I hope everyone’s fall is off to a great start. I am super excited about this year and am looking forward to bringing some of our fun district events back like the Code Quest Arcade in May and the Minecraft Challenge which will come out soon. One great new resource that has come to our district is Live It Earth! Live It is a Canadian resource which is available in English or in French and contains full lesson packages for Science/STEM lessons that closely follow our curricular Big Ideas. The subjects include such engaging topics as Life on Mars, Narwhals, Dinosaurs, Climate Change and much more with a new one coming out every month. Each package contains:
- A Slideshow that you can edit or change that is also narrated if you would like to give your voice a break
- An Inquiry Guide full of working documents that you can modify for students to fill out as you progress through the unit.
- Creative and STEM Challenges with lots of choices and step-by-step instructions
- A Feature Show about the topic which also includes the Indigenous perspective
- Career Pathways
- Self Assessment opportunities
- Post Viewing Challenges and Resources like Game Challenges, Call to Action, Deep Dives and more
Welcome back everyone! I hope everyone has had a wonderful summer and you are all recharged and ready to inspire young minds. Today I am excited to share some of the changes that Microsoft made over the summer. Our class Teams now have a Homepage and Flipgrid, a favourite for many teachers, is now called Flip. Please read on for more information about these changes and don’t hesitate to email me if you have any questions or if you would like support with information technology for you and your class.
Teams Homepage:
Our class Teams now have a new Home Page that makes your Team more like a class webpage. On your page you can have resource links, videos, a list of assignments (that is linked to the assignments feature) and you will get analytics about the number of people that visit your team. Click on Edit in the top right of your Home page to get started. If you would like to learn more about how is all works, please click here to visit an instruction page or watch this seven minute video:
Flipgrid is now Flip:
Flip (formerly Flipgrid )is a super fun way for students to answer questions, introduce themselves, share information and more. Kids love making videos and Flip is a very engaging video discussion app in which students create short videos that can be shared with your class. If you are interested, click here to get started. You can sign in with your Microsoft account (your regular work email) to make it easy. Please make sure to send home a district app consent form to make sure your parents know you are using it.
Do you have your laptop mirrored on your projector screen or Smartboard so your students see what you are working on? Maybe sometimes you would like your screen projected but other times you would like to have private stuff on your screen while your class is watching something else? Read on for some instructions for how to “Extend Your Screen”. Also read on for a great STEAM Virtual Workshop opportunity for our students grades 7-12.
How to Extend Your Computer Display
1. Right click on your desktop screen and select Display settings
2. Scroll down until you see Multiple displays and click on the box underneath this to select “Extend desktop to this Display”
3. You can close the Display window now. It may take you a bit of playing to figure out how to move your mouse to the other display (it took me a while). Many teachers open the window with what they would like the students to see and then click on it and drag it over to the projector screen.