iPad training Session 1

Thank you to all who attended the first iPad training session and also to those who took the time to complete the survey.  Based on your responses I would say it was a successful day!  Below I will summarize some of the survey results.

The presenters were knowledgeable about the topic.
	SA 15 88% A 2 12% D 0 0% SD 0 0%

The presenters were responsive to the needs and interests of the participants.
	SA 12 71% A 5 29% D 0 0% SD 0 0%

I had the opportunity to share my ideas and knowledge, as well as learn from and  with the other participants.
	SA 11 65% A 6 35% D 0 0% SD 0 0%

Participating in this workshop was a good use of my time.
	SA 10 59% A 6 35% D 1 6% SD 0 0%

When asked "What new thing did you learn?" here's what you said: The three fingered drag How to turn on the machine and navigate. I learned about many educational apps and how to now use them in a classroom.  "I learned a lot!  I like the period trick in settings.   Also, I had never done a full run-through of the settings, so that was interesting as well.   I think this first day served its purpose to get everybody on the same page.  " I learned how to shut off an app. Using Skitch to add drawings etc. to Evernote. Gestures. Evernote, Skitch, pen abilities, note taking apps, battery information I learned how to set up an Apple account and password. I also learned how to move icons. "I learned how Ever Note can allow you to share material between multiple electronic devices " The application of different apps. Evernotes How to use the 4 finger multi-gesture move to go left, right and up. How to close an application with 4 fingers. How to use apps for note taking. How to use certain apps for giving demonstrations. How to project what is on your ipad onto a smart board. How to take a picture of what you are looking at on your ipad. How to save on drop box and similar programs. Project the screen of the Ipad on to an apple TV. How the cloud works How to stop screen rotation Many educational Apps New ideas for students to take notes electronically how to prevent the screen from locking how to completely close any application that is running Don't know how to do one of the things listed above?  Please, ask one of the people who attended the session!  Know a cool trick that isn't listed?  Add a comment to this post to tell others about it. Below is a snippet from an article I read this morning that emphasizes the importance of collaborating with your peers to learn to use technology to really impact learning. If iPads, tablets, laptops, or anything else will transform classroom practice, it won't be because we airdropped them from the sky and teachers and students happen to catch them. It will be because the new affordances of technology capture the imagination of teachers and students and invite them into a sustained conversation about what's worth learning and how best to prepare young people for a changing world. Weekly (or bi-weekly, or monthly...) iPad Meetings? We need to talk, share best practices, teach each other!  Who's interested in starting an informal group to share iPad apps, ideas, and anything else tech related?  Please click this sentence to complete a survey so I can get an idea of interest. HAVE A GREAT VACATION!

Weekly Update

Competency Reports

• A cycle competency reports are just about done.  Thank you all for having your grades ready and dealing with the disappearing rankbook!
• Based on feedback from staff there have been some tweaks made to the competency levels.  This is what will be being used for this round of reporting, but it is by no means set it stone.  If you have suggestions please make them!  Use the comment link at the bottom of this post so we can have a public discussion about this!  Below is the chart going out to parents:

Level	Letter	Number	Performance Description
Advanced	ADV	90-100	The student consistently exceeds the performance standards for their grade level.  The student, with relative ease, grasps, applies, generalizes, and extends key concepts, processes, and skills consistently and independently.
Proficient	PR	80-89	The student consistently meets the performance standards for their grade level.  The student, with limited errors, grasps key concepts, processes, and skills for their grade level and understands and applies them effectively.
Needs Improvement	NI	65-79	The student is progressing toward meeting the performance standard for the grade- level. The student is beginning to grasp key concepts, processes, and skills for the grade-level, but demonstrates inconsistent understanding and application of concepts.
Not Met	NM	0-64	The student has not yet met the standard. The student is not demonstrating understanding of grade-level key concepts, processes and skills and requires additional time and support.
Not Assessed	NA		The student has not been assessed on this standard

 

• You are able to see the Competency ratings in iPass.  If you go to a student in view only and look at the grades tab you'll be able to see what their competency status is.  The standards align with the charts each department gave me.  If you don't know what your standards are send me an email and I'll send them to you.

Parent Teacher Conferences 

• If you haven't yet made your referrals for Parent Teacher Conferences, please do so by filling out this form:  https://docs.google.com/a/ssvotech.org/spreadsheet/gform?key=0AvHo4bouD7-edHNHT0FvSmtrdWE0Ykt3SjNjeEN4T2c&gridId=0#edit

Tech help with the Biggest Loser Competition

Thanks to Colette, SSVT is on its way to becoming a healthier, svelter, workplace (we hope...)!  So far 25 staff members have signed up for the biggest loser competition.   If you haven't signed up yet we encourage you to do so!  In the spirit of health and weight loss, I figured I'd dedicate this post to providing technical resources that will help you achieve your wellness goals.

1. Fitday:  http://www.fitday.com
FitDay is a free online diet journal and calorie tracker trusted by more than 6 Million users around the world.
Whether you're trying to lose weight, looking to maintain a healthy level of fitness, or training for a specific goal, you need FitDay!
Using FitDay is quick and easy. Register for your free account and immediately start taking control of your diet and fitness goals.

