IHMS Tech Tips

Administration has requested that teachers post daily classwork and homework that is visible to both parents and students.  Skyward is the ideal place to post this as parents have access to it. Post a link to an agenda (the easiest way; you only have to do this once in Skyward): 1. Click on Lesson Scheduler 2. Click on the + sign 3. Enter your class name as the Summary and add your link to your agenda in the Details. Use the Style Toolbar to link your agenda to the Details section.  Mine is linked to a Google Slideshow. 4. Be sure to select "Show item on Family and Student Access" so that parents can visit your agenda. 5. Copy your same Details to multiple classes by choosing Copy to Other Classes and selecting the other hours you teach of the same subject. 6. Set up your information to appear every day in Skyward for parents and students by choosing Recurrence and setting your preferences. If you already use an agenda on the screen fo

Stop motion videos are the digital ages' flipbooks.  You take a series of photos of an object or subject moving slightly from one frame to the next and then animate.  In doing so, the object appears to be moving. If you've ever seen the Lego movies, you've seen stop motion in action.  There are TONS of stop motion examples on YouTube. I used the below video to introduce my students to the project: I had my students created a "pre-viz" for their stop motion video.  They had the option of using Google Docs, StoryboardThat , or hand-drawing.  From there, we used PhotoBooth to take the photographs and then imported those photos into iMovie.  I did allow students to use their cell phones to take the pictures if they wanted, as it's very awkward to take photos using the Macbook.  Keep in mind, iMovie only allows .1 frames per second, so it will require 100 photos to have a 10-second animation.   Once the students had their photos taken, I showed this tut

Flipgrid is a video discussion platform for students:  "Don’t just ask a question. Expand their world and ignite a discussion! Foster previous experiences, share a booktalk, discuss current projects and events, delve deep into STEAM ideas, or collaborate on anything. If you believe it’s valuable for students to verbalize their learning processes ... that’s a Flipgrid Topic! You can moderate videos, provide custom feedback, set the privacy rules, and more." To get started with Flipgrid: Create an account at  https://info.flipgrid.com/  (It's free!) From the Dashboard, choose "New Grid" and follow the prompts Keep in mind that you can only do one topic/grid at a time at the free level.   To have multiple (prompts) running at once, you'd have to get the $$ version, however, you could use the same grid/prompt across all of your classes. You can get access to unlimited grids if you take the super simple Flipgrid certification exam (about 10 questio

I was in a meeting before Thanksgiving break where teachers were talking about how useful the table of contents feature was in Google Docs.  I agree! So I thought I'd share how to use it. To start, you will need to have a Google Doc with text.  You cannot start a table of contents without a working document.  Once you have some text, you will start to edit that text to be title, subtitle, heading, or heading 2 and so forth.  Highlight the selected text and then select "Normal text" near the font button.  Choose the type of text you want. Next, you will tell Google Docs to take that information and turn it into a table of contents with corresponding links.  Select "Insert" then "Table of contents." The table of contents will remain at the top of your document.  You can also select "Tools" then "Document outline" to have your table of contents displayed on your screen to the left of your Google Doc at all times. Us

GarageBand is another one of those tools that students have at their fingertips.  Are you using it?  If not, here are some great ways to use this free program in your classroom. Booktalks: Students can review a story or novel read for class or one of their own choosing. Interviews: Students can interview either real people or characters from books and/or history. Podcasts: Students could write a script for a podcast of their choosing on current events, events in history, or a fictional story. Music: Students can create a soundtrack for an iMovie or any other project that incorporates sound. Read-alouds: Have students read their writings aloud while recording in GarageBand and listen to critique their phrasing and language for revision.  Or, have students read each other's writings verbatim and students can listen to the recording to see what doesn't make sense. Students need to download it from Self Service first, a task I always recommend doing way in advance of

Google Sites used to be a scary, scary place, but they've done some updates this year and I'm tasking my 1st hour students with creating their own site!  In Sites , you can embed YouTube videos, Google Maps, and anything from your Google Drive. There are a myriad of ways you could use Sites in the classroom: Teachers could use a Google Site to house their calendar, weekly agenda, homework, etc.  While students can get most of this information from Google Classroom, parents would benefit greater from a Parent Portal in Sites.  Teachers could also use Sites to house all of the material for each unit.  Consider a page per unit with links, videos, audio files, etc.  Not only is it a great way for students to access information, but it also keeps everything in one spot when you need to use it the following year. Students could use Sites as a digital portfolio.  Have them showcase their work from the quarter or semester and reflect on each piece.  Classmates can then view

This week, my 1st hour students researched current emerging technologies.  They wrote a blog post about this new research which you can read here: New iPhone camera updates Brain-sensing headsets Electric cars Liquid biopsies and reverse paralysis Apple watch Artificial leaf Airless tires Liquid fuels from sunshine Electric motorcycles

