Friday, February 17, 2017

PLCs and Schoology - A Winning Combination!

Are you a PLC school looking for ways to track your student data to better inform instructional decisions? Are you making the shift from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning? PLCs entail whole-staff involvement in a process of intensive reflection upon instructional practices and desired student benchmarks, as well as monitoring of outcomes to ensure success. PLCs enable teachers to continually learn from one another via shared visioning and planning, as well as in-depth critical examination of what does and doesn’t work to enhance student achievement. Schoology provides many features which can help support these efforts.

Using the tools within Schoology, you can be:

Timely in Response/Intervention. Schoology Tests/Quizzes provide teachers with immediate results which identify students who need additional time and support. With this feature teachers can easily see evidence of current levels of student learning. Five of the six question types are auto-graded, which makes grading a breeze!



Directive. Grading groups allow teachers to provide differentiation and develop strategies and ideas to build on strengths and address weaknesses in learning. Using the Grading Groups feature allows teachers to sort students into groups within a single course section. These groups can be individually assigned graded material and displayed as individual groups in the course Gradebook.



Collaborative. Schoology groups provide a place for collegial collaboration to work together to achieve their collective purpose of learning for all which can turn data into useful and relevant information to ensure success for all students.



Intentional. Using Schoology Question Banks allows teams to create a repository of test questions from which Common Formative and Summative Assessments can be created. Based on the results of these assessments, teachers can identify how his or her students performed on each skill compared with other students. Individual teachers can call on their team colleagues to help them reflect on areas of concern. Each teacher has access to the ideas, materials, strategies, and talents of the entire team.

 
Evaluative.
Student Mastery Reporting allows instructors to view student achievement on any standard or learning objective that has been aligned to Assignments, Test/Quiz Questions, or Discussions within a course. This area contains multiple views that allow instructors to evaluate how students are learning and pinpoint students that may need additional attention.


Please contact your school Digital Teacher Librarian or Educational Technology Specialist for more information or training opportunities for your school. 

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

All Roads Lead to Chrome...Cast for Education

Teach and Learn From Anywhere in the Classroom

Do you ever have students hold up whiteboards to show their answer? Maybe put student work under the doc cam? Do you ask students to share a document with you so you can share it with the class? Now you can do all of these things with a Chromebook and a projector. The ability to cast with a Chromebook is now here for Jeffco. Similar to using an iPad with Air Server, Cast for Education lets you share your computer screen from one Chrome browser to another.

Teachers invite individuals or groups of students to cast by selecting individual email addresses or   by inviting classes that are set up in Google Classroom. Students have the choice of casting one tab or their entire browser. Teachers will be prompted to accept or deny the requests. Sharing ideas and thinking digitally is easier. Now teaching and learning can happen anywhere in the classroom. 

Things to Know:

It is free.
Only one screen can be casting to the teacher's device at a time. 
It DOES work with Chromebooks, desktops, and laptops.
It DOES work in a BYOD environment
It does NOT work with iPads.

Here are some directions to get you going or contact your Ed Tech Specialist for help:


Cast for Education on the Ed Tech Website

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

A Vision for Technology: Jeffco 2020 & ISTE


Jeffco 2020 Vision

Have you been talking about the Jeffco 2020 Vision in your school? 
In order for students to pursue their life goals, by 2020 all Jeffco graduates will be able to successfully apply the following competencies: Content Mastery, Civic & Global Engagement, Communication, Critical Thinking & Creativity, Self-Direction & Personal Responsibility.
Jeffco Principals and Digital Teacher Librarians had an opportunity at January Leading Student Achievement Days to begin to compare the similarities of the Jeffco 2020 Vision in relation to student technology standards. Teams aligned 2020 competencies to the newly released student technology standards and represented their thinking in creative posters. Teams found direct correlations between the competencies we want students to possess and the technology standards.
Technology is a vehicle for which the competencies come to life in our classrooms! So what are the new standards?

ISTE Student Standards 2016

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) unveiled their updated 2016 Student Standards this June at their annual conference held this year in Denver, which over 75 Jeffco educators attended. "At their core, the ISTE Standards are about pedagogy, not tools. Which is to say they emphasize the ways that technology can be used to amplify and even transform learning and teaching." (Redefining Learning Report, pg.2)
The Jeffco curriculum will be updated for the 2017-18 school year to incorporate the new standards. Professional development will be provided for Digital Teacher Librarians and educators to support this transition.
Looking for resources now to support you now? Download the free report Redefining learning in a technology-driven world: A report to support adoption of the ISTE Standards for Students. The report includes a crosswalk of the 2007 and 2016 standards as well as the research basis for the new standards. Classroom posters and downloads are also available from ISTE.



Jeffco Ed Tech is excited for the work ahead in supporting our schools with bringing our new standards to life!