Waffle Bytes

From Christine Schneider, K-12 Education Specialist at the Michigan e-Library Some news from the Michigan eLibrary! Please share. MeL ( http://mel.org/ ) went live with a soft launch of a redesigned homepage (codename: Pigeon) at the tail end of 2017. The changes were a direct result of usability testing performed over the winter of 2016 and summer of 2017. Here are the highlights of the redesign: 1. MelCat : The only search on the MeL.org homepage is the "new" MeLCat search. Have no fear, Classic MeLCat is still alive and well but now the new MeLCat search is on the MeL homepage. (MeLCat is our statewide shared catalog system where you can borrow material from any of 450 Michigan public libraries and pick up/drop off at your local participating library.) 2. Database Searches : Searching the available databases for Articles and E-resources can now be accomplished from the Databases page. Were you ever curious about the most popular topics among the databases?...

Here are a couple of FREE professional development opportunities for educators from REMC 12E in the next couple weeks - eResources to Add to Your Classroom Toolbox We are excited to have Christine Schneider, K-12 Education Specialist for the Michigan eLibrary, leading us in a 2 1/2 hour session on all the changes that have been taking place in MeL! Date : January 13, 2017 Time : 12:30-3:00pm Where : Calhoun Intermediate School District (Gifford Schultz Building - Marshall) Cost : FREE Register at CISD's Professional Development Registration Portal Christine will be taking us into: accessing and using the subscription databases provided by the State of Michigan to all Michigan residents through MeL targeted preK-5 resources such as Scholastic BookFlix, Britannica School and WorldBook for Kids targeted grades 6-12 resources that include Research in Context, Gale Virtual Reference Library, and Health & Wellness Center.   She will be covering many of the spe...

In honor of World Space Week, I encourage you to check out NASA Education.  NASA has developed quite a useful site for educators!  From the site : "As the United States begins the second century of flight, the Nation must maintain its commitment to excellence in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education to ensure that the next generation of Americans can accept the full measure of their roles and responsibilities in shaping the future.... NASA will continue to pursue three major education goals: -- Strengthening NASA and the Nation's future workforce -- Attracting and retaining students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, disciplines -- Engaging Americans in NASA's mission" Some of the items you will find on this site: Subscription to a weekly email with education opportunities Lesson plans & teaching materials searchable by keyword, subject and grade level Links to other useful materials, including NAS...

Just found out about this! A FREE Webinar from Office Depot - Watson for Education April 28, 2016, 4:00 - 5:00 PM EST     Join a free presentation led by Kevin Baird, Chairman and National Supervising Faculty, Center for College and Career Readiness; and Kathy Brooks, Principal K-12 Technology Consultant, Office Depot. Learning in a Cognitive Era and the advancement of self-learning computing technology defines the cutting edge of EdTech.  In this session, we recap the comments made by IBM’s education team at SXSWedu, as they look forward to an era of Cognitive Computing in Schools.  In the second half of the session, Office Depot’s team provides a first-look into the new Office Depot / IBM Personalized Learning Solution.   We’re proud to be convening these education thought leaders and know you’ll find each session to be enlightening and enjoyable. We hope you’ll join us.

#CISD Inspire Workshops on Relevant topics that involve Education & Technology Our next #CISD Inspire workshop will be May 19 on the topic of educational records.   This workshop will focus on many aspects of educational records - what they are, the laws about them, and protection & retention practices.  One portion of the workshop will be a refresher on FERPA.  We encourage REMC12E districts to send a team to this workshop as this topic impacts so many district roles. For more information, please refer to this flyer .  This workshop is free for educators from REMC12E School Districts (in Branch and Calhoun counties).

From the Michigan Department of Education - Each fall, Project Tomorrow, an internationally recognized education nonprofit organization, facilitates the  Speak Up Research Project  – and we would like to invite you to learn more about how your school and district can participate this year.   Speak Up 2015 is the best way for education leaders to learn about the views and ideas of K-12 students, parents and teachers regarding digital learning, workplace skill development, STEM education and professional development.  It is easy to participate in Speak Up – there are no fees or costs – everything is 100% free.  Last year over 521,000 K-12 students, parents and educators completed a Speak Up survey.  And 8,200 schools and 2,600 districts received free reports with their local data plus national findings for comparatives. Why use instructional funds for data collection when Speak Up is already available to every K-12 school and district?...

