August 31st Updates

Happy Friday! I hope your week was fun and productive. In this edition, you'll find some handy topics to assist you in your teaching and communication. I'm sure these will change over time. Feel free to comment on the blog, although you'll have to wait until I moderate your comments before they appear on the blog. Looking at you, Maggie Eastman! 

Have you tried...

• Apple Classroom? It's easy to set up and allows you to efficiently manage groups of students, lock iPads in certain apps, view screens, and quickly connect a student device to Airserver. 
• Open eBooks? This app offers free download of offline eBooks for students. See your media specialist or give me a shout for codes for your students.
• The little ClassLab login on your iPads? This icon links you to some great interactive features through SMART Notebook. 

If you answered "no" to any or all of these questions, then let me know and we'll get you started.

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

• Lee Elementary is starting up the Daniel Boone Regional Library card drive for families. It's easy to do, parents do have to give permission, and then students can access DBRL resources through the OverDrive app. Nice work, Kara, Whitney, and Jill!
• I used a 360 camera to record the eclipse with Mrs. Jones' 1st grade at Shepard Elementary. Check it out here: Columbia Solar Eclipse in 360. If you have an event or project that you want to try out the 360, let me know!
• Abbey Upton's 5th grade completed the "Solar Eclipse" BreakoutEDU challenge on the first day of school. There are a ton of ready-made breakouts to use or we can help you design a custom breakout to support your learning. 

Mrs. Upton's students working together to break out!

Building your digital PLN
You probably already know that I'm an active Twitter user. I get a ton of ideas from those teachers I follow and love sharing what's happening in our Columbia Public Schools' classrooms. I'm going to highlight a few great Twitter users in each edition of the Mattifest. I'd suggest following them if you are a Twitter user. If you aren't, just click on the link and you can still see the information they are sharing!


Kara Johnson, @LeetrailerD - 5th Grade Teacher at Lee Elementary
Joshua Howard, @joshchoward - Instructional Technology in Fulton Public Schools
History in Pictures, @HistoryInPics - a historical picture a day, great for writing/conversation prompts

Tech updates that might interest you...

• Parents might be seeing "Private Access Only" when trying to view documents in Schoology. This issue is Schoology-wide, and they are still working on a solution. Parents can still download the file in the meantime.
• SMART Notebook is available for download on your teacher laptops through the CPS portal.
• People with new 32gb iPads: the iLife apps (iMovie, Garageband, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, iTunesU) have to be deleted and re-installed through Self Service.

That's all I have for this edition. Thanks for reading, and as always, let me know how I can support you! 

Welcome to the Mattifest!

Welcome to the Mattifest, the digital periodical published by Matt! A kind of digital PLC connecting Smithton Middle, West Middle, Mill Creek, Shepard, Lee, Paxton Keeley, West Blvd Elementary, Midway, Ridgeway, Gifted, and Special Education. I think that's all...

My intended audience is media specialists and classroom teachers. I hope to send out one Mattifest each week with amazing ideas, updates, and questions. I chose Blogger for a couple of reasons. First, it's a very user friendly and attractive way to blog. And I know how much teachers care about aesthetics. Second, it's the end of the month and I'm out of money. So free seemed like a good price point to me! And finally, we all want to keep our audience informed (like parents) and there's no better way than pushing updates straight to their phones. Digital tools like Blogger can make that possible.

I'm working up my next post this week and will have it out to you Thursday or Friday. Feel free to pass this blog along to your teachers or administrators. And utilize the "follow by email" gadget on the right side of the blog. Then you'll get notified immediately when a post is published.

Finally, thanks to Sarah Rausch for coming up with the idea of creating a newsletter for her schools. Totally stealing this from her!