All Teachers Are Literacy Teachers

The more I research, the more I am convinced that helping our students become more literate is the key to unlocking their future success.  Below are a few articles that illustrate how important it is for all teachers, regardless of grade level and content area, to teach our students how to read increasingly more complex text as they progress through school.
In this high school, reading and writing happens in every class, even math and chemistry
Nonfiction Reading Improved but Still Short of College Readiness Levels

OETC 2016 Here We Come!

Ohio's largest edtech conference of the year, the OETC, is right around the corner and I am super-pumped to be a presenter on Thursday, February 11th.  My session is entitled "Must Have Google Add-on Apps for Speedy Grading".  As a district, we have decided to send four people from each building.  Educators who are part of the Blended Learning Crew, or BLC, have first dibs, but please contact me for more info if you are interested in attending!

Say "Hello" to the Blended Learning Crew

The Blended Learning Crew, or BLC.  Alas, another committee denoted with an acronym involving a whole other series of meetings.  Yes, I know what you're thinking.  However, this one, first formed last year and being comprised of educators from each building, has made tremendous strides in providing direction for teachers in our endeavor to use technology to promote personalized learning. Here is our recently adopted mission statement:  

The Blended Learning Crew provides support for teachers to embrace technology for maximized personalized learning with the realization that students will need to be fluent in its processes and applications for career and college readiness.

Thus far, the BLC has completely revamped the district's Blended Learning Policy to make it a usable document for teachers, outlining technology-integrating procedures and evaluation tools for digital resources.  It is now posted on our district staff page.  Of course, the ongoing challenge then is how can we efficiently communicate all that we are doing and are working towards to each other?  Still working on that one, but this is a first attempt.

Kicking Off Computer Science Week with an Hour of Code

Happy Computer Science Education Week!

Q:  Why celebrate computer science education week with our students?

A:  By 2020, an estimated one million computer programming jobs in the U.S. will go unfilled,  according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Today Exploring Computer Science student, Aaron Gross, helped Mrs. Molenaar's 7th grade math students celebrate the opening of Computer Science Education Week.  Aaron led and assisted the students in an Hour of Code through code.org.  Students solved a minimum of 15 puzzles using commands common to computer programming in a gaming-like platform with characters from Minecraft, Star Wars, and Frozen.  For more information and resources to expose your K-12 students to an Hour of Code,  check out the following sites (arranged in order of youngest students to oldest ones).

Kodable https://www.kodable.com/hour-of-code

Tynker https://www.tynker.com/hour-of-code/

Code.org https://code.org/

Khan Academy https://www.khanacademy.org/hourofcode

Codecademy https://www.codecademy.com/hour-of-code

Do things that scare you to grow

I just finished my first webinar via Hangouts on Air today and was just a tad bit nervous knowing that educators from all over Ohio and who knows elsewhere may have been viewing my presentation live. Even  technology coaches are not immune to the anxiety of exploring new technological territories, and unlike the many screencasts I've taken (over and over again), there were no re-dos for this one. The good news is . . . . I survived.  I posted it below - it's all about accessibility tools, most of them Chrome extensions.  Special thanks to Eric Curts of SPARCC who arranged the Hangout on Air (HOA) and Carrie Rathsack, moderator of this webinar and the leader of TILO (Technology Integration Leaders of Ohio).

Sailor Learning Nov15

Here is the first monthly episode of our "Sailor Learning" series.  Check out how we are developing forever learners!  Thank you teachers!

Hour of Code Week Dec. 7 - Dec. 11!

Teachers and students across the nation will be participating in an Hour of Code during the week of December 7th.  Let me know if you would like me or one of my high school coding students to lead your class in an hour of code.  jbengele@sailornet.org

https://code.org/learn

Voice Typing & Kaizena Add-On App in gDocs

Tech Time November 24

Star Wars in the Classroom

    Yes, the Star Wars craze has now even permeated the education realm. However, this site has some amazing ideas that will give your students a deeper appreciation of a concept by linking it to similar themes in the series.  For example, I investigated the "Democracy versus Dictatorship" lesson and was impressed with how the movie clips and discussion questions will get students thinking about our own government.  Also, there are Star Wars books written in Shakespearean?  I don't know if I would purchase them even if I were an English teacher, but how fun would it be to have students take a movie or book that they're crazy about and have them write it the way Shakespeare would have hundreds of years ago?  This site will definitely have you and your students delving deeper into the universe for answers.

http://www.starwarsintheclassroom.com/content/index.asp

2 Chrome Extensions for Reading

Tech Time 11/20/15

Chrome extensions are apps that work in concert with your browser to perform a specific task.  Two that will help our struggling readers are Readability and SpeakIt.  Watch this week's tech time to learn more.

Technology is a Tool

The image below says everything.  
"Technology is a tool, not a learning outcome." - Bill Ferriter
Read more . . . http://www.teachingquality.org/content/blogs/bill-ferriter/technology-tool-not-learning-outcome

Our students, our future

     How do you know that you've just attended an outstanding professional development?  Your brain hurts from thinking, both deeply from your own beliefs and viewpoints being either challenged or validated, and also from generating ideas from the information you've collected as a participant.
Today I attended a leadership meeting led by Dr. Bill Daggett and Eric Sheninger, and both renowned educational leaders gave me plenty to ponder.

Here are some brief snippets of what I witnessed today:

Zaption - Make videos interactive & collect student data!

After working with our 2nd graders on their individual online math lessons, it has become clear to me that learning coins and their monetary value is a confusing process.  So, I thought I would demo this cool tool, called Zaption, by creating a coin 'tour' for our future bankers, financial investors, and of course, consumers.
http://zapt.io/t8edt4fk
This took me less than 10 minutes to create and you can share the link with anyone - no login required!

Reading Apps

Today, I spent some time with a few of our high school students installing and exploring some neat accessibility apps that make reading go smoother and faster.  There are literally dozens of apps that manipulate your browser when you are using Chrome.  These are called extensions and are found in the chrome web store. Students can install the Chrome browser from self-service and are then able to install their own extensions on their laptops.  Here are a few that make reading online easier:
Readability
SpeakIt
We also investigated the Spriztlet bookmark which uses eye-tracking research to make reading faster.  When you create a Spritz account, you are able to vary the number of words per minute from 40wpm all the up to 1000wpm!  

Linking Email Accounts

How to forward your sailornet emails to your vermilionschools email.

Join Vermilion Teachers

Tech Time Session #2 Join our Google+ Community!

TechTime 3: Forms Summary of Responses

Another reason why Google Forms are ideal for assessments.  Show a graphic summary of responses with a click of a button!

Whooo's Reading Program

Whooo's Reading is a writing and reading program offered by Learn2Earn.  It provides free reading questions, tracking, and single-class fundraising based on time students spend reading!
https://www.learn2earn.org/whooos_reading?normal_nav=true

Tech Time with Jen
1st video publication 10/22/15

NWEA Resources for Instructional Materials Based on RIT Data

Here are a few NWEA resources that will allow you to quickly access instructional materials that have been aligned to RIT scores:

MAP to KHAN (for Math)

RIT-to-Resource (all subjects, grade 2 & up)

Lexile Levels of Books

Join the Vermilion Teachers G+ Community!

Keep current on the latest tools by joining our Vermilion Teachers G+ Community.  Simply access your G+ account, select communities, and search Vermilion Teachers.  You can even receive automatic updates when new info is posted.