New Laptop Preparation

By now, most of you have probably heard that we will be getting new laptops this Spring. Our three-year lease on the current Dell laptops expires in June, so we will begin the process of swapping out the machines very soon. In order to help this process, there are a number of tasks that you can take care of in order to ensure that you retain your files, bookmarks, etc. These tasks can also be found at on Google Drive on our Laptop Refresh Checklist.

1. Make sure you have your AC Power Adapter for the laptop. This needs to be turned in along with the laptop.
2. Remove any personal stickers, decals, Post-It notes, tape, etc. you have added to the device. Do your best to clean off the glue, but please do NOT use any liquid cleaners on the laptop.
3. Take a screenshot of the list of printers you have on your machine - this will help you to add your printers to your new laptop when you receive it. These cannot be transferred over to the new device, as they must be manually inputted.
4. Verify that the automated backup has copied all of your folders and files to the P: drive. This process will be started soon and everything should be up-to-date when we give you the new laptop, but it is always a great idea to make sure that the automated process has captured all of your files.
1. If there is anything that you are super-paranoid about, be sure to make a separate backup of it to ensure that you retain a copy of it somewhere.
2. If you have personal information on your laptop (i.e. photos, tax documents, bank statements), make sure that you delete those and empty the Recycle Bin.
3. This may also be the time to upload everything into Google Drive. Remember, we have unlimited storage in Google Drive so you won't have to worry about space limits. The Google Drive Sync app would be a great way to silently and easily backup your files to Drive.
5. Log into the Chrome browser in order to sync your bookmarks across all of your devices that you are signed into with your OakGroveSD.net account. This can also sync passwords you may have saved (or you will need to write them down somewhere until you get your new laptop).

The Checklist has a handful of videos that can walk you through the various steps if needed.

Once all of this has been done, you are ready to turn in your laptop. The IT and EdTech teams will be coming out to sites throughout the Spring in order to move you over to your new machines. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact your EdTech Specialist:

• Bernal Learning Community - Steve Harmon
• Davis Learning Community - Bruce Neff
• Herman Learning Community - Sergio Rizzi

Creating a Self-Checking "Scavenger Hunt" Using Google Forms

I just finished reading about developing a Self-Checking "Scavenger Hunt" by a teacher named Stephanie Perretta, an 8th grade Algebra teacher in Cumberland Valley. This is a great twist on using stations for students to determine if they have mastered skills or if they need a refresher. Check out the blog post to see how she did it and replicate it in your classroom!

The SAMR Model

If you have been around technology in the classroom long enough, you will see an acronym showing up all over the place: SAMR. I wanted to explain a little about this so that you might be able to shift your mindset when thinking about bringing technology into your classroom.

SAMR was developed by Dr. Ruben R. Puentedura, who focuses on applying information technology to education in a transformative way. SAMR is an acronym for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition. The first two - Substitution and Augmentation - are considered the Enhancement of learning, whereas Modification and Redefinition are considered the Transformation of learning.

Dr. Ruben R. Puentedura, Ph.D., http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/

• This video from Common Sense Media gives an introduction to the SAMR model:

• In Kathy Schrock's blog, she compares the SAMR model with Bloom's taxonomy - many of the graphics on this post will help to show the comparisons between these two significant ideas in education.

• Finally, here is an artistic explanation of the SAMR model in 120 seconds:
  

Where do you fall on the SAMR model ladder when it comes to incorporating technology into your classroom?

Where do you want to be by the end of the year?

What steps can you take to propel yourself up the ladder?

Always remember: growth does not come without action.

Passwords: the key to your life or the bane of your existence?

As technology becomes more and more prevalent in our lives as well as more personalized, passwords have become more and more important. This is a skill that does not come naturally, it is rather a learned skill, one that should be taught.

