Through the Eyes--November Edition
12:57:00 PM
This November, Lindsay and I made a goal that we would tweet everyday to share our story with our followers and you! Our story includes new various opportunities in classrooms, Jr. High team meetings, staff meetings and K-5 peer coachings. Check it out here on Storify~A November Through the Eyes of the D135 Instructional Technology Coaches
Our November kickoff with our monthly junior high team meetings. With our team being down a person, we restructured a little and created a new email for our junior high teachers to contact us JHtechcoach@orland135.org.
During these meetings, we focused the the ISTE standard "Creative Communicator". We introduced the Apple Learning verbs, discuss the purpose of memes in education and introduce Google Drawings. Memes in an educational setting can be used for classroom expectations, vocabulary, and a lesson introduction tool. If you are interested to see our presentation, click here. Teachers created a meme using Google Drawings to demonstrated on our the Apple Learning Verbs. There was a building contest to build a little incentive into the activity. One of the winners was Meredith Doyle, OJH, that focused on collaboration. Additionally, teachers began working to become an "Apple Teacher". The program helps teachers unlock the magic of iPad, Mac and built-in apps in the classroom. If you are interested in this FREE opportunity, sign up here. By signing up, you'll get access to the Apple Teacher Learning Center where you can build skills, collect badges, and earn recognition as an Apple Teacher.
During various K-5 peer coachings, we focused on the many intuitive Apple iWorks applications built in right into the student's iPads. Many classroom and interventionists began working with their students to set goals for reading fluency or math facts using Numbers to track their data which includes tables, charts and videos. Here is a link to the Reading Fluency Numbers & Math Mania Numbers: https://goo.gl/mijJFj & https://goo.gl/Agd1iG. Let us know if you have any questions and how to try this out with your own students!
Another built in app that many teachers introduced to their teachers was Pages. We worked with many primary teachers to create interactive documents that included "Instant Alpha" and a creative video such as "Chatterpix". The November example focused on point of view, check it out here. The December one will focused on descriptive paragraph writing. As you can see, Pages offers opportunities to bring documents to life, please ask if you want to learn how.
Seesaw continues to growing in the district. Seesaw is great communication tool as well as a digital portfolio for students. This is a tool that can be used for all grades PreK-8! Wondering what Seesaw is? Learn more here and ask us for more information.
The Illinois Education & Technology Conference (IETC) is a conference which took place in Springfield November 18th & 19th. We had an opportunity to present a "PD in Action: Breakout Box". We had over 30 participants in our 50 minute session. Some of the tools introduced were the ISTE student standards, 360 YouTube channel and Google Forms. It was a great experience to present. During the presentations we attended, we practiced "Sketchnoting", it was very neat to think differently through sketchnoting. We learned a few new tips, tools and tricks to bring back to OSD135. 
Finally, we renamed our handles on Twitter to represent our coach role. If you are on Twitter make sure you follow us @iCoachLindsay & @iCoachKristin.
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