Make the Most of PD with Sched and Shared Notes

With so many interesting sounding simultaneous sessions that compete for your time, attending a PD day or conference can be overwhelming.

Sched provides lots of ways to view, choose, and save sessions. Creating a Sched account is the best way to keep track of the sessions you think are interesting. Here is a short Youtube how-to. While it was created for another district’s event, it will help you make the most of using Sched. You can save more than one session per time slot, helping you narrow down the possibilities. Once you have sessions saved, add them to your calendar, print the schedule, or better yet, access Sched from your smartphone.

To make the most of your day, consider planning with your colleagues to spread out and cover as many sessions as possible. Then, create a shared Google Doc to take notes on. While there are many ways to do it, here’s an example of one created by Carla Dunavan for the Fall CUE. Since it is a shared doc, many attendees can edit at once. Just choose a cell and begin adding text, hyperlinks, and images.

Breaks or lunch is the perfect time to discuss what you’ve learned and what inspired you with your team members. Shared notes is a great way to spark discussion and provides a jumping off point for all of you to plan ways to bring new ideas to your classroom.

The most important thing of any PD is to have fun, to be energized, and for your  students to benefit from the stimulating lessons, apps, and ideas you will integrate into your curriculum.

So Much Happening in Education!

There are a number of movements in education that strive to help educators create a more student centered learning environment. You might like to consider Global School Play Day, No Worksheet Week, or Global Day of Design in your planning over the next few months.

The third Global School Play Day (GSPD) is scheduled for Wednesday, February 1st. Inspired by Dr. Peter Gray’s TEDx Talk, the founders of GSPD believe, “Unstructured play is a vital part of proper child development!” and advocate that we give the “gift of play” to students one day each year. It’s easy to participate. Just tell your students to bring anything they wish to play with to school on Wednesday, February 1st. The only restriction is they must only bring toys and games that  DO NOT require batteries or electricity. Then, on February 1st, allow your students to spread toys out around the room or take the kids outside and just PLAY!

Also in its third year, No Worksheet Week, scheduled for February 27th to March 3rd, began with a blog post. Believing that students learn more through creating, communicating, critical thinking and collaborating, this movement’s goal is to get students to discover answers and share ideas. A week is a huge commitment. Beginning by trying a day of no worksheets might be easier than you might have imagined. Ideas range from student led edcamp-style discussions, to Mystery Google Hangout, or giving students passion-project/Genius hour time. Still need a nudge? This video shows you why encouraging students’ creative thinking is important.

Global Day of Design, planned for May 2nd, focuses on the design thinking process. The website has Maker Projects and Design Challenges,many from Stanford's D.School, to help you and your students prepare for the day’s special 24 hour challenge. Want to learn more about how the design thinking process works? Watch this video by John Spencer, to see how he thinks about using the design thinking process with students.

Upcoming PD

We are so fortunate to live in an area with so much going on in education. Here are a few upcoming local (many free) events you might like to know about.

Date	Event
Sat., Jan. 21, 2017	Mindfulness and the Power of Play
Sat., Jan 21, 2017	Distinguished Speakers Series - Dave Burgess: Teach Like a Pirate followed by Edcamp Contra Costa
Sat., Jan 21, 2017	Raspberry Pi Basics with TechShop San Jose
Sat., Jan. 28, 2017	Monterey Bay CUE Digital Rodeo
Sat., Feb. 11, 2017	EdCamp Silicon Valley
Sat., Feb 25, 2017	Arduino Part 1
Sat., Feb 25, 2017 (tentative)	CUESF Bridge 2 Tech
Sat., Feb 25, 2017	MDUSD & EastBayCUE STEM & EdTech Symposium
Sat., March 4, 2017 (held at UMS)	SVCUE Teach Through Technology Event
Sat., April 22, 2017 (held at UMS)	EdCamp San Jose
Sat., April 29, 2017	STEAM Fest 2.0

Create, Curate & Collaborate Using Google Photos

Want to join this Icons album? CLICK HERE. 

Living in such a connected world, it’s becoming more important that educators model good digital citizenship for students on a daily basis. When adding images to slide presentations and resources, it has gotten easier to find media that is labeled for reuse because there are now over 1.1 billion works in the Creative Commons.

In order to eliminate having to cite the work of someone else, while also modeling best practice, Google Photos has made it easier than ever for users to create, curate and share images, gifs and video clips from any connected device. From mobile devices, Google Photos can be set to automatically backup and sync photos and videos with an unlimited amount of storage.

Looking for the right image to represent an idea? The search capabilities within the app are outstanding! There’s no need to tag pictures with keywords. Google automatically does the work. Album sharing is another great feature. Users can collaborate on albums and their name will appear on the file preview. Shared albums in the classroom promotes student media creation and citation. As your Google Photo library grows, its seamless integration with G Suite makes using your own images easier than ever!

Simply drag images from a Google Photos album to a Slides, Docs, or Draw.

Smart Start the New Year, World Class STEM Building

Smart Start was introduced to USD by Jon Corippo, Director of Academic Innovation for CUE. Its purpose was two-fold. First, it functions as a way to build community at the beginning of a school year. Students use the activities to learn about each other in a supportive, fun, and creative environment. Second, students are introduced to skills that can be used later in the year to support curriculum.

This school year, USD has decided on a district-wide “Smart Start” on January 3rd. Students will have the opportunity for fun hands-on, out of the box type activities to reengage and reinvigorate students and set the tone for the rest of the school year.

