CurTech93

Welcome Back! Another new school year is under way! There are always so many things to remember to get done when students return to the classroom. We have created a specific page on CurTech93 to help you with these tasks. When you are on CurTech93, please choose the tab “ Getting The Year Started .” This will provide you with reminders about digital tools to set up, links to your curriculum resources, and resources to review. Please let Becky or Karen know if there is anything missing from this page, that would be beneficial as people set up classrooms at the beginning of the year. Have a great 2016-2017 School Year!

Welcome back from CurTech93!  We are very excited for the 2016-2017 school year! We have three professional development opportunities to consider for the first part of the school year.  Please let Karen and Becky know if you have any questions. We will be hosting the Discovery Education DEN Ambassador Phase 1 program again this fall.  This LEAD course will introduce you to the DEN Ambassador program, focus on incorporating technology and teaching with digital media, and looking into all the opportunities for learning and growth with Discovery Education.  We have three face-to-face meetings (with pizza!): Wednesday, September 14th Elsie Johnson Innovation Center 4:15pm-5:45pm Wednesday, October 19th Carol Stream Innovation Center 4:15pm-5:45pm Wednesday, November 30th Roy DeShane Innovation Center 4:15pm-5:45pm We are offering an online book study for the book Flip Your Classroom by John Bergmann and Aaron Sams.  Bergmann and Sams give practical advice ...

 The 4th Annual CCSD93 Summer Tech Academy is taking place during the weeks of June 13-17 and August 1-5.  We have over 70 different classes this year, with 90% of them taught by classroom teachers! Sign up in My Learning Plan to attend part of the week or the entire week (3 credit hours for full week attendance). Some new classes being offered this year include: Math“app”matics Dubin This is a session for iPad users that want to become more familiar with math apps offered on the iPad.  We will learn and share ideas for using math apps throughout the different levels of SAMR and allow time to practice and explore the apps while we learn.  Please have the following apps downloaded and ready to use: Math Doodles, Geoboard, Number Pieces, Ten Frames and Pattern Shapes. All Levels iPad Early Childhood Teachers, K-2 Teachers Math 90 minutes Please install Math Doodles, Geoboard, Number Pieces, Ten Frames and Pattern Shapes prior to this ...

Happy Teacher Appreciation Day! Google has gotten into the spirit and sent a special gift to all Google Classroom users:  scheduled posts!  You can now schedule a post in Google Classroom.  Follow these steps to stay super-organized in Google Classroom! 1)  Open Classroom and click the + icon 2)  Choose "Create Assignment" 3)  Enter all of your assignment information - don't forget to add any links! 4)  Click the drop-down next to "Assign" 5)  Choose "Schedule" and choose the date/time you would like the assignment to be posted to Google Classroom A big idea for this new feature:  Use the feature to create assignments ahead of time.  Sometimes we have additional time and are ready to create and post assignments.  This new feature will allow you to create a large amount of assignments and post them at specific times. Check this site for a visual walk-through of these directions and more ideas for this great feature!

Discovery Education has so many resources on their site that it can be very overwhelming! How do you use the Science TechBook? How do you use SOS strategies? How can you limit your options when searching? Where do you find the video you want to use? Discovery has a professional development section that can walk you through some of those questions. Here is how you access it: Log into Discovery Education On the top black bar, click on Professional Development Click on Interactive Training You will see a number of “courses” listed. Choose one that you need to/ would like to know more about. In each course, Discovery has provided videos to support your learning, as well as pdfs that you can print out and follow. Currently there are 16 courses available, and Discovery is always adding more. If you find something in this list that you would like to learn more about, take the time to work through these training courses!   Effective the fall of 2016, CCSD93 will be adding an ...

Google is updating again and adding new features to Google Drive!  While your Google Drive view and layout will stay the same, a few new features will make your experience even better! First, Google Hangouts is updating to allow 25 individual Google Accounts to be on the same call at the same time.  This is a big increase from 15! Second, Google Drive now offers a "link sharing" option.  Click on the "link sharing" icon to immediately get a sharable link to send to students and colleagues.  See this in action here:  http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2016/04/4-new-google-drive-updates-teachers.html Finally,  Google is adding a setting that will all you to share documents and folders with others and have the sharing turned off after a specific date.  The expiration date feature will allow you to decide when a file or folder should no longer be shared with students or colleagues. Be sure to read the blog post at http://www.educatorstechnology.com...

Discovery Education - SOS! Discovery Education has an incredible resource called SOS! SOS stands for “Spotlight on Strategies.” The strategies can be used with their videos and other technology, but they do not have to be used in that way. They have over 100 strategies! Some of them you may be familiar with, some you may have forgotten, and some may be entirely new to you. Check it out! Log into Discovery Ed and then look at the black toolbar along the top. Find “professional development” and click on that. Now you will be on a page that offers a variety of professional development (we will look at that next week!). Click on the SOS picture:   This will take you to a page that lists a number of strategies by category. Choose one of them and you will have the option to read a brief description, watch a video describing the strategy, print out a pdf of the strategy, or choose another strategy in the same category. At the bottom of each SOS page, there is an opportun...