"Ignite  is a specific genre of presentation. An Ignite presenter only has five minutes to speak about the topic, and 20 slides to do so. Every 15 seconds, slides are moved along automatically. The overall purpose of an Ignite session is to empower and excite the audience around a specific subject matter, idea or topic. Ignite is used at conferences all around the world, at  EdCamps , and even within professional organizations and businesses."   Ignite presentations are a concise way to either introduce or sum up a concept or idea.  Ignite presentations are different than others your students might do in that they are timed: 20 slides 15 seconds per slide 5 minutes total The slides are set to auto-advance every 15 seconds so that there is nothing required of the presenter except providing the information that correlates to each slide.  This type of presentation requires a lot of practice so that transitions between slides and speaking is seamless. Here is a great s

Last week, my 1st hour students used the green screen for the first time.  They used iMovie to record and edit their films and thoroughly enjoyed the process.  While at first iMovie seems daunting (to me anyway), the students caught on quickly and ran with it. Here are some tips and tricks for using the green screen with iMovie from my 1st hour class blogs: http://techtipsmacbook.blogspot.com/2017/10/how-to-make-green-screen-video-with.html http://techtipsihms.blogspot.com/2017/10/green-screen-and-imovie.html https://technologytips4teach.blogspot.com/2017/10/how-to-use-green-screen-green-screen-is.html https://technologytoday50.blogspot.com/2017/10/imovie-greenscreen-tutorial.html Here are a few examples of their movies from last week: The Three Little Pigs The Ugly Duckling Jack and the Beanstalk Chicken Little Goldilocks and the Three Bears There is tons of information out there online, on Pinterest, etc. on how to integrate use of the green screen into the classroom.

We've talked about how to use WebEx for contacting parents, and I know some of you have used it for PLCs, but it is also a great tool to use with your students in the classroom or away from the classroom.  We are all aware of the trouble with AirPlay.  Using WebEx is a way to avoid having to use AirPlay in the first place.  With WebEx, students are viewing your screen on their Macbook in real time. Here's how to use WebEx: Instructor Load WebEx with the following link using Google Chrome:  smsd.webex.com  . Log in via the link in the top right corner of the page Click the green 'Start Meeting' button This will launch the Cisco Webex Meeting Center application Click on the 'Meeting Info' tab Take note of the meeting number, as you will need to provide this to your students Post the the number in Google Classroom, or simply write it on the board Once your students have all joined the meeting session, go to the 'Quick Start' tab and click

Students can animate in Google Slides for a fun introduction or final project for a unit.  The animation is a very simple way for students to show understanding of a particular concept. To animate in Slides, you will first need to create a presentation.  Then: Insert a shape/image/object onto the first slide Duplicate slide 1 by right-clicking on it On the slide 2, move the shape/image/object slightly so that if you were to toggle between slides 1 and 2, you would see movement Duplicate slide 2 and again slightly rearrange the shape/image/object on slide 3 Continue doing this until you've completed your steps or animation To have your slideshow run automatically: In the Slides menu choose File- Publish to the web Change "Auto-advance slides" to "every second" Select "Start slideshow as soon as the player loads" Publish After you have published, you will get a link to share the animation.  Upon opening this link, the slid

There are a few non-traditional options for meeting with parents.  While face-to-face is always the best route, here are a few other ideas you could utilize to communicate with parents: 1.  Cisco WebEx Another Cisco product! This one is for video conferencing. To schedule a WebEx: Go to smsd.webex.com Login. My login username is haydenferguson@smsd.org.  There's an option to reset password if necessary. Select "Start a meeting" You can either copy and paste the meeting URL into an Outlook Meeting or into an email with a specified time.  It's up to you to start the meeting at the designated time. Parents can join by going by following the URL you emailed them or entering the meeting ID See even more information in the district ICT newsletter . 2.  Google Voice "Google Voice  is a voicemail service from  Google  that enables users to send free text messages, customize their voicemail, read voicemail text transcript, and more." Google a

We all know that email you get following a voicemail doesn't lead to the voicemail.  Cisco Jabber does!  Like Spark, Jabber is already downloaded on your computer, it's just waiting for you to install it from Self Service. To get Cisco Jabber: Log into Self Service Choose "Cisco" from the right-hand menu Install Jabber (one time)* Open Jabber from your Launchpad (F4 on your keyboard) *You will know you were successful in your install if you click on the down arrow in the upper right-hand menu of Self Service and see: To log in (note, this is different than Spark), use your computer login credentials.  See below: Like Spark, Jabber needs to be open for you to see the notification of a voicemail. Once open, you will see this menu: Jabber will also notify you of an incoming call if the application is open.  I do not answer calls from my computer, but you can certainly try or reject incoming calls. :)  This will pop up on your screen if