Many teachers have already begun planning cardboard challenges, STEAM activities, Breakout EDU opportunities, grade level rotations, Spheros, board games, and special art projects. Need more ideas? Mary Pat Vargas, STEAM ToSA at Lietz, created this Smart Start hyperdoc with ideas and resources. Click here to see the full document with ideas. While these activities include suggestions for grades K through 5, many can be modified and used in other grades as well.

Middle school teachers at Union are starting off the year by taking the opportunity to team build and reinvigorate their classes with activities that include improv, karaoke, and introducing their students to Because I said I would, a movement to encourage people to make and keep commitments.

At Dartmouth, the emphasis will be on team bonding and connecting with their students after the break; things like minute-to-win it games, art-based projects, and STEM and Break-Out EDU challenges.

There are lots of great ideas and resources on this blog and on the web. We encourage you to check them out. Remember, the sky's the limit! Talk to your grade level partners, STEAM ToSA, Tech ToSAs, or Instructional ToSAs for implementation support. As we prepare for winter break, let’s all get ready to reStart, renew, and rejuvenate our teaching and inspire our students to get off to a great start in the new year.

World Class STEM Building at Dartmouth

The STEM program at Dartmouth is housed in a building, much like the STEAM labs that are planned for each elementary school site. If you didn’t get a chance to peek at it at our back-to-school PD Day in August, get an idea of the building that will be coming to a site near you this spring, and see the amazing things happening there by watching the video below.

Thanks to STEAM ToSAs, Cindy Loper and Mary Pat Vargas, Megan Mullaly, and the 6th grade team at UMS for contributing to this week’s blog.

We Are Thankful for Our USD Community

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I wanted to thank all of you for your hard work and dedication to the students and families in our community. I feel very blessed to be working in the Union School District for many reasons, but mostly because of everyone's kindness and generosity. Today I thought I'd share a video titled World Without Teachers. It comes from the Jubilee Project YouTube channel, a channel I happened to stumble upon recently. I definitely don't think that we need to wait until May to thank teachers for all that they do. Enjoy your Thanksgiving break!

HyperDocs to Create Simple Thanksgiving and Digital Citizenship Digital Stories

A Thanksgiving Story

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, why not have your students create a Thanksgiving inspired story? To get students started thinking about things to be thankful for, here's Kid President's 25 Reasons to be Thankful! Find more Thanksgiving related videos in my YouTube Thanksgiving playlist. 

Once students have been thinking about all the things that they are thankful for, here's a HyperDoc to help them create a thanksgiving digital story of their own. If you need it, I've created a screencast that explains my thinking behind the Hyperdoc. All you have to do is have them go to bit.ly/wevideotg. From there, students can explore, learn, help each other and create!

Digital Citizenship Contest Deadline Extended!

Since our Digital Citizenship Media Contest ended up being launched later than intended, we have extended the contest until Wednesday, December 14th.

This year we will be judging entries based on 3 categories: digital graphics, digital stories, and digital recordings. To get students writing scripts and creating videos in WeVideo, try having students take the Digital Citizenship Video Challenge by going to the HyperDoc at: bit.ly/wevideodc. In WeVideo, storyboard mode is the simplest way to drag in pictures and create a basic digital story.

Here's a video to help inform your students about the contest and get them started creating. If you need help teaching digital citizenship lessons, or would like support or advice with creating videos in the classroom, please don't hesitate to contact any of the EdTech ToSAs.

Be Part of the Movement! Just do one “Hour of Code” by guest blogger, Kristy Chia

Calling on all USD teachers to participate in this year’s Hour of Code! Join over 100 million students in over 180 countries for one hour during the week of December 5-11. It’s an exciting way to introduce your students to Computer Science.

Here’s how to get started:

Step 1: Check out this quick and easy how-to guide. Code.org provides many activity choices. There are a variety of fun online and offline coding resources for students such as Star Wars, Minecraft, and Frozen themed code activities.  

All activities are self-paced and students follow step-by-step instructions.  You can find one that is just right for your students by using the filters for grade, experience level, and device.

Step 2: Once you’ve chosen a lesson you’d like to use with your class, have your class watch an introductory video about Computer Science or one of the inspirational videos.  

Step 3: Provide an hour of uninterrupted time for students to explore Hour of Code on their own and watch their engagement and excitement!

Step 4: Celebrate! Share your #HourofCode on Social Media to celebrate with other learners around the world!  And print out certificates for your students for completing HOC!

Step 5: Let us know your classroom participated in Hour of Code by filling out this form by 12/15 It’ll help us keep track of the number of students within USD that participate and you will be entered into a raffle to win a prize!

Step 6: Let the Hour of Code folks know your students participated this year and help push the number of total students reached grow even higher than last year by filling in the form on this page.

Offline Coding Lesson Resources:

Did you know that there are ways to teach coding skills even without a computer?  Students can learn important coding concepts such as writing step-by-step directions for others to “code” using hands-on lesson activities such as these. Just click on any of the icons to take you out to the website.

There are tons more online resources you and your students might like to explore. Lisa Highfill gathered a number of them in a hyperdoc. It includes both online resources and iPads apps. And there are still more resources to check out at Code.org, the Scratch website, Tynker Coding for Kids, Code Academy, or Khan Academy

We’re hoping you will want to take the Hour of Code experience even further by integrating computer science into your classroom curriculum. Be sure to ask your site STEAM ToSA about more coding ideas and resources. For example, consider having your class pair up with your buddy class to create a coding project together!  Or, create code programs about Language Arts, Science, Math, and History topics to connect with spheros robots and makeymakey circuit boards!  

And as always, if you have questions or would like some support for hosting Hour of Code, reach out to USD’s STEAM or Tech ToSAs. We’re here to help!