It’s May! What can we do now to simplify

the beginning of school next year? New courses will not be put in Blackboard for a few more weeks. What if you want to start sooner than that? Perhaps you have a new prep and need to get started. Or maybe you want to start from scratch. You can request a template for your course here. Then when new courses are set up, we can copy the template to your actual course.

Once this year ends, you can tweak your current courses in Blackboard to get them ready for next year. Then we can copy that over once courses are set up as well. I will send the course copy re-quest link out once we get to that point. That creates the need for some clean-up, and we can help you with that if needed. Even with the clean-up, it will save you a lot of time getting ready for the fall semester.

A little planning now can ensure a smoother start to the new school year!

May 3, 2016 Volume 4, Issue 27

Webinar: Now is the Per-fect Time for STEM! Strategies to End the Year with Fun - (May 11th) at 3:00 PM. Register here.

Webinar: 30 Apps in 60 Minutes - (May 18th) at 4:00 PM. Register here.

BL’s Web-based Work-shops and Software Training (ongoing) for BL employees on Staffulty Info Course.

Part 3: 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) #3 – Google Art Project is an online platform that lets you view high-resolution images of art from more than 400 of the world’s greatest museums, including the Tate Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and the Uffizi in Florence. In the classroom students can:

take virtual gallery tours with audio and video guidance.

zoom in on individual artwork masterpieces and discuss them in groups.

create their own virtual collections or view collections you have created that support their instruction for the day.

Students can write about images that you select as writing prompts. #4 – Build LEGO with Chrome Google has partnered with LEGO so you can build with Lego bricks using Google Maps as your baseplate in Chrome. A Google team in Australia first developed this application as an experiment in 2012, and Google has now opened it up to everybody. In the classroom students can:

build their own LEGO cities, highlighting data they have collected about their city.

build Lego versions of historical landmarks and write an essay about them.

view what others have built and discuss the various structures.

screen capture their creations to include in a digital story or video.

review digital citizenship and copyright by reading the site’s House Rules.

Pass-a-Problem: If your class incorporates

problem solving, this is an AL strategy you may con-sider using. It is great for HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Skills) and Bloom’s taxonomy. This strate-gy starts with a list of issues/problems (teacher or student generated) for a given topic. Student groups are given an envelope with an issue written on front. On a piece of paper, the group brainstorms solutions to the problem. After a set time the paper goes into the envelope and is passed to another group. The next group now lists their solutions on paper with-out looking at the first group’s ideas. The third team now gets to evaluate that two lists from the other

teams, add its own solu-tions or suggestions, and then synthesizes responses from all three groups. This team can then do the final “pass” and present their find-ings to the class.

A+ Active Learning Challenge Corner

TECHNOLOGY for TEACHING

E-PD for You and Me