2.  My Fitness Pal:  http://www.myfitnesspal.com
MyFitnessPal is a diet and fitness community built with one purpose in mind: providing you with the tools and support you need to achieve your weight loss goals.

3.  Calorie Counter:  http://caloriecount.about.com
CalorieCount.com is a free online resource for those who want to live a healthy lifestyle. At no cost whatsoever, you can use Calorie Count to look up nutrition facts and view complete food labels for more than 250,000 foods. Members use Calorie Count as an online diet program, a nutrition coach, and a workout partner. Your personalized CalorieCount.com account provides a food journal, exercise log, a weight tracker, nutrition data, and diet analysis, all customized to your personal goals, so that you can start eating healthier. By seeing your calorie requirements, daily calorie count, nutrition analysis, and weight loss progress, you can get the weight loss results you seek or maintain the fit and healthy body you already have. In addition to the helpful diet and exercise tools, there is also an online community of 4 million members awaiting your unique story on the path to better health. 

4.  Fooducate:  http://www.fooducate.com
Fooducate is an iphone app, one of my personal favorites!  You scan the barcode on any food item and it will give you a "grade" for that product.  It allows you to easily see the health value of a particular product and helps you to make healthier decisions for you and your family.  From their website:

Fooducate automatically grades foods and beverage on a scale from A to D. There are 10 distinct grades: A, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, and D.  Fooducate’s  algorithm is based on information that is publicly on a product’s package: the nutrition facts panel and the ingredient list. We do not receive any additional information from manufacturers.  The algorithm rewards minimally processed, nutrient dense foods with the highest grades. This means that real foods, with intrinsic nutrients will score better than processed foods that are poor in built-in nutrients and use fortification as a means to appear healthy.

Scan this QR code to download Fooducate to your iphone/ipad:

 

Google Drive Webinar

Teq is a company that provides professional development in the area of Instructional Technology.  They have a host of free webinars on their website that will teach you many different things.  Below is one of their videos on Google Drive.  It will teach you a lot of different "tricks".  This webinar is about an hour long, but well worth your time.  Enjoy!

The Voice

I have no doubt you have all heard "The Voice" come over the loud speaker of your first period class at one time or another gently and pleasantly reminding you to submit your attendance.  :-)  I've heard some very funny (and some not-so-funny) stories regarding "The Voice".  So for today's Tech Tip I thought I'd take a few minutes to highlight some interesting facts regarding attendance that you may not know.

• Each and every morning The Voice has to make approximately 10 calls, gently and pleasantly reminding people to submit their attendance.  At the same time The Voice is also signing kids in who are tardy and answering the telephone that seems to ring constantly in the morning.  As you might imagine this makes the first half-hour of the day a pretty hectic time for the guidance department.  If you haven't had a chance to witness the morning activities in guidance I suggest you try to.  I promise it will give you a new respect for The Voice.

• In order to determine who has and who hasn't submitted their attendance The Voice has to run an ipass report -- and keep running it until it tells her that everyone has submitted their attendance.  Until all teachers have submitted their attendance she cannot move on with her day.

• After all teachers have submitted their attendance a report is run for the counselors that lists their students who are absent.  The counselors then call each student's parents to let them know they are not in school.  This is one of the reasons why it's so important for your attendance to be accurate -- as you can imagine it's not good for us to be calling a parent telling them their child is not in school when they really are.  This also sometimes happens if an accurate field trip list isn't provided to guidance -- the student will be marked absent by their first period teacher yet they're not on the field trip list.  The counselor will call the student's parents only to be told that, yes, the student did go to school today but is on a field trip. Again, not good.

• In the event of an emergency, the attendance list is used to know who is in the building and who isn't. It's imperative that, if needed, we are able to provide emergency personnel with an accurate list of every person in the building.  Which is why it's also important for staff to be sure to sign in and out each time they have to leave the building.

• Although you are not required to enter period attendance into iPass each block, it is very important that you do take attendance each period and report any missing students to guidance immediately.  Also, if someone is marked absent but is in your class we need to know that as well.  

• Period 9...  remember that kids with a purple pass need to report to their regularly scheduled 9th period class and then sign out to go to the teacher that gave them the purple pass.  If you do not ensure the students are signing out we have no way of knowing where that student is... again, in case of an emergency, or if the parent comes in to dismiss the student it makes it almost impossible to find the kid.

I hope this little attendance tip helps to remind you how important it is to take accurate and timely attendance.  Have a great week!

Is anybody out there?

After looking at the view count of my weekly Tech Tip I have to ask.. is anybody out there?  C'mon people.. give me a click would ya?  :-)

Hopefully you've looked at the new online bulletin and have noticed that SSVT now has a twitter account.  Have you looked into twitter yet?  For a very long time I shunned twitter, thinking it was just a venue for tweens to discuss their latest crush.  I recently gave in and created a twitter account and, I'm almost embarrassed to admit, I'm addicted.  I'm finding that twitter is an excellent way to keep abreast of just about any topic you can possibly imagine.

