Friday, January 13, 2017

AssessTrack User Guide

More data has been added to the AssessTrack assessment reporting portal. Now you can find information regarding your students' growth in CMAS/PARCC.  For Elementary Schools, you will now find i-Ready information by roster. You now also have access to the DRA2 and District Writing Domain/Subcontent information by term. Coming soon are reports of your students' PSAT scores. There is also a new User Guide for AssessTrack which is designed to help you get around. 

You can find it by clicking the icon in the upper right-hand corner of AssessTrack. You can submit feedback or ask a question by clicking Contact. 


Thursday, January 12, 2017

Google Classroom New Features - Small Groups / Notifications

1) You can now make assignments and announcements for individual or small groups of students in Google Classroom. 

2) You can now start receiving email or mobile push notifications each time a student sent you a private note, submits late work, resubmits work, comments on your post, or mentions you in a comment or post 

Click here for more information & directions 

Create an email filter to funnel notifications and skip your Inbox


Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Animal Webcams

Researching animals? Have students watch them live using one of these great webcam feeds.



Monday, January 9, 2017

Fake News

Recently we've seen an increase in fake news on-line making this a topic that is critical to make students aware of. 
Below is a list of resources for you to explore.

NPR Article: How to Self Check News
Fake or Real? A fun Google Search Challenge
Wall Street Journal Article: Kids Don't Know When News is Fake
Article: Facebook Addressing Fake News
Common Sense Media: How to Spot Fake News 

Professor teaches how to write fake news!



Friday, January 6, 2017

G Suite Training

Need a quick refresher when you are in the middle of a G Suite (formally called Google Apps for Education) app? Install the G Suite Training Chrome Extension to view short video tutorials as you are working! It will display in the top right corner of your chrome browser (drive, mail, calendar, sites...)



Thursday, January 5, 2017

Google Keep - Get Organized

Learn how Google Keep can work as your on-line list, note and reminder tool. Click here.



Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Google Forms - Password Protect Your Forms

Many teachers ask us how to share a Google Form on their website or through Google Classroom but still have the ability to start the form at their convenience while not having other students access it before their scheduled class period. 

Here are two (2) different strategies in accomplishing this goal. 

Not Accepting Responses On the responses tab in Google Forms, click the slider "Accepting Responses" this will change the banner to red "Not Accepting Responses" 

Password-protect your Google Forms Direction link 
1. Go to the Google Forms editor and add a text field (short answer or paragraph). Call it “Password” and make it a required question.
2. Click the snowman (bottom right corner of this question and select Data Validation - Regular Expression - Matches
3. Type your password in the "pattern" field Leave custom error text empty
4. Next, insert a new section. This is the second page where you can add your regular form fields. No one can see this section unless they know the password.