IHMS Tech Tips

Google Meet is yet another option for meeting during distance learning.  It is new so somewhat glitchy, but I did not find it much glitchier than WebEx Teams.  Please note that WebEx is still the district-suggested medium to use. Meet is now available for all Google Classrooms, though you choose whether or not you want to enable it and if and when you want students to have access to the meeting link.  To get to the Meet info in Classroom, first choose settings: Scroll down until you see the Meet information.  Click "generate link" and then decide if you want to this link visible to students at all times or not.  If you toggle it on, the link will appear in the banner of your Google Classroom.  If you have it turned off, you can still post the link at a later time, or even change the link each time you want to Meet.  Be sure to save your changes. If visible to students, they will see the Meet link in the banner: To start your meeting, ...

If you are looking for lesson ideas or supplements to your current content, try using the Microsoft Educator Community .  " Connect and collaborate, find training and lessons, and earn badges and certificates on this personalized hub created for  educators  like you."  While you can certainly use content from the site with your students, it's really a site for teachers. Signing in is simple and connects to your Microsoft365 account.  This is the login you use for all Microsoft software (Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, and Word).  The username would be your network ID (ex. ihhuggin@smsd.org or 800001234@smsd.org for newer staff) and network password. To search for ideas, you can search by type, grade, subject, etc.   If you are interested in using Skype in your classroom, you can search by availability for guest speakers or look through their themed activities and calendar of events.  See this previous blog post for more on Skype/video ...

I'm sure many of you are familiar with Skype, but there are also lots of other free video conferencing websites that you can integrate into your classrooms.  Soon, our district will be launching a similar site to Skype through WebEx/Spark.  This will allow you to more easily communicate with colleagues, students, and parents.   Edumemic gives some reasons why you might want to consider using video conferencing in your classroom: Use it to collaborate with other classrooms:  Whether it's another classroom across the district or across the world, use a video conference to connect with other students that have a different background.  Think about what you could do in foreign language or with a classroom that's studying the same novel.   Use it to conduct expert interviews:   Authors, philanthropists, historians, you name it.  Set up a video conference with them.  It's more convenient than finding a time that works for everyone and maybe even...