Washington Tech Tidbits

If you're interested in setting up a weekly, biweekly, or monthly meeting time with me, please fill out this form or email me with some dates and times that work best for your schedule.

As you all know, today we will be able to view a solar eclipse right here in Park Ridge, Illinois. I wanted to provide you a couple of links that might be helpful for you and your students.

EclipseLive: This is NASA's site that will provide you with several streaming videos from all over the United States. Along with this, you will find some informative links, as well as safety and preview videos.

Eclipse Smore: This is the link to the Smore, created by D64 ITCs, that provides you with several resources regarding the eclipse. It features a YouTube playlist, past data about solar eclipses, a hands-on activity to teach students about eclipses, and much more.

If you have any questions or need help setting up the live stream, let Pat or me know.

Seesaw is a student-driven digital portfolio that allows users of all ages to document and share what they are learning at school. It is a free iPad app that is available on all of our kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade, and gen ed cart iPads. Intermediate teachers, have no fear... Seesaw is fully accessible on the Chromebook through seesaw.me.

Seesaw is a learning journal that allows teachers and students to create and/or upload work to post in a private class feed. Teachers have the ability to approve all posts before they're uploaded to the feed. Parents can be invited to see their child’s posts through a different app.

Seesaw posts can be:

• photos

• videos

• drawings

• typed text

• website links

They can also be annotated with audio and drawings!

This tool can be used in all settings and with students of all ages. Please let me know if you'd like to get started! It's a great way to enhance student motivation and increase communication with parents.

On December 9, EdCamp Lake County will take place at Carmel Catholic High School in Mundelein from 8:30am-2:30pm. Click here to register.

Description from Edcamp Online: Edcamp is a form of unconference designed specifically for teachers and their needs. What makes Edcamp an unconference? Unlike traditional conferences which have schedules set months in advance by the people running the conference, Edcamp has an agenda that's created by the participants at the start of the event. Instead of one person standing in front of the room talking for an hour, people are encouraged to have discussions and hands-on sessions. Sponsors don't have their own special sessions or tables, all of the space and time are reserved for the things the people there want to talk about. People could pay hundreds of dollars to attend another conference, or they could go to Edcamp for free.