Washington Tech Tidbits

Northern Illinois Computing Educators (NICE) will be hosting an informational panel, in which educators share how they use personalized learning to provide students with opportunities to reach their learning targets. Participants will also be able to personalize their own learning by exploring a variety of tools and instructional strategies. The panel discussion will take place this Thursday, April 13 from 5:00-7:00pm at Emerson Middle School. A *free* light dinner will be served. Teachers can submit this to Skyward for professional growth credit and receive CPDUs for attending.

For more information, click here. To attend, please RSVP at bit.ly/nicersvp.

With the Post-it Plus app*, users can take a photo of a series of Post-it notes from a collaboration session, then have the ability to arrange, refine, and organize the notes from a mobile device.

According to the iTunes App Store, on the Post-it Plus App, you can:

• Capture up to 50 square Post-it Notes at a time.
• Group your ideas by thought or simply organize on a grid.
• Create or edit notes in seconds—add ideas easily using the digital note features.
• Combine boards—collect and combine ideas from across multiple sessions.
• Share to your favorites—supports PowerPoint, Excel, Dropbox, PDF and more.
• Work as a team—anyone can arrange, add and build on great ideas.

Click here to learn more about this great collaboration app!

*Please note that this app is NOT installed on any of our building devices; however, I thought it was a good one to share!

Maker Month has begun at Washington School! Throughout the first two weeks of April, your students will be diving into the maker movement during their LRC times. Each maker station is related to a children's fiction book. Students have various materials to choose from, including Legos, pipe cleaners, straws, Goldie Blox, K'nex, and more, to fulfill their maker challenge. To read more about the benefits of the maker movement, check out this article. For online resources for maker kids, click here.

Washington teachers, please remember to back up your computers as soon as possible, in preparation for your new devices.

We ask that you please complete the backup by May 19!

Files and folders that exist on your desktop computer and MacBook (Desktop, Downloads, Documents, Music, etc.) must be backed up before handing in your old devices.

We highly recommend you back-up to Google Drive, which has unlimited storage and can be accessed from any device.

If you have any questions, please contact Pat or me.