Tomorrow is May 4th – a special day for Star Wars fans. Here is an article with some great ways you can celebrate May the fourth with your class: May the 4th Be With You: Best Free Star Wars Teaching Ideas. Don’t miss the Star Wars Crawl Creator and Lessons from the New York Times.
I have been teaching a lot of lessons lately on Digital Wellness and one of the topics that I want to share with you this week is keeping the location of your photos private. If you have the Location Services turned on when you take pictures, it adds data to your photos about where they were taken. If you then publish these photos on Media, other people can look at the data and find out where your pictures where taken. This can give away your home address. Here are some instructions for turning this off on photos on iPhones and Android phones:
Iphone:
1. Go to Settings
2. Click on Privacy
3. Click on Location Services
4. Go down to Camera and click on it then select Never
5. Go Back, then go down to Photos and click on Never for that one too
Android:
1. Go to Settings
2. Click on Apps
3. Find the Camera and click on it
4. Click on Permissions
5. Turn off location here
Today’s Tech Tip is a nice simple one. Have you ever been looking at an article on the internet on your iphone/ipad and wished you could easily send the whole article to a friend or save it to look at later? All you have to do is take a screenshot, click on Full Page and share or copy it. Here is a short video to show you how:
One great way to get a good feel for how your students are doing is to use the Reflect options in Teams on a regular basis. It is anonymous to the students and it is a safe, fun way to ask them how they are doing (thanks to Tracy, one of our fabulous Teacher Librarians for this idea). Read on to learn more about Teams Reflect and to get some tips for primary teachers using computers with their students.
Tips for Using Computers with Primary Students:
1. Give your students a card that contains their username and password. Click here to open one that you can use. I recommend filling them out in upper case because that is what they will see on the keyboard.
2. Teach them how to take care of computers and proper behaviour when they are using them. You can use this responsible use agreement: SD#71 Primary Responsible Use Agreement
3. Show them what they are doing before they get on the computer then show them again when they open up the computers.
4. Start slow. Many will have never used a mouse (but may be familiar with a touch screen). Let them try some games that teach mouse skills: abcyaSkills – Many of these games are designed just to help kids learn how to click and drag.
5. Start a Typing Program. This will also help students with letter recognition. Click here for instructions to help you use Typing Pal
6. You could introduce word processing Click here to read an article with ideas or click here for some lessons to help you
7. Have a signal to get student’s attention and get their hands off of the computers. For example you can have them put their hands on their heads or cross their arms and then you can see that they are not using their computers. Some teachers have the students turn the laptop around or put the screen at “Half Mast” (half way down not closed which would turn the computer off).
8. Teach your class Internet Safety. Here are some great sites to help you: Digital Citizenship for Primary Classes
9. Teach them how to create folders, save files and keep those files organized.Click here for help with this.
10. Use the computer to teach research skills: Click here for some help with this.
Using Reflect in Teams:
This is an extension in TEAMs that may help students recognize and navigate their emotions by providing regular opportunities to share and be heard. Reflect is a great way to help students think about their feelings and reflect on what you are doing in class. Teachers can keep the responses anonymous so students will never know who each response is from.
Click here for instructions for how to use Reflect.