The EdTech Rally team has settled on a group name - METS (Michigan Educational Technology Specialists) and has planned a fall EdTech Rally. Date : October 1 Time : 9am - 3pm Location : Eaton RESA (1790 Packard Hwy Charlotte, MI 48813) Audience : The meeting is open to any K-16 Michigan educator who supports other educators with instructional technology and wants to collaborate with others who have related roles (either full, part time or extra duty). You do not need to have an official title... Please visit the Smore Flyer for more information & to register.

From our Discovery Education Representative - "Discovery Education, in partnership with the Alcoa Foundation, will be hosting a LIVE virtual field trip from Whitehall, MI’s Alcoa Power and Propulsion to Celebrate Manufacturing Day on October 2.  More details including the link to register can be found below.  Please share!  This event will be also archived on Discovery Education Streaming, along with all of our other virtual field trips from the past, webinars, etc. here:  http://www.discoveryeducation. com/Events/#/archived" Manufacture Your Future Live from Alcoa Power and Propulsion Whitehall, MI Monday, October 2, 2015 at 1:00 PM EST Discovery Education and Alcoa Foundation are back to celebrate Manufacturing Day with a LIVE Virtual Field Trip on October 2 from Alcoa Power and Propulsion in Whitehall, Michigan . Students will be transported inside one of the most sophisticated manufacturing facilities in the world to learn about key...

From Discovery Education - Discovering a Sense of Place - Taking Learning to New Heights September 23 - October 1 The GLOBE Program, GLOBE AFRICA, Colorado's St. Vrain Valley School District and Discovery Education are proud partners in a scientific and learning expedition to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. About the Hike Embarking on the expedition will be 10 students, 12 educators, and 4 scientists representing Nigeria, Oman, South Africa, Tanzania, and the United States. This international team will attempt to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, one of the world's Seven Summits, and the tallest mountain on the African continent. Follow along as they explore the incredible terrain of the mountain as well as the culture and surrounding wildlife. Each day, the team will submit a blog post on blog.discoveryeducation.com that will capture their unique perspective on the journey through the eyes of the students, teachers and scientists. Learning Objectives From the...

CUE Rock Star Teacher Camp Saugatuck hosted by MACUL Saugatuck Middle School July 7th to the 9th f rom 9-4 daily.  This isn't a just a tech camp, but three high energy days about putting great teaching first and then enhancing it with technology. It's also an experience where the faculty doesn't present, but facilitates and ensures the attendees are the "rock stars". Last year's event was a huge success and feedback was extremely positive from attendees. The overarching theme from teachers was that they had never experienced PD like that before.  1/6 of last year's group presented at this year's MACUL conference, many for the first time ever. This is proof that the camp's goal of launching new educational leaders is indeed being realized and helping to grow new teacher-leaders across Michigan and the Midwest. You don't have to be looking to become the next great edtech guru though, just looking to energize your teaching...

A colleague of mine - Justin Cowen - from the UP created this resource for educators in his area giving the M-Step on Chromebooks.  If your district is using Chromebooks for the M-Step, you might share this with teachers and those that are helping provide technical support during the test. M-Step Troubleshooting Guide - by Justin Cowen

The following is from Pynya Mishra of Michigan State University's School of Education.  His team created the T-Pack tech integration model. From him - We need your help in completing a relatively short research survey about 21st century skills. We ( Punya  Mishra, Rohit Mehta, and Danah Henriksen) have been gathering data to help us better understand what education professionals such as current/future educators, faculty, and education graduate students, think about 21st century skills.  This short survey will take approximately 10 minutes of your time to complete. It will provide essential information regarding the challenges faced by educators in the 21st century and the knowledge/skills needed to face these challenges. If you start, please do take the time to finish, as your responses are extremely valuable to us. The survey should not take more than 8-12 minutes. Your responses will be confidential and fully anonymous. Click on th...

