Teachers in Littleton, Colorado — like teachers in many places — are increasingly asking students to read and write online. Free tools like Google Docs have made it easy for students to work on the same piece of writing at home and at school, and have allowed teachers to explore collaborative writing assignments and synchronous…
This is part 6 of 13 Gmail hacks for teachers. What if you can’t use Google Groups? Is there another way? Gmail has a feature I called Contacts Groups. This is a group that you create in your address book. The disadvantage to this group is the fact that others can’t use it for things like…
13 Gmail hacks for teachers A continuation of Gmail hacks for teachers. Highlight rows in Google Sheets with conditional formatting It’s easy to highlight cells in Google Sheets, this shows how to highlight an entire row. The Best Schools In The World Do This. Why Don’t We? I would have never guessed the three items…
This is part 5 of 13 Gmail hacks for teachers. Google groups is a service offered by Google to create email listservs. While some of its functionality can be duplicated with Google Classroom, there are times when having a Google Group comes in handy. First, you will need to know if Google Groups is turned…
A few weeks back, EdSurge published a podcast interview with education consultant and commentator Alan November, and Director of Secondary Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment for the Houston Independent School District Mike Dorsey, after chatting with the two education experts at ISTE. The interview got quite a number of listens, likely because November said that the…
When the visual and performing arts, the musical and recording arts, and the theatrical and graphical arts are seen as mere luxuries or add-ons within the walls of a school, powerful forces are thereby prevented from transforming routine schooling into a renaissance of learning.But who has the time or the funding to allow that to…
This is part 4 of 13 Gmail hacks for teachers. We’re getting close to inbox zero, and today’s tip deals with emails from students. I’ve talked about this in the past, and the directions haven’t changed. Student Email Footer Unfortunately, Google’s search criteria fails if you have students in the same domain as teachers (everyone…
Play is what happens when we accept these limitations, narrow our focus, and, consequently, have fun. Which is also how to live a good life. Manipulating a soccer ball into a goal is no different than treating ordinary circumstances — like grocery shopping, lawn mowing, and making PowerPoints — as sources for meaning and joy….
The secret to VLACS’ success may be that it does things differently from most virtual schools. It puts a focus on building strong student-teacher relationships. It breaks up traditional courses into specific skills and abilities, called “competencies,” that students master through a personalized blend of traditional lesson plans, offline projects and real-world experiences. Source: Inside the…
This is part 3 of 13 Gmail hacks for teachers. This is probably my favorite hack. What if I told you there was a way to only receive school email in your inbox, and all non-school email went into an Outside Email folder? And that you could do this with a 100% success rate? Well,…