Free Digital Literacy Course -- Webinars

Last month, the K-12 High Speed Network released a basic online course on Digital Literacy. This course is available at no cost to all K-12 schools and districts in California through the CaliQity Learning Management System. We are hopeful that this endeavor will help schools around the State meet the forthcoming CIPA requirements and provide essential information to students.

We have scheduled three additional webinars tailored to the Digital Literacy Course available in CaliQity:

·         July 11 at 9:30 am. Register at: http://icoe.k12oms.org/1172-61452

·         July 18 at 3:30 pm. Register at: http://icoe.k12oms.org/1172-61453

·         July 25 at 9:30 am. Register at: http://icoe.k12oms.org/1172-61454

The Digital Literacy course, which will evolve as laws and conditions change, was created and written specifically to the California state content standards for digital literacy and cybersafety. It has been vetted through the California School Library Association Curriculum Committee and reviewed by Penny Glover of the law firm Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo.

The course is built on a scaffolded model which begins at the Kinder level. It then proceeds through grade 6, before going on to the Middle School then High School levels.

The course provides simple information and assessments that are appropriate to the current grade level of a student.

The course is adaptive and users can supplement existing information with additional links, videos, etc., to bring it to the media-rich status they desire. Users can also adjust the assessments – especially if they are adding new questions. Users should understand that removing currently assessed facts or data points may cause the course to no longer meet the requirements of CIPA.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at any time at: info_request@lists.k12hsn.org or (760) 312-6512.

Thank you,

 

Magali Meza

Outreach Specialist

California K-12 High Speed Network
Imperial County Office of Education
Tel: (760) 312-6512

http://www.k12hsn.org

Apple Offers Free Summer Camps

Apple is again offering free summer camps (http://macte.ch/44M89) for kids at its retail stores. Dubbed "Make Movie Magic," they focus on filmmaking using iMovie and GarageBand.

Here's how Apple describes the camps: "At Apple Camp, kids ages 8-12 learn how to shoot their own footage, create an original song in GarageBand on an iPad, and put it all together in iMovie on a Mac. This free workshop, held at Apple Retail Stores, spans three days and ends with campers debuting their masterpieces at the Apple Camp Film Festival. Space is limited and workshops fill up quickly, so sign up now for a super-creative adventure."

Use TED-Ed to Flip YouTube/Khan Academy Videos

If you are interested in using video’s to flip your classroom, or to support your curriculum, but have hesitated because it does not connect enough to your curriculum, there is now a solution.

TED-Ed allows you to modify any of their videos, or any of the videos on YouTube (which include Khan Academy) through their website.

What you can add: Title, introduction/instructions, quiz questions, short answer questions, additional information/resources.

How do you do it:

1. Go to http://ed.ted.com/


2. Find a video through the website, or through their “YouTube” tab and open it up.


3. Find the “Flip” box near the video and start adding information.


4. They will give you a link to share with your students once you have finished.

Additionally: You can have students login and you may track their progress.

Exciting Aeries Enhancements Coming Next School Year

Eagle Software is already preparing for many new and exciting changes that will be available for the upcoming 2012-2013 school year.

In addition to Aeries Analytics and the new Aeries Teacher and Parent/Student Portals, we wanted to highlight some of the changes that will be released over the summer to be available for the new school year:

Student’s Form Address Fields:

As most Students have a residence address, and fewer have different mailing addresses, we have adjusted the order of these fields on the Students form and added logic to automatically match the addresses if they are the same.   If different, you merely specify so and keep that mailing address current.  This will help with data entry as well as third party vendors who pull only the mailing address field and will no longer require you to manually duplicate data!

Student “Add” Process:

With so many Students being inadvertently re-entered into your District and causing duplicates, we have enhanced the Add process to require a thorough District search before adding a new student.  The search logic not only takes multiple criteria into consideration, but should the student truly be new to the District, data entered for the search is automatically placed into the new Students record!

Sibling Matching:

When unable to locate a student in the District Add process, you will be able to search for an existing Sibling enrolled in the District.  If a Sibling is located, then their information can be pulled into the new Student record.  The existing sibling data does not need to be re-entered for the new Student.  The Family Key will also be assigned to the new student at that time.

