Teacher Tech- Student Resource page

One of my EdTech Mentor projects is updating the Technology Resources section of my school website. These are some of our K-5th grade resources. I also made a TK Tech page and a Teacher Tech Tips pageWhat do you think? Have you tried out these sites before? Kiddle Search Engine Kiddle is a visual search engine for kids powered by Google, offering safe kids web, image, and video search. Results are vetted by editors Your child can access most sites with their perminate ID #, their lunch number.  If you need this number, the office or teacher can get it for you. Reading Curriculum Mc Graw Hill "Wonders" This website will give you access to what your child is learning in class: https://connected.mcgraw-hill.com/ To Log in : Username:Student Lunch Number pusd (example: 12345pusd) Password: Student Lunch Number pusd (example: 12345pusd) Go Math website Go Math is your child's math curriculum. From this website you will find assignments for your child and access activities your child can do to practice their math skills  To Log on you need to enter your child's I.D# (lunch number) And the password given to you or the password you created from the temporary password that was sent home www-k-6.thinkcentral.com You can find the Math on the Spot videos for K-6th grade here https://goo.gl/ssf7Qw    Imagine Learning  Imagine Learning is a tool for learning how to read and increase comprehension. In this program your child will have a variety of options, from learning to identify the ABC's, phonics , and comprehension lessons, please take the time to explore. To Log in :https://client.imaginelearning.com/?studentlogin&sitecode=630600 Username:  Student Lunch Number Password: stu123   *The password is case sensitive and may have been changed by the teacher. Or download the Imagine Language & Literacy app for iOS or Android or Kindle Stoneman's school code is 630600 Imagine Math Facts AKA Big Brainz This is an engaging game base program that assesses and teaches addition, subtraction, multiplication and division math facts https://bigbrainz.com/login/?studentlogin&sitecode=630600 To Log in : Username:Student Lunch Number Password: Student Lunch Number Or download the Imagine Math Facts app for iOS or Android or Kindle Stoneman's school code is 630600 Raz Kids Raz Kids website will allow you access to many different leveled books as well as other activities for your child. This is a great opportunity for your child to be read to and read daily.  Your child can access ABC books, leveled books, decodable books and complete assignments assigned for them while they earn stars. Please take advantage of this valuable resource by logging on daily for 10 to 20 minutes. https://www.kidsa-z.com/main/Login Accelerated Reader https://hosted219.renlearn.com/281302/default.aspx To Log in : Username:  Student Lunch Number Password is student initials (for example Melissa Ortuno's password is mo) Be Internet Awesome Kids can play their way to being Internet Awesome with Interland, an online adventure that puts the key lessons of digital safety into hands-on practice with four challenging games. Play in English     Juego en espanol    TYPING                                  Code for Typetatic is red panda Typing Club    Dance Mat Typing ONLINE LIBRARIES                       OTHER LEARNING SITES Many of these site contain advertisements and links to other sites. Please supervise students while they are online.

Teacher Tech Tuesday

Updated 2019

Here you will find my main Teacher Tech Tuesday posts and this is the place to link your TeacherTech posts too! We all love tech and teaching let's share about tech that helps us teach. It could be an old post or a new post about technology in the classroom or technology that helps you prepare for the classroom. 

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Teacher Tech Tuesday- Twitter

updated June, 2019

Today's Teacher Tech Tuesday is all about Twitter. TTTTT, lots of T's!

Now I am NOT a Twitter expert, far from it but there are a ton of great educational chats on Twitter so I had to join and start learning and it is not too hard at all. No really!

First you need to sign up for Twitter. 

I find using the computer easiest with Twitter so go to https://twitter.com/ and you will see something like this on the left and click the sign up button or go straight to  https://twitter.com/signup

The hardest part here is picking your username but the awesome thing is you can change it later so just pick something and get tweeting, you can change it later :)  

Now that you are on Twitter it is time to find some super cool peeps to follow and chats to follow. 

I am @TKwithMrsO and I love #wholebrainteaching , #WBTchat , ##WeAreCUE and #TeacherFriends
The @ goes before the username and the # is the hashtag.
#wholebrainteaching #WBTchat are on Whole Brain Teaching, be sure to follow  WBT Executive Board member Sarah Meador @MeadorScience
#WeAreCUE is the hashtag to follow for all things CUE, Computer-Using Educators
and #TeacherFriends is a great group organized by Debbie Clement, @KweezleQueen and friends
Both #wbtchat and #TeacherFriends use to have chats on Tuesdays at 6 PM Pacific/9 PM Eastern and while the chats are no longer every Tuesday these are still active hashtags.
Do you have a favorite Twitter chat?

Even if you can not make the chat live you can search Twitter for the hashtag and still read the tweets, tweet using the hashtag and of course follow all the cool people that participate in the chats.

I recommend typing the hashtag #TeacherFriends  and #WBTchat in the search box and following the people tweeting in those chats. To follow someone simply click on their name and click the Follow button that will pop up :) 

Now if possible it is fun to follow Twitter chats live. You CAN follow a chat from the main Twitter page but I find it hard to do. It is just not user friendly to me on the main Twitter page so  I like to use TweetDeck on my laptop.

