Tech Bytes

 Make Finding Those Videos Quick and Easy! Very often, someone sends me a link to a video and I don't take the time to organize it for easy access down the road. The solution...add it to a playlist!  If someone sends me a link to a video playlist, rather than searching for that email or document that had the link on it...  SAVE THE PLAYLIST!!!! Save yourself time and frustration...watch the video below to learn how to save a playlist and find it when you go to YouTube.  Steve

 With distance learning on our front porch, taking a look at how to set up your gradebook for distance learning will be very important.  Here is the update to IC Gradebook 2020.

  Wide Open School      One of our favorite curriculum resources, Common Sense Media.org , has new resources to help teachers navigate online learning and critical thinking skills. They have information for both teachers and parents.       Find resources to support distance learning and online teaching. These free webinars, articles, templates, and more can help you partner with families, build your virtual classroom culture, and gain confidence with remote teaching.     Wide Open School has lessons and multi-media resources for Pre-K, Grades K-2, 3-5 and 6-8 for Math, Language Arts and more!       Common Sense Media.org has always been our curriculum for Digital Citizenship and online safety. Now is a great time to explore these activities to add variety and interest to your standards-based teaching and to encourage and grow online literacy and safety skills in your students. Not to mention continuing to grow that classroom culture that is both challenging and exciting in an all digit

 Hey PSD Teachers! Just a quick helpful hint on how to connect with your Tech Coaches. First of all, remember we are TEACHERS. We are Instructional Coaches, not technician specialists or site techs. We SO look forward to working with you on how to get the most bang for your proverbial buck in regards to leveraging the technology available to meet your educational, academic, and social/emotional learning goals for your students.  We are ready to collaborate, encourage, co-teach, and coach you. So how do you get started? Visit us at palmdalesd.org/edtech When you get there, scroll down to where you see "OUR VIRTUAL MEETING CALENDARS" It will take you to a site that houses our calendars. I highly recommend you bookmark this site or add it as a link in Classlink. Ask us how when we meet. Wherever you see a silver "Open" button, that is an appointment slot you can click to reserve a time with any of us.  Also, each of us has the link to our specific calendar in our email

Click here for the blogpost  Election Lessons and Resources and Strategies for Improving Virtual Engagement      What a great opportunity! This is the perfect time to teach citizenship and important Social Studies standards.  The more students learn about their political world, the better prepared they will be for their future and ours.            This Edutopia blog post is full of great resources for the upcoming elections (K-12 lessons, games, media and other resources).  There are also  strategies for improving virtual participation.       Students need to see that what they are learning matters to them and their world!

      Data Analysis and Sim Pandemic Click the image to go to the website! "We are woefully under-preparing our students to successfully navigate the 21st century.  The mathematics we teach is rooted in the 1950s space race and offers little practical utility in the 21st century.  There is a distinct and widening gap when it comes to the skills and competencies students need in life compared to what is taught in schools." Stanford, Graduate School of Education  Youcubed.org           This is a free website, best suited for middle schoolers, to help them understand the statistics around COVID-19 predictions. It is very interactive and really highlights information they are seeing in the news.      Statistics and data analysis will be the most important aspect of Science and Math in the coming decades, not to mention addressing the Common Core Standards related to evidence and critical thinking.      Link to Pandemic Resources     Link to Sim Pandemic COVID-19 interactive simul

 Teamwork with Parents!     We all need training and clear communication...keep your parents in the loop! Share information, instructions and daily agendas with them using Google Docs and Google Slides -  crucial during distance learning.      Check out this video by Alice Keeler to review or learn the important steps to making your information "seeable" for our family members. 

Simplify and Structure your Distance Learning Make life easier for you and your students!            This high school chemistry teacher (also an ed-tech leader and TED Talk blogger) has great ideas for providing students with a daily template using Google Docs. ( It's a 7-minute video!)     His ideas can certainly be modified for different grade levels and used with Google Classroom.  Ramsey Mussallam - Cycles of Learning     Please try to make your assignments to students and communication with your parents as simple as possible. It will be simpler for you too!      Reach out to your Ed Tech Coach for ideas on how to do that. We all have too many places to click....if it's complicated for you, it is for your students and parents as well!     

Access to free online teaching resources, lesson plans, data visualizations, NGSS aligned classroom activities, live chats with scientists, and much more! Check out the California Academy of Sciences !  "Can't make it to the Academy? We offer a wide breadth of resources that can impact your teaching from afar. Whether you are looking for kits of classroom materials, lesson plans, science videos, distance learning programs, or full courses, the Academy has science teaching resources galore." -  Steve Stucky