Edgaged

Early Release! Toward the end of June, MSD of Steuben County gained access to the early release of the New Google Sites. It is a very exciting opportunity as our teachers can start to get a feel for how to implement it as a key communication tool and implementation in the classroom. Due to the upcoming changes, I've already canceled a training I had planned for a blogging template I had created using Google Sites. Now that there is a new version, I ultimately decided that it was a matter of time until that training would be obsolete. So I'm excited to present the new version of Google Sites to the administrative team on Monday, August 1st and teachers Thursday, August 4th.  MSDSC was also planning on utilizing Google Sites for school websites. That plan is now on hold as the transition takes place. So for now, teachers and administrators get to test and get familiar with the new format as we prepare to make the transition along with Google.  What's in the New ...

Chromebooks Required Throughout this summer, I kicked off a training series for my staff that I titled "Chromebooks Required." Mainly because we are shifting completely to the Chromebook for students vs. a mix of devices. We are excited for this focus on all that Google has to offer our students. There certainly be some growing pains as many of our teachers transfer technology integration from the iPad to the Chromebook.  Part of my training has been on the topic of Google Classroom. It has been a basic orientation of how to connect students as well as how to utilize the various methods of communication as well as how to utilize other tools to enhance the experience with Google Classroom (Share to classroom, Doc Hub, Orange Slice Rubric, etc.) Google Classroom is much more than an assignment creator. I also have been holding training sessions on the topic of hyperdocs which is much more about lesson format and how to more efficiently create learning experiences via...

Can I Have It Auto-Grade? I frequently get the question about how to create quizzes that will be automatically graded.  If you already have a quiz you are planning on using, you might as well take advantage of it being fully automated, right? It saves a great amount of time if you are planning on administering a quick quiz all based on multiple choice or true and false.  Toward the end of June, Google launched the ability to create graded quizzes via Google Forms. Using a Google Sheets add-on ( Flubaroo ) is no longer necessary to accomplish this task. Teachers can quickly make a quiz, set the correct answers, and instantly have all the results within their Google Form. If you are wanting something quick and extremely user-friendly, this is the route to go. If you are wanting to have more control over point values and weighted grades, Flubaroo is much more feature-rich as it has been in existence much longer. Both tools are great, I recommend trying them both. Why n...

#gafe trainer and innovator meet-up rocked. Lots of exciting Google goodies coming soon! #ISTE2016 @leadlaughlearn pic.twitter.com/RFdG2nk04t — Lance Yoder (@Mr_Yoder) June 28, 2016 ISTE 2016 ISTE 2016 was awesome. The Denver Convention Center is probably my favorite location out of the four ISTE conferences I've attended. The building is easy to navigate and in a great place, downtown Denver. I walked away from ISTE with some great ideas of how to supplement teacher training as well as a taste of the new features Google is offering schools this academic year. I'm excited for the new version of Sites to be launched, Android apps on Chromebooks, as well as some new features within Google Classroom that will certainly make the lives of teachers much simpler. Many of these features will be discussed in future posts. This post is focused on an issue that seems to be regularly ignored within the realm of educational technology. We're talking about the Children's...