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.

Hall County purchases Reading A-Z, RAZ kids, RAZ Plus, and Science A-Z for our elementary schools. There are several ways to learn more about the parent company, Learning A-Z:

  1. Please find below the April schedule for webinars.
  2. Our professional learning representative from Learning A-Z, Angela Romano also offers Teacher Talk, the 2nd Wednesday of every month. https://attendee.gototraining.com/r/3807150668191627266
    Training ID: 458-428-396
  3. Please see Top 10 End of Grade/Course Resources newsletter below.

Read more

OneNote is a Microsoft product to help organize content. It integrates with other Microsoft products you already use as well.

It can be used as a productivity tool for planning, collaborating, routine tasks. But it can also be used to push out content to students. It can even allow students to interact with that content and keep a copy of it in their personal Class Notebook (in Canvas).

Where to Find OneNote

Hall County training so far has covered OneNote Online, accessible through Office 365. You access this version via LaunchPoint > Office 365 with your HallCo Credentials.

Office 365 Online Apps

You may intuitively understand the difference between OneNote Online and the other versions. The online versions exist on the Internet, The Cloud. And both OneNote 2016 and the Windows 10 app are tied to a device.

Look for these on your HallCo issued device.
If you have not upgraded to Windows 10 yet, here is one more reason!

OneNote Win 10 app beside OneNote 2016

When you want to explore the difference between OneNote and OneNote 2016, follow this link. You can designate either version to be your default app for opening OneNote links and files. Learn how to change the default version of OneNote.

How to Use OneNote

The OneNote Quick Start can be a great reference until you become familiar with all the functionality.

Teacher Productivity

Teachers have innumerable tedious tasks which need to be tracked, organized, documented. Curriculum maps, parental contact, meeting minutes can all be captured in OneNote and neatly stored and searchable in one place. Outlook integrations are promising (you’ll want to Google for the version of OneNote you select and Outlook) and the ability to share Notebooks with other teachers in

the organization can revolutionize a team, grade level, or school’s organization.

Do you have many handwritten notes? Microsoft has the mobile app Microsoft Lens for you to take a picture and upload to your OneNote or OneDrive.

Student Facing Content

The ability to use OneNote within Canvas is already enabled. Published courses with students, and the Canvas “Class Notebook” Navigation setting enabled, are expected to create a Class Notebook with the same name as your Canvas course within your OneNote. Users have to sign in once with their HallCo credentials the first time they access OneNote via Canvas. After an initial log in per course, the user has access to OneNote within that Canvas course. That appears to be the extent of the integration at this time, LTI 1.0.

In Canvas, the Class Notebook remains accessible no matter where a student is in the course. The Class Notebook could be used to push out and organize information for students, as textbooks used to. The Class Notebook could also

You can enable the Teacher Only feature in a Notebook to hide content form students until you are ready to distribute it.

Student interact (ink over, type in, add to, read) with their copy of your shared items in the Class Notebook. They don’t turn these in, and you don’t grade them. However, you can view them and use them as formative feedback and evidence. Some great ideas for use are given in the Canvas Community post, the Portfolio idea was very detailed and interesting.

https://youtu.be/h_Dc8nDf_U4

Additional Resources:

How to turn a teacher into a OneNote Ninja
www.onenote.uservoice.com

www.onenoteforteachers.com

Hall County graduated our first cohort of Microsoft Innovative Educators (MIEs) October 2nd and 3rd.

53 Hall County educators, representing 22 schools in the district, earned their MIE badge. MIEs use Microsoft tools in the classroom and have learned the fundamentals of applying technology in education. This is the first step on an exciting journey of joining a professional network of enthusiastic educators who come together to learn, share, and grow.

Participants learned about: Microsoft Office 365, Forms (Surveys & Quizzes), OneNote, and the Educator Community and self-training opportunities online.

Not Able to Attend?

Network with your BLaST members to learn about future training opportunities (check out our calendar on the home page). Consider working with one of your above colleagues to learn more about the opportunities available to Hall County educators through their Windows 10 operating systems on their teacher laptops.

Learn how you can become an MIE! You can work independently to gain this recognition., online and at your own pace.