I have often used the analogy of house keys as passwords. No one would leave their keys sitting around in a public area, hang their keys outside their front door, or hand out their keys to everyone at their school site. Likewise, no one should do this with their passwords. Writing down passwords (even if supposedly hidden) can leave them open to being stolen. Though having your keys hanging outside your front door would certainly make it easier for you to get into your house, it also makes it easier for everyone else in the world to do so. Using a Fisher Price plastic key for your front door would not be very secure either, just like using a weak, standardized, or universal password is not very secure. Passwords that have been set up for new accounts are supposed to be temporary as everyone would know this password and thus would have access to your account.

Now that we understand that passwords need to be personalized and strong, the question becomes how to create a strong password. The more characters in a password, the stronger it will become and the more difficult for criminals to guess. Additionally, adding in numbers, symbols, and upper and lower case letters will make your password even more secure. Whenever I teach others about creating passwords, I tell them that I have two simple rules:

1. Make a password that is NOT easily guessable.
2. Make a password that you will remember.

Of course, the key is in implementing these rules.

Here is an example of how to do this: I wouldn't use something that others know about me, but is somewhat personal to me so that I will remember it: maybe my Aunt's dog's name, Roscoe. Unfortunately, names are not good passwords, so I would change it in some ways - maybe add in some capital letters, RosCoe. Some letters look like numbers, for example an i or l looks like a 1, or a p looks like a backwards 9 or upside-down 6 - so in my Aunt's dog's name I can replace the s with a 5 and the e with a 3, Ro5Co3. I'm also going to choose something else to add to this, so that it makes it a little more difficult. Since my aunt is on my father's side of the family, I will choose my mother's father's birth year, 1942. I'll only take the last two digits and will connect it to Roscoe with a symbol, Ro5Co3#42. This password will be extremely difficult for anyone to guess or even to hack using password-guessing software. Even if someone knew the information I used, my Aunt's dog's name and my Grandfather's birth year, it would be difficult for them to guess which letters I capitalized or changed into numbers and where I placed the symbol. But, because I know this information intimately, it should be easier for me to remember. Though I wouldn't want to write the exact password down, I could write a hint, i.e. Aunt's dog, Gpa year. Having that cryptic note next to my computer would allow me to not have my password out in the open but also provide a hint for me to remember what I used.

Sometimes sites require that you change your password on regular basis, or sometimes you want to use different passwords for different sites. This can be accomplished by creating a base for your password and then change a prefix or suffix depending on the time or site. For example, if I wanted to use the above password as a base, then I could make a site specific password for an Amazon.com account as follows: Ro5Co3#42amazon. Or if you needed to change your password monthly, you can add in the month and year: Dec15Ro5Co3#42. Then each month when you change your password you only have to change the month and year in the front as needed but keep the base the same.

edSurge Tech for Schools Summit

On Saturday, my colleague and I went to edSurge's Tech for Schools Summit (Silicon Valley 2015). Though there were numerous companies presenting their applications and devices, I just wanted to focus on a couple that we felt would be of most benefit to you. (If you follow the link above you will be able to see a list of all the companies that were involved.)

•  curates public radio stories to be used in the classroom. There are pre-made lessons available, and they are highly customizable so you can delete questions or add your own. Questions can even pause the program to check for student's comprehension. Though accounts are free, to get the full experience and be able to create lessons online the premium service may be required. Unfortunately, there is no prices that can be easily seen on the website and you would need to contact them to find out current pricing. [Update: in July 2016 this company rebranded themselves from Listen Current to Listenwise.]

• , SE3D, has developed a 3D Bioprinter that is inexpensive enough to be used in the classroom (in other words, less than hundreds of thousands of dollars). Although this is still outside the price range of most classes, unless you have an angel donor! I just put it here because it is really cool and speaks to my geek side! I could see this being used in middle school science classes in numerous ways.

• PocketLab was one of the best items we saw. As the name implies, it is a miniature lab that can fit in your pocket. The device is very small, 2.65 inches long, 1.15 inches wide and 0.65 inch tall. Within the PocketLab are multiple sensors, including an accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, thermometer, and pressure gauge. It connects through Bluetooth to a device and allows you to detect a lot of information. They cost $98 (discounts available for bulk purchases).

