Sketchnoting, LivBits, and ESPN8

Technology is such a powerful tool for connecting
individuals, or in some cases such as Wednesday, entire school districts! I keep looking for "ESPN The Ocho", but it must not be available on my streaming service. If you want to learn how to send an email to a large group of recipients and prevent them from "replying all", just let me know. Pretty simple stuff. 

I got to attend the METC conference last Wednesday in St. Charles. It's a great opportunity to learn from other educators about how to use technology to enhance student learning. So I wanted to share some ideas with you.

Have you tried...

• Sketchnoting? Simple enough, sketchnoting is a way for students (or anyone really) to create a visual representation of books, processes, history, or whatever. It's totally flexible and you don't have to be an artist. The basics of a sketchnote includes text, containers, connectors, frameworks, icons, shading, and color. Here's Kathy Schrock's Sketchnoting Page for a wealth of resources to get you started. 
• LiveBits? This ten year old spoke at the conference about how she shares her love of reading with the world. Her message is powerful, but making the videos is simple and would be easy for you to replicate in your classrooms. Let me know if you want to know how.

Cool stuff happening in my classrooms (and can happen

in yours)...

• Josh Smith and John Harker have been doing excellent

  

  Student rereating authentic Egyptian housing

  work with Minecraft Education. Their students have created Ancient Egypt, complete with pyramids, sphinx, villages, and Nile River valleys. John had his students give tours in class while Josh's will be recording tour videos so students can narrate their learning. 
• Lee 5th graders are finishing up their informational writing using Pages. We're going to create and share an iBook using iBooks Author. Really simple way to create a professional product for your students to take with them.

I've started my children's book binge to prepare for my new role next year. My son has guided me to this point. Here's what I've read:

• Double Cross by Jackson Pearce
• All the Answers by Kate Messner
• The Worst Class Trip Ever by Dave Barry
• Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt

Got any suggestions? Tweet me at @mattvillasana 

Have a great weekend!

January updates

Hello all! It's been a while! Tough getting into routine with so many choppy weeks. I wanted to send you some quick updates.

eLearning classes are starting next week. There are six classes available through PD Express that cost exactly zero dollars. Completing the course gets you 32 inservice hours. You still have time to sign up. Check out the topics:

• Chromebooks in the Classroom - I'm taking this one. Ryan "The Master of Extensions" Pingrey is facilitating it. Should be good.
• Innovative Teacher Leaders in the Digital Age - I'm facilitating this one so that should be enough motivation for you to take it.
• Empowering Learners with PBL (Project Based Learning)
• Effective K12 Online Instruction
• Digital Citizenship - currently full
• Digital Age Learning with iPads

Schoology Updates:

The Schoology app can now be used in split view on the iPad. Split view is a great tool for utilizing different apps at the same time. Not sure what split view is? Check out this video:

Students are now able to take managed assessments from the iPad. Chances are you haven't used a managed assessment yet. The purpose of a managed assessment is to gather data across multiple classrooms. Curriculum coordinators, for example, might push out a managed assessment to all 7th grade math classes. We have the ability to allow teacher teams to use these as well. Let me know if you are interested and I can help you get started. 

That's it for now. Look for the regular Mattifest next Friday.

Hello! My name is Merry Sugarwine!

I'm currently going by my elf name, Merry Sugarwine. If you are interested in learning about your elf name, just visit this handy website: http://christmas.namegeneratorfun.com. Tweet at me with your name with the hashtag #CPSelfnames. I think the description fits me well.

Welcome to the final Mattifest of 2017! Crazy, eh? 

Have you tried...

• Epic Reads YouTube channel? Team Epic Reads brings to you book trailers, author interviews, and project ideas in an engaging way. Visit the Epic Reads channel.
• Explore.org? Alright, it reminds a little of The Circle (the book, not the movie which was horrible) but there are a lot of really cool live videos of interesting places and animals. Would be great to spark some conversations and writing ideas. Visit explore.org to start viewing today.
• BreakoutEDU? If you have, you might notice you need to sign in to see the resources now. Just use your school Google account. There are some paid games now, but those are mostly digital breakouts. Schools are working to get a generic login to access those resources.