With TweetDeck you can make a column just for the chat and it will automatically load new tweets for you, something I can't do on the regular Twitter page. Once I have set up my TweetDeck all I have to do is open https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ and I am ready to go with the chat column already setup :) Here is a screen shot of my TweetDeck years ago but it still is my go to way to read tweets

I am all set up to follow #TeacherFriends and #WBTchat as well as read my regular Twitter feed :) Now I am all set to read the tweets live for chats or catch up later. I hope this post was helpful and you feel ready to tweet and I can follow you :) 

Teacher Tech Tuesday - My Memories Suite V 4

I really wanted to share a video post today but I ran out of time to finish my own video review of My Memories Suite Version 4.  The following video features the wonderful Lisa with My Memories Suites reviewing the main features of Version 4. Be sure to visit yesterday's post to enter to win a copy of My Memories Suite!

Throwback Thursday- Confer

I am excited to do my first link up with The First Grade Parade for

This is actually going to be a throwback and an update to a guest post I did last year that is no longer showing on the other blog :(  and a follow up post I do on the Confer app. First the throwback post :)
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Original posted at LMTree June 30, 2012 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Hi! Welcome to the Blog Swap and Hop! I am excited to be here at Arlene's blog today. This is my first ever guest post so I hope you forgive any typos :)  I'm Melissa O.  from Transitional Kinder with Mrs. O. I will be teaching Transitional Kindergarten this fall in California after 11 years teaching in elementary technology, first grade and kindergarten. In every grade I have taught I have always been amazed at how much differentiation is needed and how much growth is possible in one year. It is awesome when that struggling student becomes a top student. Today I wanted to share with you a tool that has helped me the last 2 years keep track of differentiation, the Confer app.

The Confer app has helped me so much in my planning, conferencing with students and meeting with parents because I can take notes quickly during Reading and Writing Workshop on individual students, small groups or even whole class lessons. I even track behavior with Confer. The Confer app is for iPods, iPhones and iPads and can be found at http://www.conferapp.com/. I have no affiliation with the app or its maker but love that he is a teacher sharing something that he created for his classroom.
Here's what you can do with Confer:

• take notes on individual students and small groups

• view your students by the "tag", "strength", "teaching point", or "next step" in your note

• view your students by date, level, group or flag

• search through student notes

• create flexible small groups 

• upload your data to your gmail account as a spreadsheet

• export and import your data on any iOS device via email

I started with the free Lite version then upgraded to the paid after I saw what I could do with the app. With the Lite version you are limited to 2 subjects, 10 students per subject and 5 notes per student.  You can export data through email but not import so it really is just to see what the app can do. When I used the Lite version I found 2 ways to make it work since I had 20 students. The first way was to track 10 students in subject 1, the other 10 students with subject 2 and export the data each Friday. I would then copy and paste the data into a new excel sheet to look at all the data of all the students. This gave me the data with a few extra steps. The second way I used the Lite version was to track small groups and whole class lessons. 

After a few months cutting and pasting I decided to upgrade and it is much easier :) I have all my students and can take as many notes as I like. I use the CAFE approach to notes based on The Sisters' work you can find at http://www.thedailycafe.com/. My Tags are Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency and Vocab. For Strength I list what the student is doing well on and the Teaching Point is the CAFE Strategy the student is working on. I often fill out Next Step after conferencing with students as I sort the data. With the paid app I usually sort data during lunch or in the evening during commercials because all I need is my iPhone :) I can quickly see who needs to work on the same skill, who I haven't met with in a while, who is ready for a new skill, which groups are working, which groups need something new and what needs to be taught whole class again. It is also great during parent conference week because I can show parents the notes for their student.
If you want a visual of all that Confer can do here is the video about the app :)


I hope that some of you can see that Confer is an easy and fast way to track during and after Reading and Writing Workshop and give it a try. If you do decide to purchase the paid version please stop by my blog at

Be sure to post a comment with your email and I will email you my Confer spreadsheet to help get you set up :) I hope you will visit even if you decide Confer is not for you for Teacher Tech Tuesdays and Whole Brain Teaching Wednesdays. Thanks for hopping with Arlene and me! Enjoy hopping to all the other great blogs!



NOW the update for July 2013!

It is now much easier to share files, all I need is your Confer id and I can send you my Confer file with my Tags, Next Steps, ext based mostly on The CAFE by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser.  I also have included my Behavior file based on a clip chart system and Whole Brain Teaching rules. You can import this file on Confer Lite or Confer :)
When you have downloaded Confer you will see one of these screens when you open it  

 

If you see the screen on the right click on the little gear at the bottom of the screen and you will get this screen. 

When you click on Enable Syncing you will get the Cloud screen and from there you can create an account. Once you have your account name come back here and leave a comment with it and I can add you to the list  of people that can download the file and message you that you have been added. Once added you will see the Behavior and Reading CAFE subjects when you open Confer. Remember you can only have 2 subjects with Confer Lite but you should be able to take a look at both files if you haven't created your own subjects in Confer Lite.