Sync Data for Active and Pre-Enrolled:

We are implementing a process that will keep live Student data and any pre-enrolled records automatically synchronized!  There is a setup form to define the fields to sync, but defaults are automatically added so the process will be in place for next Spring when you create ‘copies’ of data for Scheduling incoming students.

Have a great summer!

Eagle Software

Zimbra - How To Create An Away/Vacation Message

This question came up in our training this morning at CHS.

Please go to the following site which has excellent tutorials on how to accomplish this and other Zimbra features: Website - http://help.zimbra.com/.

For video specific tutorials please go to: Website - http://help.zimbra.com/videos/7x/

Here are the directions:

Please find the instructions for sending an away message for your email, and a screenshot, below:
1. Select the "Preferences" tab on the top menu
2. Select "Out of Office" from the menu on the left
3. Select the bubble next to "Send auto-reply message"
4. Fill in the message you want sent to the people receiving the email
5. Select the box next to "Time Period" and select the start and end dates
6. IMPORTANT: Select "Save"



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Technology Drop In Inservice CHS June 14th and 15th

Just a reminder that our make-up technology professional development for this school year is taking place on Thursday, June 14th and Friday June 15th, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., located at Calabasas High School.  This will be in the Science building in rooms S-3, S-4, and S-5, look for the signs.

Bring your laptops.

We will have three concurrent sessions going for the two days. There will be a self-guided Moodle course, mini-trainings by Phil Scrivano and the Media Specialist, Chris Jones and Cathy Rodriguez from LACOE, coming to share about our County's technology resources, such as virtual field trips, California streaming, workshops, etc.

Sample topics we will be covering include the following:

• Datawise


• Zimbra


• Quia


• Media Center Webpages


• Shmoop


• Teacher Websites


• Twitter & Blogging


• iPhoto


• Other Web 2.0 Tools

All teachers and staff are welcome to attend any portion of these two days. We look forward to working with you.

Teacher(s) Spotlight: A (Mostly) Paperless Classroom

When I first met Carol Colman at AC Stelle I would never have guessed that she initially refused to use email when the district rolled it out. I was there to troubleshoot the problem she was having with student enrollment in her Moodle course. As is generally the case when using new technology, there were some problems.  Carol worked through it and in roughly 3 weeks she posted all homework assignments and quizzes to Moodle. All this before knowing how to add an attachment to an email! She said that even though there is a time investment in using Moodle it is simple, she will have the work forever which means she won’t have so many copies to make.

This once hesitant teacher is now leading the way in building a 21^st century classroom and community. Carol plans on going mostly paperless next year, has helped me to better understand Moodle, and is supporting another teacher in the school trying to use Moodle. As she was showing me how to use Moodle, Jody Hepps walked in who also recently started using this tool and taught both Carol and I the feature of having students discuss topics. Both of these woman said they would be happy to help other teachers at their school site learn this tool as they have found it so helpful. What an inspiration!

If you love Wordle try these!

Here are 9 amazing word generators that you can use in your classroom today!!

 

Word Clouds in Education Series: Part 3

Making Progress: Rethinking State and School District Policies Concerning Mobile Technologies and Social Media

Please read the article linked below. I think COSN has developed a balanced discussion on Social Media resources. I look forward to your thoughts on using these resources in our curriculum.

http://www.cosn.org/Default.aspx?TabId=12543

Phil Scrivano
Chief Instructional Technology Officer

 

New Features in Datawise & Testing out Common Core Questions

Yesterday 5/30/12 Karen and I went to a Datawise training that introduced new features of Datawise and discussed their role in Common Core Standards.

On Wednesday Karen and I went to a Datawise training that introduced new features of Datawise and discussed their preparation for the Common Core Standards.

There are several features, but I will describe a few I thought would be most helpful:

-My Students: “Use the My Students function to quickly look up information about all of your students or to focus on students or groups, such as students in a particular intervention group, on an alert list, or within a Student Set.”

-Longitudinal Roster Report: This allows you to look at student or teacher data over a designated time period all in one easy to read report.

More elaboration of the new features can be found in What’s New? and may be covered in our training next year.

We also got a glimpse of sample Common Core questions from the Datawise test bank. In the near future Datawise will be looking for classroom teachers interested in having their students test out items from their Common Core item test bank. If you are interested please email me and I will put you on a list that we can send when Datawise is ready jpeyrot@gmail.com