September Tech Connect

As everyone settles back into the rhythm of the school year, September brings a fresh wave of focus, routine, and new learning. Whether you’re gearing up for classroom tech integration, streaming your daily routines, or exploring new digital tools for the season ahead, this issue is packed with resources to help you step into autumn with confidence. We have several opportinties for webinars provided by NCDPI as well!

OpenAI offers a dedicated ChatGPT for Teachers initiative that provides free, full-featured access to verified U.S. K–12 educators, staff, and administrators through June 2028.

Designed specifically for school environments, this plan creates a secure workspace equipped with education-grade privacy settings and FERPA alignment, ensuring user interactions are not used to train OpenAI's models by default. Teachers gain access to advanced features—including search, file uploads, image generation, and custom prompt templates—to streamline lesson planning and administrative prep.

Customizing Google Chrome transforms your browser into a personalized command center built around how you actually teach. Adding key teacher extensions like screen recorders, web annotators, and grading assistants lets you handle admin tasks in half the time. Ultimately, tailoring your digital workspace cuts down on classroom downtime, keeps you organized, and leaves you with more energy to focus on your students.

Providing audio and video feedback is one of the most effective ways to make Tier 2 interventions and individual student supports feel personal, accessible, and manageable. Written comments can be overwhelming for struggling readers or English Language Learners, but audio and video bridge that gap by adding tone, clarity, and visual cues.

1. Audio Feedback with Mote

Mote is a Chrome extension that integrates directly into Google Docs, Slides, Classroom, and Canvas. Instead of typing out lengthy comments, you click the Mote icon to record a short voice note (usually 30–60 seconds) directly inside the student's assignment.

• Why it works for Tier 2/3: Students click play to hear your actual voice guiding them through a correction. It cuts down on decoding frustration and includes automatic speech-to-text transcription for additional visual reinforcement.

• Best use case: Direct oral feedback on writing drafts, reading fluency notes, or daily behavior check-ins.
  
  

2. Video Screen Walkthroughs with Loom

Loom allows you to record your screen and microphone while showing your face in a small corner bubble. You can talk through a student’s work on-screen while using on-screen drawing tools to highlight specific areas.

• Why it works for Tier 2/3: It provides dual-coding (visual plus auditory instruction). A student struggling with multi-step math problems can rewatch a 90-second video of you walking through their specific mistake as many times as they need.

• Best use case: Targeted math correction, step-by-step navigation guides for assistive technology, or individualized reteaching for absent students.

To keep this strategy simple:

• Don't record everything: Limit voice and video feedback to key target goals for Tier 2 and Tier 3 intervention groups rather than whole-class grading.

• Keep it short: Aim for 30 to 90 seconds per recording—focused, micro-feedback yields the best results without consuming your planning time.

Google Authenticator works like a secret-handshake generator, using something called a TOTP (which stands for Time-Based One-Time Password). When you first set up an account, your phone and the website share a hidden secret code. After that, your phone takes that secret code, checks the current time, and uses a math equation to create a new 6-digit code every 30-60 seconds. Because your phone only needs the secret code and its built-in clock, it works anywhere—even without Wi-Fi or phone service!

It is also much safer to use the app on a phone than on your computer screen. If your web browser breaks or is not functioning properly, you could lose all your codes. Keeping your secret codes on a separate phone keeps your accounts locked tight!

These are apps that have been approved for use in Davidson County Schools and are housed in our DCS App Library.

Google has waived the standard exam fees for both Level 1 and Level 2 Certified Educator certifications, making the process completely free for teachers.

If you are unfamiliar with these credentials, they are designed to help teachers master digital tools and integrate them directly into learning. Level 1 focuses on setting up a solid digital foundation—covering the core Google Workspace tools like Docs, Drive, Classroom, and Forms to help streamline grading, lessen paperwork, and organize lessons. Level 2 takes your skills a step further into advanced integration, showing you how to leverage interactive tools, analyze student data faster, and build rich, collaborative learning environments.

Beyond saving time in your daily workflow, earning these certifications is a great way to validate your tech skills, boost your resume, and earn professional development credits. You can complete the self-paced preparation courses and take the exams directly on the Google for Education Learning Center platform whenever you have time.

The External Implementation Guide is a repository for all North Carolina Standard Course of Study (NCSOS) stakeholders. This repository provides a variety of resources for supporting administrators, educators, and parents during the implementation of the current Standard Course of Study for each content area. The range of resources offers users an opportunity to determine their own specific needs and find materials that suit them.

This Canvas repository can be accessed with or without a Canvas account. Browse through resources to help you learn, plan, instruct, review, and inform yourself or others. Click the button below to learn more about the External Implementation Guide.

Sue Tobin - suetobin@davidson.k12.nc.us

Allyson Medlin - amedlin@davidson.k12.nc.us

Libby Moretz - libbymoretz@davidson.k12.nc.us

Listed below are the schools that each of us serve - please feel free to reach out to us!

This edition was developed with the assistance of Google Gemini (Version 3.6 Flash). AI was used to brainstorm and refine ideas, as well as create images. Final pedagogical oversight and editing were performed by the DCS Digital Learning Team.