 If sharing works well I well share my current files for the other CAFE menus and more WBT goodies :)

Teacher Tech Tuesday - Organizing your Facebook Newsfeed

So it might be blocked at my school but Facebook still has become a huge teaching tool for me this past year. Most of my friends are fellow teachers, most of the pages I like are related to teaching, and my time is spent mostly on teacher groups and chatting with teachers. That said I do have a life outside teaching, hard to believe I know, and when I want to check out what is up with my cousins or how my friend with the new baby is doing I really don't want to search through all the teacher related posts to find the posts from them. I needed Facebook to show me teaching stuff sometimes and family and friends stuff other times, I needed a way to organize my Facebook! After a little Google and a lot of playing around I finally have a pretty organized page and want to share what I have found. Here goes:

1. Top Stories or Most Recent

This might be old news to all of you but I thought for the longest time that my newsfeed was automatically in chronological order of newest to oldest but it is not. The default setting is Top Stories.  "Top stories" means you're letting Facebook's algorithms decide what's most important. Facebook says this is decided by "lots of factors," including your relationship to the person who posted the story, how many comments and likes it got, what type of story it is, etc.The "Most Recent" option will return to your news feed to a more chronological order. The quickest and easiest edit to your news feed is switching between these and it is found at the top of your home page.
Click on "Sort" and you get the option to see just "Top stories" or "Most recent."

2. Hide News Ticker

This also may be an old trick but I love how my facebook page looks with this gone! To hide the "News Ticker," go to your home page, mouse down to the very bottom right hand corner of your screen and find the icon that looks like an open box with an arrow. 

Clicking this will make the sidebar (and therefore the ticker) disappear.

3. Set Up Lists

Now these takes more time than #1 or #2 but is sooooo worth it because this is the way to really get an organized newsfeed. I use Facebook's "Lists" functionality to set up a dedicated news feed. Once you set up a list, you can click on that list from your home page to see content from only those selected folk. So when I am in teacher mode and want to see what my favorite teacher bloggers are doing I click my Kinderland list and when I am in family mode I simply click my family list and I get only the content I want in my newsfeed!   Click Here to start your own list Once on the page you can search other lists or create your own. You can subscribe to my Kinderland list of my favorite kindergarten and first grade teacher pages by clicking here and click the subscribe button at the top right of the list page.

To create your own Interest List, go Here again and you’ll see the button for “+ Create List” at the top of the Interests page (visible in the top right of the screenshot above). Lists can have any combination of Friends, Subscriptions and Pages! To start with, Facebook displays a list of all the Pages you’ve already liked, all your Subscriptions (personal profiles to which you’ve subscribed) and Friends.

Select the choices you wish and click Next.

You can probably guess what is in my Vacation list :)

Now, another cool aspect of Facebook Interest Lists – similar to Twitter Lists – is you can choose to make the list visible to Public, your Friends, or Only Me (completely private). My Kinderland list is public so I can share it with you all but most of my other lists are private because they are only for me :)

Now that you have your lists you want to do the next step to make it fast to switch between your lists.  I found this is all from http://www.marismith.com/how-take-back-control-of-your-facebook-news-feed/

Add your Lists to your Favorites

This part can get a bit tricky to maneuver but once you’ve done it once, it’s easy! First, go back to your list of Lists (bookmarks page), you’ll see the little pencil icon next to each list. Click the icon and select Add to Favorites as shown in the screenshot below. (By the way, the little blue Interest List icon is for Lists you created; the green icon is for Lists to which you subscribe).

Add an Interest List to your Favorites

Next, now go look at the list of favorites at the top left of your home page. Hover over any item and then click the little pencil icon. From there, click Rearrange. Now you can drag and drop the order of anything you have in your Favorites. You can have Interest Lists, Friend Lists, Groups, Apps, and Pages as Favorites by going through this same process. If this is new to you, you’ll soon wonder how you ever managed Facebook without Lists and Favorites! Your Favorites are visible on mobile, too.

So there are my favorite 3 ways to have a more organized Facebook feed! I can like all the pages I want and have lots of friends and still have an uncluttered feed :) Please let me know if this was helpful and how you organize your feed.

Teacher Tech Tuesday-Pinterest

One of the coolest tech tools I have found this year is Pinterest and I mainly pin teaching stuff. It amazes me how many cool things there are from classroom theme ideas to how to fix whiteboards that have ghosting. I am in no way a master pinner but I am friends with a few :) 

Rachel, a fellow Top Teacher, from Minds in Bloom has a great post on Pinterest that is a must read.

The delightful Debbie from Rainbows Within Reach is a super pinner and has been sharing the love by hosting some awesome Pinterest linkies. Here are just 2 of the many wonderful linkies Debbie has put together. Be prepared to repin and follow like crazy and link up your Pinterest account too :) Transitional Kinder is both Early Childhood and Kindergarten so my TK friends make there are treasures on both of these lists :) 

 

Debbie is also hosting this freebies Blog Hop full of super awesome freebies. I am so excited to be the second link on her list :) Don't forget to pin your favorites!