Monday, October 24, 2016

Maker Meet Up


Maker Spaces are all the rage lately!

Are you involved in a maker space at your school? 

Do you give your kids design challenges to help them hone their problems solving skills? 

Does your building have bins of "stuff" for kids to tinker with to make something unique? 

Want to discuss how this phenomenon can help you and your kids with other people who are using these at their schools? 

Come to Hawthorne Elementary School on Tuesday, October 25th at 3:30 to see what they have set up in their building, play with some of the tools they have acquired for their kids to play with, bring some of the stuff you have access to at your building and discuss the possibilities of Maker Space use with like minded teachers from our district and neighboring districts! The theme of this Maker Meet Up is "Tools & Instruments." We hope you can make it!



Read this: Renovated Learning

Friday, October 14, 2016

Google Cast


Now that our classrooms have access to Chromebooks, we want learning to be as collaborative as possible. Google Cast is a way for a teacher to organize students ability to share what they are looking at on their Chromebook with the teacher or the rest of the class. Google Cast can be used by students enrolled in a Google Classroom, or individual students with a G Suite account. (G Suite is the new name for Google Apps For Education, or GAFE. All WCS students and staff have G Suite accounts)

This new tool is a great way to showcase the individual work that students are doing.

Google Cast intro video:

Take some time to set up and play with the ability for students to share their learning with you and your students. If you have questions, make sure to contact your Ed Tech Coach, or let us know how you are using this tool with your class!

How to set up Google Cast in your classroom.

Add the Google Cast extension here.

Please note: Google Cast for Education is different than Chromecast.

Monday, October 3, 2016

What’s that little star on the bottom right of my Google Doc, Sheet and/or Slide presentation?


It’s the new EXPLORE feature in Google!





September 29th, 2016 Google introduced this new feature called Google Explore in Docs, Sheets and Slides to bring you insights, design tools and research recommendations so you can create better work, faster.


Explore uses Google smarts to help you create awesome presentations, spreadsheets and documents in a fraction of the time they used to take.  Create your documents efficiently and effectively with Explore.  Learn more here... Google's new updated blog.