It’s hard to believe that the year is quickly coming to a close. It’s time to start dreaming of mountains, beaches, flip flops, turned off alarm clocks, etc. After you get back from that daydream, it might be a good idea for us to start planning for the fall just a bit to make that transition

more pleasant.

What worked well this year? What would we like to change? A good source of information is our current students. They can provide helpful feedback (and sometimes slightly painful) about what worked well for them in our classrooms. We can informally survey our students, or we can create an anonymous survey in Blackboard (create under Tests, Sur-veys, and Pools). Google Forms is another way to gather information either anonymously or named.

Possible questions:

What was your favorite part of my class? Did you learn what you hoped to learn? What improvements would be helpful? Were you able to find the information you needed in Blackboard? Was the workload manage-able? Let us know if you would like help designing a survey.

Apr. 26, 2016 Volume 4, Issue 26

Webinars: Engaging Digi-tal Citizenship - (April 28th) at 3 PM. Register here. Teachers Using Instagram in Class (April 26th) at 4 PM. Register here.

Blackboard Training Op-portunities (at BL). Click here to register and refer to Kay’s email for specifics.

BL’s Web-based Work-shops and Software Train-ing (ongoing) for BL em-ployees on Staffulty Info Course.

Part 2: Google Tools you can try. (Taken from: TCEA Newsletter: Four Lesser-Known Google

Tools You Should Try Today Diana Benner | Mar. 11, 2016 | Google Tips and Tricks)

#2 – Google Sky Google Sky is a part of Google Earth that allows you to explore space and star sys-tems. It allows you to view star systems using the best images from NASA satel-lites, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and the Hubble Telescope. Google Sky is a great way to view the planets and constellations and witness the birth of galaxies and other items in the universe. In the classroom –

Students can write poems about the stars.

Students can discuss objects in the solar system and de-scribe differences between them.

Students can create stories about the night sky.

Students can build presentations about the history of the planets.

Students can discuss the atmosphere of the Earth and how it protects life on Earth.

Students can create videos about the importance of the sun or climate change.

Value Line - This AL strategies allows students

to share their opinions quickly and visually. Create a Likert scale in your class (verbal instructions or place signs across one wall). You will ask the students to line up based on how strongly they agree or disagree with a statement you propose. According to Medina (2008) movement enhances learning, so this strategy gets the students moving and gives them a visual for remembering content. For example, a teacher could ask their students to respond to one of these state-ments (from strongly agree to strongly disagree): Classroom design leads to increased learning. Shakespeare wrote all of his own plays. Europe made the correct decision to welcome Syrian refu-

gees. Be sure to give students think time for each state-ment before allowing them to move to their “position” on the scale. Then this scale can be used to spur class discussion or, better yet, create groups of like-minded or mixed students for projects, teams, class debates, etc.

A+ Active Learning Challenge Corner

TECHNOLOGY for TEACHING

E-PD for You and Me