Adams County Community Foundation Grants - Deadline January 15, 2018
The Robert C. Hoffman Charitable Endowment Trust grants will close January 15, 2018. I am providing a link to the grant application as it has changed since 2017. No 2017 applications will be accepted. You must use the new application. Click here to go to grants and scholarships.
Schoology - Big Blue Button -
For those who have the Enterprise Version of Schoology did you know that you have the ability to video conference with your students with the Big Blue Button an open source video conferencing tool. The Big Blue Button is ideal for use with 50 users or less. It allows you to present to your students or you can have your students take over and they can present. Click here to see a video that will review how to use it.
Holiday Resources - PBS videos
Eight Days of Hanukkah is a cute video resource about the number 8. Peg and Cat visit Albert Einstein. Click the title to check it out. Grades K-3
Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood Videos are for students grades PreK-1. The are about holidays and celebrations. Click the link above to check them out.
The Perfect Christmas Give (According to Science)/BrainCraft - This is a short, but fun video with some common sense tips about gift giving (according to science). Grades 6-12 Click the title to view it.
Five Physics Experiments for the Holidays by Physics Girl. This was another short clip that shows 5 quick physics experiments that can be done at school or home.
Kahn Academy - Assessments - Sharing a notification I received.
I am sharing a recent notification I received from the Kahn Academy that describes the three most popular ways to use the Khan Academy's test and quizzes. Here is what I received.
Hello teachers!
You asked to be able to assign quizzes and unit tests, and now you can! Thanks to feedback from teachers like you, we’ve added this new feature so you can be more responsive to your students.
The three most popular ways to use Khan Academy’s tests and quizzes:
#1. Formative assessment in the middle of a unit
#2. Pre-test before starting a unit
#3. Prep for a test
Assigned quizzes and unit tests come with the same simple but powerful reporting we provide for exercises and are available across grades and subjects.
Check out our quizzes and tests
How do you assign a test or quiz?
Step 1: Navigate to the quiz or test that you want to assign.
Step 2. Start the quiz or test. The assignment toolbar will appear; you can choose the class, students, and due date for the quiz or test.
The quiz will show up in your assignments list with the other material you’ve assigned to the class.
Check out our quizzes and tests
As a reminder, just click on “Subjects” to find the content right for your classroom.
If you have questions about using Khan Academy, be sure to check out our teacher resources page. Good luck with the rest of your term!
The Khan Academy team
Hello teachers!
You asked to be able to assign quizzes and unit tests, and now you can! Thanks to feedback from teachers like you, we’ve added this new feature so you can be more responsive to your students.
The three most popular ways to use Khan Academy’s tests and quizzes:
#1. Formative assessment in the middle of a unit
#2. Pre-test before starting a unit
#3. Prep for a test
Assigned quizzes and unit tests come with the same simple but powerful reporting we provide for exercises and are available across grades and subjects.
Check out our quizzes and tests
How do you assign a test or quiz?
Step 1: Navigate to the quiz or test that you want to assign.
Step 2. Start the quiz or test. The assignment toolbar will appear; you can choose the class, students, and due date for the quiz or test.
The quiz will show up in your assignments list with the other material you’ve assigned to the class.
Check out our quizzes and tests
As a reminder, just click on “Subjects” to find the content right for your classroom.
If you have questions about using Khan Academy, be sure to check out our teacher resources page. Good luck with the rest of your term!
The Khan Academy team
Digital Story Apps
Below I have shared some digital storytelling apps. Some are free and some have a cost.
Story Creator - Free App for iphone and ipad - With Story Creator you can easily create beautiful story books containing photos, videos, text, and audio all in one gorgeous collection. Story Creator truly brings your best stories to life and easily allows you to retell and share your most memorable moments.
ChatterPix Kids - by Duck Duck Moose (a subsidiary of Kahn Academy). Grab your camera! Let’s ChatterPix! Chatterpix Kids can make anything talk -- pets, friends, doodles, and more.
Simply take any photo, draw a line to make a mouth, and record your voice. Then share your Pix with friends and family as silly greetings, playful messages, creative cards, or even fancy book reports. And best of all, it’s FREE! AGES: 5-12. Designed for iphone and ipad.
Simply take any photo, draw a line to make a mouth, and record your voice. Then share your Pix with friends and family as silly greetings, playful messages, creative cards, or even fancy book reports. And best of all, it’s FREE! AGES: 5-12. Designed for iphone and ipad.
Pictello - by Assistive Ware $27.99
Everyone loves to tell fun, engaging, and imaginative stories. Go ahead and make a social story or visual schedule for a child with autism or a slide show of holiday pictures for your friends - Pictello makes it a breeze to create and share! Whether you use the included natural-sounding Text to Speech voices, or record your own voice, Pictello is the perfect tool for visual storytelling.
Each page in a Pictello story consists of a photo or video and some text, which can be read aloud by a Text to Speech voice or your own recorded audio.
