from home.

 

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Quizlet Live

Quizlet Live

Quizlet Live – Want to check for understanding in the learning process in a fun and engaging way? Try Quizlet Live. Quizlet Live is an in-class, team-based learning game. Students work together to correctly match a Quizlet set’s terms and definitions. Students are automatically grouped by their “power animal.” The first team to match 12 in a row wins!

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Professional Resources

Connected Classroom

Connected Classrooms Workshop Google Community is a Google Community designed to empower educators to collaborate with one another, share resources, develop best practices, and bring their big ideas to life through technology. Share your big ideas, connect with classrooms across the world, and reimagine how technology can be utilized to enhance education.

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Social Media – Who to Follow

Brad Gustafson@GustafsonBrad: Dr. Brad Gustafson is a National Distinguished Principal, author, and speaker. He shares a belief that schools should be spaces where relationships, creativity, and innovation thrive. He has a passion for leadership and learning. Brad is a 2015 Digital Innovation in Learning Award (DILA) winner.

EdSurge @EdSurgeEdSurge helps educators find and use the right tools to support all learners, through content, community and tools.

 

Shelly S. Terrell

@ShellTerrellShelly tweets a consistent stream of fantastic new resources for bringing technology into the classroom. An expert on webinars and global education collaboration, following her is one of the most direct routes you can take to get connected with other like-minded educators around the world.

 

*Interested in getting started on Twitter?  Contact your ITS!

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Professional Development

TIP: you can always search for professional development opportunities offered by Instructional Technology by browsing the “Online/Web,” “Technology Services,” or “Webinar” categories in Eduphoria.

November 2017

Health impacts of cannabis – benefits, harms and many unknowns

A new report by Royal Society Te Apārangi summarises what is known about the potential risks and benefits to health from the use of recreational and medicinal cannabis.

It finds evidence that cannabis-based medicines have some therapeutic effect in specific clinical situations and that recreational cannabis use can have some negative health outcomes. The report finds large knowledge gaps in understanding the health effects of both recreational cannabis and cannabis-based medicines, particularly in specific groups of the population, and this lack of knowledge poses a public health risk.

 

 

Royal Society Te Apārangi President Professor Wendy Larner says the report draws heavily on the 2017 publication by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine: The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids: The Current State of Evidence and Recommendations as well as additional literature of relevance to Aotearoa.

“With changes to New Zealand’s legislation on prescribing cannabis and the upcoming referendum on whether New Zealand should legalise recreational cannabis, Royal Society Te Apārangi has prepared this report to assist people considering the opportunities and risks to health associated with cannabis use.” These are the best pipes for smoking.

Associate Professor Joe Boden, Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago, who was one of the report’s reviewers, says that for medicinal cannabis, there is evidence of effectiveness to treat a small number of specific conditions but the evidence is not well established as it hasn’t been widely tested in clinical trials.  “Cannabis-based medicines have been shown to have some therapeutic effects in treating chronic pain, nausea from chemotherapy, muscle spasms due to multiple sclerosis and in rare forms of epilepsy, but we don’t have good evidence that they work better than the existing medicines available to treat these conditions.”

Dr Irene Braithwaite, Medical Research Institute of New Zealand, who also was a reviewer of the report, says that cannabis-based medicines, many of which are derived from plant material, have not been through the same vigorous efficacy or safety testing as existing medicines. “The levels and types of cannabinoids in these plant-based preparations can vary greatly due to different growing, harvest and storage conditions. This makes it difficult to draw conclusions by comparing or pooling the results from the limited number of studies that do exist,” says Dr Braithwaite.

For recreational use, some harms are also seen. “Recreational cannabis is associated with negative outcomes including mental illness, particularly in youth, drug use disorders, respiratory illness, impaired cognition, increased road accidents and lower birthweight in babies born to women exposed to cannabis,” says Professor Michelle Glass, Head of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at University of Otago. “People may assume cannabis is largely safe as it has been used by people for so long, but this is not necessarily the case.”

The report finds many gaps in the research literature, particularly in population groups thought to be at most risk from cannabis use: those under 18 years, pregnant and breastfeeding women, people over 50 years and heavy cannabis users.

An area where the risks are clear is synthetic cannabis, says Professor Glass, who studies cannabinoids in her research.

“Calling it synthetic cannabis is misleading as it’s not cannabis. It’s non-cannabis plant material sprayed with lab-made chemicals that mimic the effect of cannabis in the body but tend to be much more powerful. In 2017 there were approximately 45 deaths linked to synthetic cannabinoids in New Zealand and every day, ambulance services in New Zealand report multiple life-threatening cases related to synthetic cannabinoid use.

“Being so different to cannabis, it can be difficult to identify with standard drug screening techniques.”

Professor Glass says it is worth noting that synthetic cannabis would remain illegal, regardless of the outcome of the public referendum, such is its great potential to cause harm.