We were fortunate to host Brian Buffington, Director of Instructional Technology at Pioneer RESA.
Brian joined us
October 16th & 18th at the Hall County Instructional Support Center to work with us on Creating with Chromebooks.

Brian shared a Google Doc with the group which contained our agenda:

 

 

Canvas Training has been updated!

Hall County School District offers many ways to learn about Canvas by Instructure, our learning management system (LMS).

Learn Canvas Face-to-Face

Five iterations of face-to-face training:

  • June 3, 4, 5
  • August 14, 15, 16
  • October 2, 3, 4
  • January 28, 29, 30
  • March 3, 4, 5

Each iteration offers Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced training. Each training contains activities directed by an expert from Canvas and the training contains activities that show participant competence.

Training Descriptions:

Beginning – Course Basics, Canvas Commons, Course Settings, Modules, Creating Content/Accessibility, Communication Tools, Assignments

Intermediate – Assessment Tools, Outcomes and Rubrics, Group Work & Collaboration, Gradebook and Speedgrader.
PREREQUISITE: Beginner Canvas Training or Growing with Canvas in Hall County online course (found in Catalog)

Advanced – Agenda to Include: managing assessments, group work and collaboration – Google and Office, mastery paths, getting starter with Badgr.
PREREQUISITE: Intermediate Canvas Training

Learn Canvas Online, on your Own

Online, Asynchronous Beginners Canvas course. Each month this course offers a way to work through the content on your own. See your BLaST leader for a reminder of how to sign-up in Catalog for a course as needed.

September 2019 Online Course

 

Learn On Demand with Canvas Experts

Canvas Training Support Services

You can watch videos or sign up for future, live webinars. These webinars have one expert who shows you what to do in Canvas and one Canvas expert who runs the chat window answering your questions.

You need to Authorize this, much like you did the first time you used Google within Canvas.

Make sure once you are logged in to look through the Learning Library and Training Calendar (below).  Your My Learning section is a listing of the sessions you have signed up for, with an option to reschedule.

Register for Live Webinars

Ther remain many ways for educators in our district to learn about Canvas.

Follow this blog for more information and to keep up on the latest face-to-face training on our calendar.

Find Lucid Chart and Lucid Press on LaunchPoint for K-12 Hall County students and teachers.

Initial train-the-trainer training happened 9/26/19.  Find the session handouts at the end of this document.  The demonstration concept map can be found: bit.ly/LC-Demo and will work for anyone with a Lucid Chart account.

Lucid Chart

The Flowchart menu contains Flowchart symbols with specific meanings.

Lucid Chart allows for assigning a chart to students via Canvas.  Students receive a copy of the chart in their Lucid Chart account.  Students can submit their Lucid Charts to assignments (just like Google).  Additionally, student submissions can be graded and annotated in SpeedGrader within Canvas.

Lucid Chart offers the ability to create slides from the infinite canvas inside Charts.  The presentation is a “Prezi-like” experience and is worth your time to look at what this could mean for your classroom.

Lucid Press

Many products would benefit from the color palettes and/or the school mascot icons at identity.hallco.org.

Lucid Press offers Smart Templates with multiple product options.  More common products include brochure, flyer, invitations, magazine, and posters.  Lucid Press offers the features for high-quality printing for those interested in that specific facet.

 

Both Lucid Charts and Press offer the ability to collaborate between teachers and between students.  The share functionality can be activated through the platform and via a shared link.


NewsELA Supports #LiteracyforHall

NewsELA is a district subscription which focuses on 3-12 grades. NewsELA combines real-time assessments with leveled content from daily news sources and nonfiction publishers, Newsela makes reading to learn relevant, interesting, and effective regardless of interest or ability. Access is via a tile on LaunchPoint for both teachers and students. Class rosters are pulled in from Infinite Campus, or you can group students into “Classes,”

Ready to Use NewsELA

For beginners, consider an Onboarding Workshop. Our “login method” is Clever/ClassLink:

Login Method Clever ClassLink

If you want a start-up walkthrough, consider NewsELA Educator’s Center. You will want to know that under “Set up Classes” we use Clever. This would be ideal to share in your PLC.

Consider becoming a NewsELA Certified Educator either on your own or in a certification course eLearning runs in June.

NewsELA Training

Watch for redelivery from colleagues who attend training sessions at the district level. Make sure your Blended Learning Support Team (BLaST) members and/or leader knows you are interested in future training on NewsELA. Stay tuned for a webinar offering the second semester!

Your BLaST leader will also have the bit.ly session resource files shared at each out our recent training:
NewsELA bit.ly links for Session Resources

These links were shared in the session and then shared to the BLaST leaders in Teams.

Start with What you Have

Do not wait for a full class set of Chromebooks. Blended Learning strategies encourage you to use the station rotation model when you have less than a 1:1 classroom. NewsELA would be a perfect station!

NewsELA in varied Tech Settings Graphics

Ask your local BLaST leader for resources shared at the session – the link to which was shared via Microsoft Teams to them.

Hall County Schools provides Turn It In for 6-12 classrooms.

Turn It In is for more than the English Language Arts classroom and for more than just a “Gotcha!”

Is There Help?

Help.TurnItIn.com

Consult the Teacher Quick Start Guide.

Turning on the ETS e-rater, turns on spell check! Turn It In QuickMarks would save any teachers time. Consider including voice comments (up to 3 minutes) for things which go beyond written feedback.

{coming soon Hall County Schools CBA rubrics}

 

How to get help with Turn It In

Step 1 Click Feedback Studio Step 2 Select Canvas Step 3 Click External Tool

 

Not sure if it is Turn It In or you? Feel free to check the status of TII at any time on their status page.