Come on in to see learn the basics of Chromebooks and start to use your device like an expert.
Sure, it may seem a bit obvious, but do you know all there is to know about Chromebooks and how teachers and students use them in Sylvania Schools? Check out this visually-enhanced guide to explore everything from care and maintenance to keyboard shortcuts. The guide is designed in Google Slides, so for the best experience, open it fullscreen.
Come in and learn a bit about Google’s Education Training Center, where teachers learn tricks and best practices.
Google is pretty committed to education. After all, they give educators and students free access to a wide range of tools and unlimited storage. But, their support for schools does not stop there. Google for Education has established their Training Center, where teachers can complete units and lessons to learn digital instruction tricks and best practices. The center is structured in two basic sections: “Fundamentals” and “Advanced,” with each section featuring menus of lessons for easy browsing. Lessons will give web resources and video tutorials to explore topics, with self-check quizzes closing each. Topics range from basic understanding of Google apps up to advanced practices with data analysis, digital conferencing, and more. So, whether you’re a true novice or a teacher leader, you’ll find something to explore and learn. Check it out!
Use an Admission Ticket, Exit Slip or Elementary Homework Survey for Parents to guide instruction.
This Folder of Resources, designed specifically for use in elementary schools, allows teachers to quickly and easily gather information from students and parents about learning and homework. This Teachers Manual provides educators an in-depth explanation of three different formative assessment surveys to use in their school or classroom, sharing instructions, and how to analyze the data that is generated.
Teachers can learn about their students’ attitude toward homework, and how often and how long students are engaging in homework that should be part of a nightly routine like reading or math practice.
These are a great tool for teachers to use at the start of a class or school day. Students are surveyed about what they learned the day before, what they enjoyed, and what they accomplished. This helps to connect learning from one day to the next. The teacher can also use responses to clear up any questions from the previous class.
These are another great tool for teachers to learn about student learning and interests. Students are surveyed at the end of a class or school day about that day. It is a great way to promote reflection for your students. Teachers, you can use this as a way to find out if students are on the right track for their learning and to help you better plan the next day or class.
Folder with Teachers Manual and 3 Surveys
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Are you looking for a way to prepare your students for the upcoming Ohio State Tests? Do you want your students to see practice questions that include drag and drop, checklist, text-based questions, and label a diagram or image prompts? Follow the links below for resources to prepare your students for the Ohio State Tests.
Ohio Common Assessments- This is a catalogue of released Ohio State Tests that have been created for Edcite. These tests are separated by content area.
AIR Test Prep Resources- These are digital test prep materials created by teachers in Sylvania Schools. Look to the toolbar along the top for content specific resources. Resources are linked, catalogued, and a brief description of the resource is included. These resources were updated in February 2018.
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Have you ever wondered how long students are ACTUALLY spending on their homework? Are you looking for another way to find out what questions students had about their homework so you can quickly and thoroughly target those questions? Do you ever wonder what your STUDENTS feel was the most important concept they learned in class that day? Do you wish you could get a clear indication of what students learned and accomplished in class each day? Admission Tickets and Exit Slips may be another tool to help you solve all of these problems and quickly and easily answer these questions. The purpose of this User Guide is to explain the Admission Ticket and Exit Slip, how to edit them, how to administer them, and tips on using the data that you collect them. Open this folder to locate the Admission Ticket, Exit Survey, and this User Guide. Simply create a new folder in your Google Drive, copy the documents, and move them into your new folder. See page 4 for directions.
This User Guide explains everything you need to know about accessing, administering, and using the data created by the Admission Ticket or Exit Survey. This User Guide includes step by step directions with explanations for easy use in your classroom. Flow charts show each question and where students will be directed within the Admission Ticket or Exit Survey based on their answers. It also explains how to locate and use the data that is generated. It ends with a brief tutorial on how to use Google Forms and Google Classroom to administer the Admission Ticket and Exit Survey.
Admission Tickets and Exit Slips
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This blueprint document includes all 6th grade resources with links to help prepare for state testing.
Description of this Resource- What is it?
This blueprint document includes all 6th grade resources with links to help prepare for state testing.
Description of Use- How can a teacher use this resource?
Teachers can use this document to locate resources to use for their 6th grade students. It also provides related standards and point ranges for the assessments in relation to the past state testing assessments.
Links
AP teachers, take notice! Rich digital support is here!
Albert.io is a repository of test prep resources for AP, ACT, and more. Through it, students complete practice exercises aligned to those standardized tests and receive feedback on strengths and weaknesses. Albert.io has also begun including materials for regular class units that can support teachers’ digital instruction.
The primary purpose of Albert.io is test preparation. The site will provide rich feedback for students and teachers, enabling teachers to make curricular decisions based on data-identified strengths and weaknesses. Students can even use it on their own to practice for their tests, even when a teacher is not actively using it in class.
AP teachers at Southview and Northview are using this resource.
Are you or someone you know using this? Notify us, and we’ll post your or their name here as a building expert! Email to aclarkson@sylvaniaschools.org.
