Google Sites for Beginners Presentation

Here is "The Basic Site" Presentation for our PD tomorrow morning. We will be working on creating basic sites with some basic embedding and link creation from our District Teacher Template.

Hapara List for Launch!

Here is the link to the Google Doc as well.

Our school district is using Hapara Dashboard to organize our Google Accounts and Chromebooks more easily. Here is the document from our first training. It was good to have this to go with as we were starting out our training and, so far, Hapara is going well. We all want MORE than it does, (instant updates on Chromebook screens, interactive chatting and remote control of Chrome desktops, multiple smart copy location choices, etc.) but what it is supposed to do has been working well.

Hapara Week One

As our school dives into Hapara, we are encountering a lot of questions, but we are also finding answers as well. I have shared with you a "Hapara Launch" document that I used as we did training sessions on Monday and Tuesday after school which may be helpful.

I think that all of the teachers that have been trying the Hapara Teacher Dashboard would agree that the "Smart Copy" feature is the most exciting feature of Hapara. Below is a short training video that you may find helpful, but please feel free to stop in if you have other questions.

I added the information above, as well as the great PDFEscape Tutorial that Mr. Gohring had students create at the bottom, to the Deuel PD website. (You must be logged into the Deuel account to view the PDFEscape document.) There are a lot of other tutorials available on the site with Google under the Google Apps link list on the right side of the page.

I hope that you are having a great week!

724 Math Sorted Math Resources

Math Teachers-- Have you seen this yet?! What a great SORTED resource!

http://illuminations.nctm.org/Weblinks.aspx

Above is a link to 724 resources sorted by math category: Algebra, Probability, Measurement, etc. Many look like good resources and as they have been reviewed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, I'd hope they would be! I hope you can find something here you can use. 

Check out this Blog Site!

Blogs have turned into a great professional development tool and I want to start trying to share a few with you! Below is a blog that is relatively new, but has a very respectable author. He reviews iPad apps (some paid, some free) and gives some great integration ideas as well. Once you have visited this site, I recommend bookmarking it and checking it every now and again to get some new ideas. Check it out! 

 http://ipadapps4school.com/ 

Target Field Trip Grants

Many corporate entities provide funding to give back to their communities and as I am an avid Target shopper, I was glad to see this opportunity. Check out the Target Field Trip Grant Program and apply for this school year!

Target provides up to $700 in funding for many educational field trips throughout the United States. It looks like a relatively simple form and may be a great way to fund a field trip this year! The grant deadline is October 1st. If you have any questions or I can help in any way, please let me know.

 Have a great day!

Google Apps for Edu Great Plains Summit #gpsummit

I had been looking forward to this all summer long and the #Google #AppsforEduSummit in Lincoln, NE lived up to the hype. In 100+ degree heat, five teachers and I travelled six hours by minivan to Lincoln and, somehow, everybody had fun and learned something! 

I had personal goals of exciting everybody else on the trip, but not overwhelming them at the same time. I will be the first to admit, Google Apps for Edu and going Chromebooks can be overwhelming. But, like almost everything else, I liken it to running. As a marathoner, I'm often asked, "How in the world do you run 26.2 miles?" My reply is easy... one step at a time. When I started running, I never set out to run marathons, half marathons or even a 10k. I was going to run one local 5k that was raising money for a young family with a son in the NICU, but as I crossed that first finish line my mind was immediately changed. I didn't win and I wasn't last, but I knew I could do better. It wasn't a race against anybody else, it was to be the best I could be each day. 

So after that first race, the educator in me set out to learn everything I could about running. I read every issue of Runner's World (old and new), asked questions to every runner I could find, and found blogs of runners that were just like me. To make a three-year story short, about fifty 5ks, twelve half marathons, a fifteen mile road race and thousands of training runs later, I became a marathoner two months shy of my 30th birthday. 

Google Apps for Edu can be a lot like running a marathon for teachers new to cloud computing or online collaboration. If you try to run 26.2 miles just after getting off the couch, you WILL NOT make it. You will not be hydrated or fueled properly for your run and half way through will cramp and give up. So, don't let your Google Apps for Edu colleagues give up, find a training plan. Run a 5k, a 10k and a couple half marathons before you hit your stride for a full marathon. 

If you are ready to start with Google Apps for Edu, head over to the Great Plains Summit page and check out some of the resource materials. There were awesome presenters that can bring you from Couch to 5k or send you out on your first full marathon. 

Finally, here are the intro slidedecks from our Deuel trainings on Drive last spring. Check them out to refresh your memory. If you need help with your username/password for our Apps for Edu account, just email me.