Google's Applied Digital Skills Lessons

Students are allowed to keep their Chromebooks home over the summer - so reinforce and/or enhance your kids’ digital skills throughout the summer with Google’s Applied Digital Skills lessons. You kids can make pixel art inspired by Frida Kahlo and Mexico or create a comic strip in Google Drawings. You can also learn job-ready skills from anywhere with the video-based lessons. Have a wonderful and relaxing summer with the family!

Winter Break

 

Parent Pointer: Kami

Kami is a digital annotation tool that helps students (and teachers) interact and collaborate with pdf documents. All students have the Kami extension pre-installed on their Parkway-issued Chromebooks. Kami has a Read Aloud feature that allows learners to hear the text to be read aloud. (Remember, this feature is also available with Chromebook Accessibility.) Kami also has a Dictionary feature, which gives the definition of the highlighted text. Finally, a tool that both students and teachers enjoy is the colorful stickers rewarded after a job well done. Go ahead, have your child test out Kami’s features with this fun Kami Geography Scavenger Hunt Activity (you must use the Parkway-issued Chromebooks and open the PDF with Kami).

Flippity.net

Are you interested in creating a virtual escape room but perhaps daunted with setting up response validation in Google Forms? Start small with Flippity’s Scavenger Hunt! Enter the questions and answers (‘locks’ and ‘keys’) into a Google Sheets template and follow the detailed instructions to transform your spreadsheet into an escape room!

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Flippity.net has other templates to turn a Google Sheet into a board game, crossword puzzle, Mad Libs, and more. Some instructions are simple enough that you can even have students create their own! In each case, check out the demo, and then use the templates and detailed instructions provided to transform your spreadsheet. Happy creating!

Annotate in Schoology

 

Engagement Strategies

 Each of the short (under 2 min) videos below has a tip about different ways to engage students.

Tip #1 - Station Rotation (submitted by Ashley Wiedman at Central Middle)

Tip #2 - Using the 3E model in Schoology (submitted by Monica Dickens at South High)

Parent Pointer: Applied Digital Skills courses

What will you do this summer? Play this Mad Libs to find out!

Keep you and your family's digital skills sharp with Google’s Applied Digital Skills courses. The Applied Digital Skills curriculum consists of free resources designed to build digital literacy in education and for jobs. For example, you can have fun with digital arts and games by making Mad Libs such as the one above and making pixel art with Google Sheets. Or take virtual field trips and explore art from home by going on a scavenger hunt through Italy or exploring the History of Humankind in Kenya. Model positive digital citizenship by evaluating the credibility of online sources or understanding your digital footprint.

What digital skills will you learn this summer?

Goosechase

written by Kristen Harms// posted by Elegan Kramer

Want to go on an adventure with your child?  Want to have a fun and educational experience that is different than everyday learning on the Chromebook?

Goosechase is an interesting scavenger hunt app that is interactive.

Video

Create The Game

Build your game on the website, giving it a name, picture and description to mark it as yours.   Set how long the game will run and whether there’s a password to join.

Choose Missions

Each GooseChase game has a list of missions for participants to complete. You can create your mission list using the bank of 100+ tested missions or by designing your own from scratch.

Missions have a name, description, point value and an optional link or photo to provide extra information. For text & gps missions, the answer and target destination must also be provided.

Digital Choice Rooms

Written and recorded by Kristen Harms// posted by Elegan

• Choose a topic or focus on all of the rooms.

• Design activities for each room.

• teacher led

• outside websites

• quiet working room

• Introduce the stations and review the procedures:

• What is expected?  How many students can be at a station at any one time? What does a student do when s/he completes a station? 

• Remind students periodically of remaining time.   Close activities with small group discussions. Try two broad guiding questions for the discussions: what did you learn and how does it connect to the broad topic? This is where we start to make connections to the big ideas. The discussion time is also an opportunity for students to discover other rooms. Students share what they did and learned with each other. 

Parent Pointer: Google Earth

written by Kristen Harms// posted by Elegan Kramer

Google Earth enables you to travel, explore, and learn about the world by interacting with a virtual globe. You can view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, and much more.

Interact to Google Earth as a family!

1. Relive family trip-drop markers on the most important places and describe them. Add personal photos and videos to make it more vivid.

