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 ...

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,...

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...