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What's a Hyperdoc? I've written several posts on hyperdocs varying in content and purpose . In a nutshell, the purpose of a hyperdoc is merely to provide learning space. It might be an organized collaborative space or a document chock full of links, graphics, and resources to guide a learning experience. Either way, the real advantage of a hyperdoc is to buy the teacher time to collaborate with students and personalize learning. Students work through learning experiences as the teacher meets with individuals or small groups. This is much like the reader's workshop model I utilized in my classroom. Students worked in small groups on a text, independently on their own text, or were writing about their reading through a notebook or our class blog. In the meantime, I was conferencing and meeting students in the trenches of their work. In the end, the teacher will have a collection of responses that give a wealth of information about the students' discussions or level ...

Guardian Summaries are Here! I'm very excited about the opportunity to connect family members with Google Classroom . It has been a major piece missing since Classroom debuted. Parents were reliant on students to open their classroom and decipher the information teachers put in there. To a person that has never seen/used Classroom, it could seem pretty overwhelming. If you look at the example above, you can see that Guardian Summaries will provide an overview of all classroom activity. With Guardian Summaries, caretakers can choose to get a daily or weekly summary of their child's classes. It arrives in their email so no account setup/password is required. Teachers merely attach a guardian's email address to the students and an alert will be sent to them to confirm the address. Once the parent is attached to a student, other classes will automatically add the same email address.  Not so Fast! This is not yet available for teachers in MSD of Steuben County....

A Little Something for Your iPad This year is the first time that the Metropolitan School District of Steuben County is going to be a full Chromebook 1:1 technology district. In the past, we had a combination of iPads and Chromebooks. As our fleet of iPads have aged, we've come to the point that we were ready to make a switch. So what do we do with all of our old iPads? Put one in the hands of all our teachers.  For many of our teachers, this is the first experience they have had with an iPad in a classroom setting. So the question I'm getting is how can a single iPad be beneficial to a classroom? I have a few ideas listed on a previous post in April of 2016. If you'd like to see it, click here . One item that is not on that list is the new launch in the Google Classroom app for Android and iOS devices. Users can now give handwritten feedback on assignments.  Why Give Feedback on an iPad? Do you prefer handwriting over typing? Do you like to quickly mark a pa...

Let's Get Organized! My biggest beef with Google Classroom for quite some time has been the organization of it. Teachers have been at the mercy of "the stream" since it debuted. Last year, teachers rejoiced when they could finally move items to the top of their stream of assignments, announcements and questions. It wasn't enough though because the teacher still had to scroll through all those materials to find the resource they wanted to bring to the top. With all of Google's expertise in search, it always surprised me that there wasn't a way to categorize those posts. Well, the time has come! Topics I'm very excited that Google Classroom now has "topics" added to the stream. Now teachers can essentially group posts with a single tag. This is great if you have several items in relation to one topic or study. Students and teachers can then easily trounce through only those items with the associated tag. Setting up topics is e...

What Teachers Need... Eight years ago I was still teaching fourth grade and was getting a brand new building. I remember how excited I was because of how amazing it would be that I would have a projector that I didn't have to share with other teachers and wheel in on a cart. I was even more surprised when we were going to receive a tablet PC that would work completely wire-free. It completely changed my style of teaching: I no longer taught with my back turned to the board.  I experienced less interruption because I could better locate myself in proximity to a student that needed to refocus. (I rarely had to stop a lesson because I had my laptop in my hands.)  I could pull up an unlimited amount of content at any moment.  For the last couple years, Apple TV has given iPad teachers the same experiences I had several years ago. Now that all of my teachers are going to be utilizing Chromebooks in the classroom, what options do teachers have?  What is G...