•  looks like a great grading program that allows you to scan or photograph work (or students can do their own), you then grade it online and you can then view the statistics. One of the cool features was that if you decide to change how much a question is worth because you realize halfway through grading everything that it was harder than you anticipated, then the gradebook will change the previous papers you had already graded to reflect that change! This keeps all scoring standard across all student work for that assignment. Though originally designed for universities, this can be used in any classroom setting. You can request an account for free on their website.

•  provides free, easy-to-use computer science (programming or coding) resources to help teachers of 4th through 8th grades create clubs for their students to learn programming. There are multiple themes to choose from, each theme has about 10 hours of materials available. Though it is designed for an afterschool club, it could be incorporated into a classroom as well. And the best part, it is free!

A Teacher Toolbox

Often teachers will ask for one program or website that will do it all! Wouldn't this be nice - to have one place to go and it does everything?!? Unfortunately, I have never found a single site that will do this - even though there are plenty out there that claim that they do. One of the reasons our district turned to Google Apps for Education is that it has a plethora of apps (note the plural!) to do different functions. It is a toolbox for teachers. As a woodworker, I have a toolbox that has various tools in it. Depending on the project, or even a step in the project, I will need to decide which tool is the best one for that task. Likewise, as a teacher, I have numerous "tools" in my toolbox to use in various situations in the classroom. When working in Google Apps for Education, we also have numerous tools to use, such as Classroom, Drive, Sites, Calendar, Blogger, Email, Hangouts, etc.

Here I will try to explain how you might use these various tools (this explanation is by no means exhaustive or the only way to use these tools):

• Email: this is a communication tool. Google uses their email system in order to inform you of anything happening in the other apps as well as allowing you to communicate in written form with others.
• Drive: a drive is a storage device inside the computer (you may have heard of hard drives, floppy disc drives, flash drives, or thumb drives). In Google, they named the place where you store files the Drive. This is all that Drive is: a place to store your files online. Any files in your Drive can be shared with others to be viewed or edited.
• Docs: a word processor, much like Microsoft Word or Apple's Pages.
• Sheets: a spreadsheet program, much like Microsoft Excel or Apple's Numbers.
• Slides: a multimedia presentation program , much like Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple's Keynote.
• Calendar: this is a calendar that can be private, shared with one or more people, or made public to the world. Multiple calendars can be created for different purposes, each one can be shared differently as well.
• Classroom: this is an assignment management system. Using Google Drive to handout or collect assignments can be cumbersome and prone to errors with students. Classroom makes it a LOT easier to handout assignments and collect them from the students, as well as monitoring their work as they are doing it. This is not a public site to use as your main webpage, parents will NOT have access to this as it is only available within our Google Apps for Education domain.
• Sites: this is a program that will create a website for you. This you can share with a class, a school site or with the entire world. This is to create an online presence to share with your student's parents. You can also use this to have students create an e-portfolio of their work for the year.
• Blogger: a blog is a web-log or internet journal. In Google Apps for Education you can specify who has access to read your blog, and you can invite others to collaborate on your blog as well. What you are reading right now is the EdTech Blog for Oak Grove School District.
• Hangouts: video and audio communication piece. This could be useful in a number of situations such as having someone in industry presenting to a class or connecting with a class in another part of the world.
• Youtube: this is an online resource for videos. With your Google account you can upload and share videos through Youtube, creating your own channel with videos for students, parents or the world to watch.

There are so many tools here that it may feel daunting to start using them. I would never suggest that you start by trying ALL of them. Rather, focus on using one or two of the tools and learning how to use those well, before moving on to another tool. You may even find that some tools can be used for multiple purposes (albeit not as effectively as a tool designed for that purpose - think of using a screwdriver as a paint scraper).

How To Training: Resetting a Student's Password

One of the most common requests received by the EdTech team is asking us to reset students' passwords. Guess what? You have access to reset a student's password as well! We have put together a screencast to show you how to do it. Our suggestion is that you open one tab with the video and another tab where you can follow those directions step-by-step. Good luck, and let us know if you need further help.

• Screencast