Be Internet Awesome by Teaching Digital Citizenship

Be Internet Awesome

The internet is a part of daily life. We need to make sure our students have the knowledge to stay safe and make good choices whenever they use this powerful tool.

Google has created a curriculum called “Be Internet Awesome” to help teachers teach Digital Citizenship. Click here to check out the fundamental ideas and explore the site.

The curriculum comes with downloadable posters, certificates, badges, and a fun online game called Interland to help teach core principles. Check out the video below to get a glimpse of Interland.

Another great digital citizenship resource that has been around for a little while is Common Sense Education. It is a full K-12 curriculum to help you tackle a variety of topics such as internet safety, self-image/identity, and cyberbullying.

Check it out by clicking here.

Please contact your Digital Learning Specialist if you would like additional information on anything mentioned above.

Google Classroom Updates, SeeSaw Activities, Digital Tools for ELA

Google Classroom Training:  Are you using Google Classroom and want to expand   your Google  Classroom chops? The Google Classroom Training Center has added new lessons with some great ideas on how educators can share assignments more easily and collect them effortlessly. It is worth checking out!

SeeSaw Update! Introducing Activities Now you can easily create and share activities for your students to complete in Seesaw!  This video is a great introduction to using  activities in your classroom.

	Reading a novel? Have students map the plot or imagine different story paths using If/Then Adventure Stories. Check out this example.
	Showcase learners’ writing at a poetry slam or storytelling competition. Students can collaborate and organize it within Google Calendar.
	Use Create an Editing Tool with Programming to check for common writing mistakes and overused words.

3 Valuable Robots That Will Make Your Classroom Awesome

As a White Bear Lake Area Schools teacher, you have access to a few powerful pieces of technology you can use to help you reach more students and reflect on your practice. They are the Double Robot and the Swivl.

Double Robot

The Double Robot is a device you can check out from the District Center Technology Department. It is essentially an iPad on wheels that you or a student can control remotely from another location. You can use it to enable a guest expert to speak to your class, maneuvering from table to table to speak with students. Homebound students can continue to attend classes. You can even take an educational trip and stay connected with your students while you show them your exciting adventures!

The Double Robot comes with an iPad, can be controlled remotely via Google Chrome, and the battery lasts about eight hours on a single charge.

If you'd like to learn more about how it's used, you can contact your DLS. If you'd like to book it, you can sign up for full-day sessions here.

Swivl

The Swivl is an observation assistance tool that enables teachers to record themselves in their classrooms from a variety of perspectives. You can set up a Swivl to automatically track you throughout your classroom, recording your voice and your actions for later review. You can even use this tool in conjunction with your peer coach or administrator observations to get a more holistic view of your classroom environment.

The Swivl automatically moves to record you in your classroom, tracking a device and microphone you keep on your person. This allows you to review the words you use, student interactions you have, and your proximity in the classroom. It's an incredibly powerful tool for increasing intelligent self-reflection and helping you gather data on the goals you've set for yourself.

If you'd like to learn more about the Swivl, make an appointment with your DLS. You can book full-day appointments with the Swivl here.

LightBot

If you're looking for a friendly, accessible way to get your students to think like a programmer, LightBot is a great introductory tool. LightBot has an app version, but there's a limited browser edition put together by the folks behind Hour of Code. LightBot introduces students to concepts like functions, programs (groups of functions), and automation. No coding experience required for you or your students! Students can even print an Hour of Code certificate that they can take home and proudly display.

Google Certified Educators of White Bear Lake

Congratulations to these WBL teachers who are now Google Certified Educators!

Christine Balgord - Central	Phil Wacker - South Campus	Erin Stumo - North Campus

Heather Kay - North Campus	Jill Osborne - North Campus	Josh Lehr - North Campus

Karin Hogen - Central	Kim Lacasse - Central	Carla Jerry - Central

Ariana Lowther - Otter Lake	Hui Xu - North, South, Birch Lake	Sarah Atkins - South Campus

Kendra Herder - Central		This could be you!

Are you interested in joining this amazing group of educators? Watch for details and registration information for the next boot camp which will be coming soon.

What is the Google Educator Certification? The Google Educator Certification is designed for educators and classroom teachers who wish to demonstrate proficiency in using Google for Education tools. The Level 1 status indicates that an educator is able to successfully implement G Suite for Education into their teaching practice in order to enhance teaching and learning. The Level 2 status indicates that an educator is able to successfully integrate a wider range of Google for Education tools and other technologies in order to transform their teaching practice.

Why certify?

• The learning is practical and centered on classroom integration.
• The examination is situation based and assesses your ability to authentically utilize Google Applications in classroom settings.
• The Google Certified Educator badges validate learning.

District Policy: Digital Presence/ Communication + Google Slides Updates

What is the district policy on your digital presence and communication?

Frequent, convenient and scheduled communication, along with a consistently updated calendar, remain the essential elements of our digital presence and communication. We will continue to collaboratively review digital presence standards as we evaluate the strengths of Google Classroom, Schoology, Skyward, email updates, and new tools such as Illuminate, Seesaw, and Flipgrid.

Google Slides Updates

Google has added a bunch of new features to Slides for G Suite customers like drag & drop integration between Keep and Slides, insert ready-made diagrams, link slides between slide decks to mirror updates, skip slides during your presentation without deleting them, and reorganize the order of your slides in grid view. The biggest update is the addition of add-ons, like Pear Deck and Unsplash, that allows users to build better presentations.

Insert Diagrams or ready-to-use visualizations. 

The diagram will get added to the slide and is ready to get edited to the needs of the user. This is great for when you need to effectively share timelines, processes or hierarchies. (Click here to read more)

Link Slides

Making sure data is up to date, repeatedly copying slides from one presentation to another is a major time-sink. Now, you can link and sync slides from multiple presentations with a click. This way, you can maintain a single source of truth and easily update linked slides to match the source.

Skip Slides

Tailor presentations to different audiences with the Skip slide feature. You can now choose to skip select slides without fully deleting them when you present from your phone or laptop.

Grid view

Select Grid view to view all your slides at once as thumbnails. This helps you easily reorder or change formats of multiple slides.

Drag-and-drop integration between Keep and Slides.

What this means is that you can now just drag notes from Google Keep into your presentation, so there’s no need to type in the data manually anymore. (Click here to read more)

Google Slides Supports Add-Ons.

Pear Deck + Google Slides

In the past, you hopped between Google Slides to design your presentation and Pear Deck to add the magic of interactive questions (Pear Deck, More information, How to). It worked, but it wasn’t optimal. The developer teams from Pear Deck and Google collaborated to create an add-on for Google Slides. You will love the 100% participation and student engagement you get with Pear Deck and the freedom to make your slides to look just so.

Unsplash + Google Slides

Unsplash (link to add) is a vibrant community of creatives curating a resource of beautiful high-quality free images and photos you can download and use for any project. No attribution required. As of last week, the entire Unsplash library of high-resolution photos is now available directly in Google Slides for free use in your presentations.