Develop literacy skills
- Support reading with word-by-word text highlighting
- Develop writing and spelling with built-in word prediction and Speak as You Type
- Create stories to teach academic and social skills
- Import free early literacy and adapted academic books from Tar Heel Reader
Designed for both iphone and ipad
Everyone loves to tell fun, engaging, and imaginative stories. Go ahead and make a social story or visual schedule for a child with autism or a slide show of holiday pictures for your friends - Pictello makes it a breeze to create and share! Whether you use the included natural-sounding Text to Speech voices, or record your own voice, Pictello is the perfect tool for visual storytelling.
Each page in a Pictello story consists of a photo or video and some text, which can be read aloud by a Text to Speech voice or your own recorded audio.
Develop literacy skills
- Support reading with word-by-word text highlighting
- Develop writing and spelling with built-in word prediction and Speak as You Type
- Create stories to teach academic and social skills
- Import free early literacy and adapted academic books from Tar Heel Reader
Designed for both iphone and ipad
Little Bird Tales - Kids all over the world are using the Little Bird Tales app to create their own stories, podcasts, presentations, journals and to share vacation photos. Now, they can also download lessons from their teacher, and send them back for review when complete! The Little Bird Tales app is easy, fast, and fun!
Features:
Fun, easy to use art pad for illustrations, and diagrams
Import photos from your device, or take photos on the fly
Record your voice and add text to each page
Save and use images to your gallery
Download lessons to your iPad, then upload completed lessons for review
Upload stories to littlebirdtales.com to email, embed, edit and/or create PDFs and MP4s
Smooth playback with audio, text and images
Intuitive user interface
Free website accounts for individuals and teachers
Ideal for K-6+ for both iphone and ipad
Classroom Uses: Custom lessons, Common Core aligned lessons, writing assignments, book reports, podcasts, poetry, journals, logging science experiments, sequencing, year books, class blogs, support for foreign language learners, and more!
Features:
Fun, easy to use art pad for illustrations, and diagrams
Import photos from your device, or take photos on the fly
Record your voice and add text to each page
Save and use images to your gallery
Download lessons to your iPad, then upload completed lessons for review
Upload stories to littlebirdtales.com to email, embed, edit and/or create PDFs and MP4s
Smooth playback with audio, text and images
Intuitive user interface
Free website accounts for individuals and teachers
Ideal for K-6+ for both iphone and ipad
Classroom Uses: Custom lessons, Common Core aligned lessons, writing assignments, book reports, podcasts, poetry, journals, logging science experiments, sequencing, year books, class blogs, support for foreign language learners, and more!
My Storybook Creator School Edition by Bright Bot Inc. - $6.99
Storytelling is a fantastic way to promote literacy, comprehension, creative thinking, and self-driven learning. My Story is an amazing way to engage your K-5 students.
* Create and share ebooks and movies of your stories by adding drawings, photos, and stickers. Export to iBooks!
* Record your voice on every page and share your story with friends, family and classmates!
* Choose from hundreds of fun stickers already included in the app, no extra downloads needed.
* No in-app purchases, hidden ads, or additional costs.
* Share your storybooks to the web, on Facebook and Twitter, and standard ePub format to be viewed in 3rd party apps or edited in iBooks Author. Export as a movie to Mp4 format straight to YouTube! Now you can export as PDF as well (no audio).
* Teacher friendly: allows for multiple authors in one interface!
Designed for iPad and iPhone. Made for Ages 6-8.
Storytelling is a fantastic way to promote literacy, comprehension, creative thinking, and self-driven learning. My Story is an amazing way to engage your K-5 students.
* Create and share ebooks and movies of your stories by adding drawings, photos, and stickers. Export to iBooks!
* Record your voice on every page and share your story with friends, family and classmates!
* Choose from hundreds of fun stickers already included in the app, no extra downloads needed.
* No in-app purchases, hidden ads, or additional costs.
* Share your storybooks to the web, on Facebook and Twitter, and standard ePub format to be viewed in 3rd party apps or edited in iBooks Author. Export as a movie to Mp4 format straight to YouTube! Now you can export as PDF as well (no audio).
* Teacher friendly: allows for multiple authors in one interface!
Designed for iPad and iPhone. Made for Ages 6-8.
Google Classroom - What's New in Classroom
I came across some information about the newest features in Google Classroom.
 | Single view of student work Classroom now has a dedicated page for every student that showcase all of their work in a class. ‘With this new view, teachers and students can see the status of every assignment, and can use filters to see assigned work, missing work, or returned and graded work.’ |
 | Reorder class cards Teachers can reorder their classes and organize them based on their own criteria (e.g., work load priorities, daily schedule, etc). |
 | Decimal grading Classroom integrated decimal grading allowing teachers to ‘use decimal points when grading assignments in Google Classroom. |
 | Transfer class ownership With this new feature teachers and admins are able to transfer ownership of Classroom classes to other teachers without having to recreate them. |
 | Display class code Teachers are now able to display a unique class code in full screen so students can rapidly join new classes. |
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