One of my favorite feeds to follow is #edchat.  It's the most popular hashtag for educational content.  I guarantee if you create a twitter account and search for #edchat you will find at least one article that you will be interested in reading.

I urge you to set up a twitter account and just have a look around.  How do you get started?

1. Go to http://www.twitter.com and sign up for a new account.
2. Once registered follow SSVT by entering @SouthShoreVoc into the search box at the top of the page.  Once you find the account click "follow".
3. Next, start searching for interesting content.  Searching for #edchat will show you all the #edchat tweets.

Click here to watch a video specifically for educators on getting started with twitter.  Yes, I found the video on twitter :-)

I hope to be able to follow many of you soon, wouldn't it be great to have an active #ssvt? You might not be able to answer that now, but trust me, it would!

Happy tweeting -- yes, it's called "tweeting" not "twitting.  Don't say twitting because, as my daughter pointed out to me, that's just WRONG.

Teacher Web Sites

Wouldn't it be great if you had a central place to store all of your class assignments, make announcements, list homework, and provide a course calendar?  Creating a Class web site is an easy way to accomplish this task.  Having a site for your course will allow your students (and parents) to see what the homework is, download worksheets, etc.

There are many free, user-friendly tools that will allow you to easily create your class website.  Google sites is one way.  Mr. Scopelleti and Mr. Savage both use Google Sites for their class websites.  Check them out!  Mr. Savage's is here;   Mr. Scopelleti's is here.  Getting started with Google Sites is simple.  Just click "sites" at the top of any Google Page, click "create", choose a template and start adding your content!  Click here for a comprehensive guide to setting up your Google Site.

Another option is to use Weebly.com.  This is a free site that will enable you to have your site up and running in no time at all!  I just created this test site in a matter of minutes.  Click here to see my example.   A guide to using Weebly can be seen here.

I hope I've gotten you thinking about creating a website for your class.  If you already have a site, please let me know so I can link to it off our school website.  If you're interested in creating your own site but need some help let me know!

What browser are you using?

Browser choice can have a big impact on your internet experience. Different browsers are better at displaying different sites, depending on how the site was developed.  Which browser do you use most often?  Please take a second to answer the poll on the right so I can see which browser is used most frequently as SSVT.

My favorite browser is Chrome.  Why?  Mostly because I use a lot of Google services. Since Chrome was developed by Google it was designed to interact seamlessly with all of the Google Services.  It also provides features that the other browsers do not, such as being able to drag and drop folders from your desktop directly into your Google Drive.  If you were using Internet Explorer or Firefox you'd have to drag one file at a time, which is much more time consuming.

If you haven't tried Chrome yet I'd highly recommend it.  You can download Chrome here, or submit a ticket with the SSVT help desk to have someone install Chrome for you.

Happy Surfing!

Staff Snapshot of the week:

If anyone has a photo they'd like to submit to our staff snapshot of the week, send them to Crystal!

TECH TIP: Email Filtering

SSVT maintains an email filtering service to help keep your inbox free of junk.  You may be surprised to learn that each day there are approximately 6500 email messages destined for ssvotech.org email addresses.  Of those 6500 messages, about 80% are tagged as “bad” (either spam, containing a virus, or in violation of our acceptable use policy) and are sent to a quarantine folder before they ever reach your inbox.  According to the reports, 99.4% of the time the quarantine correctly identifies these “bad” messages. What happens the other .6% of the time? 

Let’s say you were expecting an email from a vendor but it never arrives.  The vendor insists they sent it.  There is a chance that the message was part of the unfortunate .6% incorrectly identified as spam.  In order to locate the message you’ll need to do the following:

1.     Check your email for a “quarantine summary” message.  The sender will be “South Shore Regional School District”

2.     Open the message and scan through the list.  This is a list of all your messages that were caught by the spam filter.  If the message you’re looking for is in the quarantine you will see it in the list. 

3.     To release the message from quarantine click the “deliver” link to the right of the message. This will cause the spam filter to forward the message on to your inbox.

Hmmm... I hit “deliver” on the quarantine list but I still don’t see the email in my inbox.  What happened?

Because email spam and viruses are so rampant there is a second set of filters your message has to go through before you get it.  Sometimes a message you release from the SSVT quarantine will be identified as spam by this second filter and it will not be delivered to your inbox.  If this happens the message will go to a special folder in your inbox named “spam”.  To find this folder, go to the left-hand side of your gmail screen, click “more” at the bottom of your folder list and find the folder named “spam”.  Clicking that folder will show you its contents and you should then be able to find the elusive email message you’ve been looking for! Click the box to the left of the message and then click the button that says, “not spam” at the top of your message list.  This will tell google that this is a good message and make it so that messages from that sender will no longer be banished to the spam folder. 

I hope this tech tip helped you to understand the email filtering process employed by SSVT.  As always, if you have any questions do not hesitate to ask!

TECH TIP: ITunes U

Looking for enrichment? Have you considered iTunes U?

iTunes U makes it easy to learn from the world’s leading educational institutions. Take a full course or browse the world’s largest catalog of free educational content. The app includes a dedicated library where you can store all of your downloaded iTunes U content so that all of your lectures, videos, books, and full courses are available at your fingertips.