Finishing Up

Yesterday I spent 5 hours finishing up my work on our school-wide grading system Engrade.  I deleted the final group of seniors, made sure all names were typed the same, and added the new group of sixth graders.  It was tedious work, but I'm glad it is done.

Today, I spent two hours finishing up the Internet Safety lesson for the beginning of the year.  This will be presented to all students during the first week of school.  These 2 hours finished up my required 30 hours.

However, in the next few weeks, I know I will be setting up the computer lab, helping other staff with their setup, and other various work.

QR Codes

I spent an hour figuring out how to make QR codes for all of our staff this year. For those of you who do not know, QR codes are the bar codes that can be scanned with a smart phone.  This year for open house, all of our staff will have a sign outside their door with their own individual QR code.  Parents will be able to scan it and get their teacher's information stored instantly.  I did some research and decided to use this site to create the QR codes.  I plan on finishing these tomorrow. 

Data, Data, Data

I spent 5 hours updating our Grade Portal Engrade today.  It can be very finicky, so what seemed simple at first turned out to be a very long enduring task.  I went through and made sure all names were typed the same and that all student ID's were correct.  I also finished deleting the seniors who graduated this past spring. 

Digital Citizenship

Thursday I met for half hour with my principal and discussed some technology needs for the fall.  The one she asked me to tackle while we are waiting for the school to finish being cleaned (fingers crossed that we reopen tomorrow) is a lesson on digital citizenship/Internet safety.  So I discussed some ideas with our tech coach.  He said it should be a lesson that we can use this year for all grades and then next year with the 6th grade and new students.  We decided that we would create another lesson that could be added on to the curriculum next year.  He also said he wanted it to be something that the 2 of us could present to all grades to make sure that a uniform front is presented.  Money is limited so he told me to utilize free resources or make resources as much as possible. 

So, this weekend I have been researching and working on this task. I have spent 2 hours working and have found a TON of great resources.  I will share two of them with you here. 

• Digital Passport
• If I taught elementary or even just middle school, I would totally be using this resource.  It is in Beta stage, but is really neat.  You create accounts for students who then can log in and go through learning modules based on different lessons (online chatting, privacy, searching, creating work, etc.).  The lessons include videos and games that  help the students learn.  The students earn badges toward their passport.  
• Common Sense Media 
• Since our school is 6-12, however, I think this option will be much more suitable.  The lessons are all available online for free or you can purchase them on a jumpdrive.  Each lesson comes with a printable lesson plan, activity sheets, videos, assessments, and more.  The lessons estimate in time from 45 minutes to 1 hour so they are perfect for an assembly with our students.

The two lessons I am deciding  between are Digital Life 101 (Click here to go to that lesson).  It is supposed to be for grades 6-8, but when I looked through the lesson it is easily adaptable for 6-12.  It is a general introduction to digital life and focuses on the responsibility that comes with using technology. 

The second lesson I am looking at is along similar lines, With Power Comes Responsibility (Click here to go to that lesson).  Both lessons look like great tools that I can adapt to our needs. 

So my goal tomorrow is to decide between the two lessons, adapt any parts that need to change and/or create anything that needs to be made, and email it to my administrator and tech coach for approval. 

Meeting

This morning I got to sit in on a planning meeting with administrators and the leadership team.  I spent 2 hours discussing the mission and vision statement and how technology integrated into both of these guiding documents.  We talked about our limitations in the technology department and how regardless of this, we could implement the importance of technological skills in an ever-changing, global world.  I felt really good about how we put technology as an important part of our belief statements. 

Surveys

Today I spent 2 1/2 hours working on a survey for our administrator.  I met her at school this morning to receive all of the documents and get her specific directions.  Then, later today I created the actual survey and tested it.  I was going to use Google Docs to create a form, but our school districts filter always is really iffy with Google Docs.  My administrator suggested SurveyMonkey which I have used in some of my other classes.  I started out using SurveyMonkey, only to learn that it only allows you to create up to ten questions for free.  So I did some more research and decided to go with Kwik survey because its format was similar to SurveyMonkey.  I cannot share the survey with you because it is for our school improvement plan and locked with each staff members email.  My principal had mentioned limiting the number of responses, but I told her that I could set it up to only allow those with the email address I provided to take the survey.  So as soon as she sends me the list, I will be adding the staff.  It was tedious, but I learned the pros and cons of "free" and creating online surveys. 

Engrade

This week I have spent 5 hours upgrading our school-wide grading system called Engrade.  I have been given the task to go through and make sure that new students were added and that seniors were deleted.  That is what I have been doing.  I have a student roster with student name and ID number.  I went through and deleted seniors.  And began to add the 6th graders.  My goal for the rest of the week is to finish the 6th graders and then delete duplicate accounts.  We are hoping that this will make Engrade better for everyone by having a universal system for each name and ID.  This should make printing progress reports easier and remedy the duplicates that existed in the past.