Cool stuff happening in my classrooms (and can happen in yours)...

• I got to spend two days in Meera Sood's 6th grade science class last week to launch Hour of Code. Students programmed with Microbits, Swift Playgrounds, Bloxels, and the code.org site. Check out this code.org website for easy ways to get students started with coding.
• I spent Thursday afternoon working with Midway first graders to record reading samples using Schoology. This recording was the second of the year and we'll be working with students to reflect on their progress. 
• Looking forward to working with Marc Alexander's students in January. We are going to create medieval siege machines using Vex kits. 

Tech updates that might interest you...

• Reminder: there are two options available in Schoology for assessments. The one that says "Add Test/Quiz" is the one you are used to. The "Add Assessment" option is for the new question types. The "Add Assessment" option does not work in the Schoology app, but "unofficially" works in Safari. I'd be happy to discuss either of these with you.

• You need the Bloxels Star Wars kit in order to unlock the coding features in the app. Bummer! Smithton just purchased one, so we'll let you know how it goes.

Have a great winter break! 

Straight No Chaser, Star Wars, and Christmas Bingo!

Happy December! We took our kids to see Straight No Chaser in St. Louis over Thanksgiving break. What a great show! If you use Amazon Music, most of their stuff is there and they have a great holiday collection. 

In case you didn't know, watching Christmas movies is one of my favorite things to do. So last year I created my very own "Christmas Movie Bingo" game. Check out this link and print them out to ramp up your holiday viewing.

Quick PSA for middle school teachers: students will have iPads in the middle school next year. 


Have you tried...

• Bloxels Star Wars? Your students (or you, I guess) can create Star Wars themed video games. If you like the original Bloxels, you'll really enjoy this version. If you'd like it for your school, just let me know!

Cool stuff happening in my classrooms (and can happen in yours)...

• Marc Alexander's students are creating movies about Ancient Rome. They are smashing apps such as Green Screen, Keynote, and Explain Everything to create informative, edgy videos.
• Shayla Roop and Stacey Peters are getting ready to have their first graders record more reading samples in Schoology. A great way to document progress! 
• Sue Cunningham has her second graders documenting their science observations using the Google Science Journal app. 

Tech updates that might interest you...

• Nothing this week!

Have a great weekend!

Mattifest conference edition: Wise advice from Borimir

Hope your conference went by smoothly! Just think, only seven more school days until Thanksgiving break. You can do it!

Please take a few minutes to peruse "The Rausch Report" and "The Hall Monitor" links at the top of this blog. They are great resources for you from the rest of the middle school instructional technology team. 

Now that we're through the conference season, I'll be looking to set up more PLT times in December. I'm going to start with my fifth grade folks and then to those of you who have met with me in the past. If you haven't met with me or your media specialist this year, we'd still like a chance to work with you...

Awesome tip of the day...
Have you ever been on a site in Safari and it just doesn't work like it does on a computer? You're not alone. But instead of winging the iPad across the room, you should try to set Safari in "desktop mode". Here's how:

• Browse to your site like you normally do
• Hit the sharrow button (or the export button for you traditionalists out there)
• On the bottom row of grey icons, swipe over ("Swiper, no swiping" - sorry, couldn't resist) to the one that says "Request Desktop Site"
• The page will reload and you can try again

This tip is brought to you by Alisha Long, who couldn't view PDF submissions in Schoology through Safari. Once we switched to desktop mode, the submissions were visible and she could grade more efficiently. Yeah! 

Tech updates that might interest you...

• Full Google Integration is now available through the Schoology app! Yippee! The Schoology app should update on its own. Now students can activate their Google assignments through the app. More detailed information can be found here. 
• If you have a student without an iPad, please ask them why! If they say it's been misplaced, have them come to the media center immediately. We've had great success finding iPads that go missing during the day.
• Apparently closing Excel files and hoping for the prompt to save your work is a gamble these days. When working in Excel, always save your work before closing.

Have a great weekend!