Check out this video tutorial for Albert.io and/or use the support materials below.
See how two teachers at McCord Junior High are using digital technology to connect their students to the world outside.
Each Chromebook in the classroom is a window. Teachers and students can use those windows to look into art galleries around the world, observe animals in the wild and in the zoo in real time, and even walk along the plaza outside the Taj Mahal. But, more importantly, those windows can connect us with each other. Technologies that take advantage of Internet connectivity have cropped up in recent years to become household names, with Skype and FaceTime leading the pack. These apps allow us to talk with each other without the separation of audio-only discussion. We can see each other, in pairs or in groups, and react to body language, facial expression, and more.
In Sylvania Schools, teachers are beginning to take advantage of this technology through Skype and Hangouts, Google’s video communication platform. Packaged with everything else in our Google accounts, Hangouts is easily accessible and simple to set up. What these programs are doing in our classrooms is impressive.
Take the example of Kate Strausbaugh, McCord GATE teacher, and her eighth grade class. Students had read Joelle Charbonneau’s dystopian novel The Testing, and Kate wanted them to connect with the literature as an individually created work on a more intimate level. So, she contacted Charbonneau and asked if the author would be willing to talk to her students about the creative process involved in writing a novel. Charbonneau, who enjoys meeting and talking with her young adults fans, readily agreed. All that was left was set up.
This is where Skype came in. Kate set up her account in Skype and requested to be friends with Charbonneau. They scheduled a time, and Kate arranged for all of her eighth grade students to gather in class for the discussion, meaning that some were excused from other classes. Kate needed to make sure everyone could see and hear each other, so she secured a webcam, microphone, and speakers to enable the Smartboard to feature Charbonneau. Students would see her on the Smartboard and she would see them as a group.
At the same time Kate and I were setting up and testing the connection, she sent a form to her students to solicit questions in advance. She received over one hundred questions, from “How are you today?” to “What was your hardest scene to write in The Testing?” to “If you could tell your younger self anything when you started writing, what would it be?” The class was set and ready.
On the day of the discussion, Kate called Charbonneau through Skype, just as simply as one would make a phone call. The author picked up, framed by a Christmas tree and decked out in red. The cheer of the scene was matched by her exuberant and genuine nature, which made each student smile. The rest of the class period was spent in comfortable and enlightening conversation as Charbonneau told the story of her development as an author and answered the students’ questions. Through that conversation, she explored the challenges she faced with early rejection, noting that she “got really good at it.” She made the students laugh when in describing her first novel she noted, “I wanted to make people cry, but the only thing that people would cry about was all the hours they wasted by reading this book.”
The activity succeeded beautifully, and in doing so, the technology disappeared. Students, teacher, and author soon forgot about the Internet-based technology connecting them and immersed themselves in the connection, an opportunity for students to explore literature in a manner rarely done in classrooms.
Just as rare was the success accomplished through Google Hangouts in Marla Pawlowicz’s sixth grade English classroom, also at McCord. One of Marla’s students, Brenden Behan, was staying home while undergoing chemotherapy, so he was looking at weeks of being separated from his class. Before leaving, he had done the work for a Great Americans research project and presentation. Unfortunately, his absence would prevent him from presenting the work, and he very much wanted to present his work.
Marla thought that a solution must exist to Brenden’s problem, so she asked for help with a distance connection. Just like Kate, she worked with me on gathering hardware necessary to turn her classroom desktop into a audio/video connection, and we tested the connection with Brenden in advance. The process was simple: Marla logged into Google Hangouts through her school account and invited Brenden to a hangout session through his account. Brenden accepted and the connection was made. He could see and hear us, and we could do the same. In fact, with the connecting computer being the Smartboard computer, Brenden’s image was larger than life on the big screen in front.
Two days later, that larger than life image greeted students in second period. Brenden’s peers were overjoyed to see their friend back “in” class; each one waved and said hello. After the happy greeting, the class got to work. Brenden shared his screen with Marla, which meant that the Smartboard displayed what he was seeing on his Chromebook at home. In that way, he was able to display his Google Slides presentation, advance through the slides, and speak his part. The students in the class watched the presentation in virtually the same way they would have had Brenden presented in person. At the end, they applauded with quite a bit more vigor than a standard presentation would have earned. Brenden’s pride was obvious.
And that may have been the end of the story, but Brenden had one more surprise in store. When asked whether he wanted to keep the connection open to participate in the class, he readily agreed. He was able to hang out for the rest of that period and he has continued to do so for most class periods since. Marla and Brenden’s peers have come to see Brenden’s distance connection as commonplace now, and they love that they miss their friend just a little bit less.
Two stories at McCord Junior High School, two successes for simple digital technology connecting students to others. As Marla notes, “This is truly an exceptional (and easy to use) educational tool that is easy to use in any classroom!” As these tools become more familiar and comfortable in our classrooms, they disappear and the windows they open connect our students to a world that has become increasingly smaller.
Sylvania Digital Learning 