2. Plan a dream vacation-do the same thing as above, but instead, show where you would like to travel someday.

3. Family History Timeline-show your family’s migration history.

4. Find You on the Map-drop a marker on your house and family members homes.  Use points of reference to identify scale and distance.

Digital Gallery Walk

written by Kristen Harms// posted by Elegan Kramer

During a Gallery Walk or a Poster Walk, students get up out of their seats and circulate the room. They look at images, text and/or student work and identify what they see, think, and wonder.  There may be discussion at each of the posters or students may write thinking or questions around the edge of the poster.  Students have time to reflect at each station, build on each others’ ideas, write clarifying questions, agree or disagree, and provide feedback.  Students may also complete a “See, Think, Wonder” graphic organizer as they progress through the gallery.

Use one of the tools below for students to view the image or artifact and decide how they will note their thinking.  You can also prepare questions, images, videos, etc. that you would like students to respond to during the gallery walk and post them to the tool that students will use for the gallery walk such as Padlet or Flipgrid.

Each slide can be a new image or artifact or multiple Slideshows can be added to a shared Drive.   Students can write their thinking on the slideshow in text boxes or on a separate document.  Example Video

Each frame can be a new image or artifact or multiple Jamboards can be added to a shared Drive. Students can drag, drop, draw, type, and insert images into the frame.

Teachers can create their own image to put into the padlet or the teacher can provide specific artifacts or links. Students can mark their thinking or questions on the Padlet.

Fun online interactives - Iceberger and Thisissand.com

Iceberger

Icebergs float because they are less dense than water. But how much of the iceberg floats?

1. 10% (very little floats)

2. 50% (about half of it floats)

3. 90% (most of it floats)

4. Depends on the size and shape of the iceberg

Have your students predict the answer above and then test their predictions with this Iceberger simulation. Students can share their iceberg creations with others. After sharing, students can find patterns with their creations in order to justify the answer to the question above. This would be a great community-building activity while learning about density (sinking and floating), patterns, shapes, geometry, percentages, and more! So how do you think the iceberg (letter ‘E’) above will float? Test it to find out!

Thisissand.com

Thisissand is a unique playground for creating and sharing amazing sandscapes on your computer or mobile device. It’s free and easily accessible online, just click ‘Play Now.’ You do not need to create an account or sign in with Google or Clever. This could be a good community-building activity, having students share their creations with others and notice different patterns that can be made with falling sand. Or do it yourself and make it as your new Zoom background. Start pouring away to experience this special sand piling on your screen!

Video Conference Zoom Chat Strategy: Waterfall Response

Get students engaged with the Zoom chat by using the waterfall response strategy. Here are the directions:

1. Split your class into 2 groups.

2. Read the question or prompt. Students in Group 1 type an individual response into the chat, BUT DO NOT SEND.

3. Group 1 students release his/her response when instructed by the teacher. (“on the count of 3.”)

4. You will see a waterfall of chat where everyone’s responses come in at the same time. Allow time to read.

5. Now ask Group 2 to review the responses and publicly comment, BUT DO NOT SEND until the teacher says so. (“on the count of 3.”)

6. Allow time to read the waterfall.

7. Debrief. Follow-up if necessary and as appropriate.

8. Switch roles with a different question or prompt.

Benefits to this strategy: By delaying when students release their responses, all students can participate during Zoom and not feel pressured to follow-up on the latest comment or remark in the Zoom chat. Even if students have similar remarks or comments, the individual students still have ownership of his or her response and he or she feels engaged in the class.

 

Be sure to ask questions that foster conversation as opposed to questions that kill conversations (e.g., Should the US have entered into World War 2? vs. When did the US enter World War 2?)

Here is a Google Slides view-only waterfall template to help you get started. The first slide has directions for the waterfall strategy with space for students' names. The following slides have space to insert a question and sentence starters to help students get started with the conversations. If you are interested in using this template, please go to File and Make a Copy.

Extra tip: If you’re monitoring and reviewing participation later, quickly save the Zoom chat by clicking on the ellipsis button in the Zoom chat and select Save Chat. This will save as a text document file, most likely under Documents > Zoom > folder of meeting date.