  November 10, 2014 | 9:30 AM EST (Archive available at 1:00 PM EST) Discovery Education is proud to support Veterans Day with a unique, global perspective on honoring veterans. Join us on Monday, November 10 at 9:30 AM EST for our first ever live global virtual field trip from the historic Tower of London, United Kingdom. An archive of the event will be available for viewing from 1:00 PM EST. Remembrance Day is a national day of tribute in the United Kingdom that is observed on November 11. It serves to honor members of the armed forces who have died in the line of duty. Transport your students across the globe to participate in this 30-minute virtual tour. Our British guides will bring us into the Tower of London and the moat to teach students about the history of Remembrance Day, the significance of the poppy as a symbol of remembrance, and the historical importance of the war that started 100 years ago. Remember World War I and pay tribute to ve...

MiFlip 2015 3rd Annual MI Flipped Learning Conference We would like to welcome Steelcase Education as a new sponsor of the conference, along with TechSmith! When : Saturday January 10, 2015 Where :  Steelcase University Learning Center Cost : FREE This year’s theme is Blended Learning. The Keynote will be given by Mr. David Tebo Superintendent of Hamilton Community Schools.  Get a chance to talk with Flipped Classroom Published Authors: Brian Bennett, Karl Lindgren-Streicher, Dave Prindle & Delia Bush. Reservations and tickets can be made at Eventbrite . Watch the miflipteaching site and Twitter feed for more information.

Join the largest learning event in history Dec 8-14, 2014 Last year, 40,000 teachers led a grassroots effort called the Hour of Code – to introduce ten million students to one hour of computer science. Kids of all ages tried one hour of writing code and making apps in classrooms, and they loved it.  This year, supported by over 100 organizations, they want to reach 100 million students, across every country in the world, during Computer Science Education Week ( Dec 8 – 14 ). http://hourofcode.com/us From the site -  What is Hour of Code?   The Hour of Code is a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify code and show that anybody can learn the basics. Check out the tutorials , and look out for new ones coming for the Hour of Code 2014. Anybody can host an Hour of Code anytime, but the grassroots campaign goal is for tens of millions of students to try an Hour of Code during December 8-14, 2014, in celebration of Compute...

Google Forms has been getting a little Google love.  Some of you have been asking about them, so I thought I would make sure to cover some that you might find useful. A quick down & dirty one that teachers have been requesting for a long time has been added to the top of your form options - ability to randomize your form questions. Now you can have your questions in a random order so that when giving it to a classroom of students all at the same time you can decrease the odds of them giving collaborative answers.  Note that if you use pages to organize your questions, the questions are shuffled on each page.  And, this is an all or nothing features - you cannot choose which pages of your form (quiz) are shuffled and which aren't.  Why do I bring that up?  Two examples - if you ask for student identifiers they would each need to be the only question on a page to keep it from being shuffled with other questions if you provide a graphic which is follo...

One of my Google Accounts has access to the "new" look of Drive.  There are several key differences that are worth noting if you are changing over!  Here are 5 of the ones I think will impact people the most. 1. New Look with Breadcrumb trail - the look of drive has been updated (new fonts, shadowing of window, etc), but the best part about it is the addition of a breadcrumb trail so you can see where you actually are if you use nested folders.   2. Adding files - this has been reordered a bit so it is more noticeable that you can actually upload files into your Drive.  Also, the three most use choices pop right up, the remainder fall under a "More" choice.  This can be slightly annoying for those that use some of the "More" options often. 3. Change from "Shared with Me" to "Incoming" - strictly a naming change; when people share documents with you, they now go into a folder called "Incoming."  (I think it ...

A very recent update has been the option of how documents are shared with others.  In addition to a new look, there is another choice. As for the look, some of the verbiage has changed, an icon is different, and users have the option of easily changing between the different options that are available for them.  There is an icon of a pencil in the upper left corner of the document (on the end of the toolbar) that can be selected now.  Clicking on this gives the options of Editing, Suggesting and Viewing the document - Any that you as the user are unable to use will be grayed out.  Formally there was not the ability to change between views - you either had editing rights, or the top of the document said "View only." What do each of these look like? Well... there isn't much actually difference in how the document looks in the editing and viewing options and they function the same as they did previously: It is the new option of Suggesting that is the real...

Join us on November 12 th  to  Elevate Learning & Leadership !   The West Michigan Education Leadership conference held at Kent ISD is an opportunity for area leaders to gather together to share and learn. The first leadership conference was held last fall and there were over 150 leaders throughout the region in attendance. This conference allows educators to learn from one another and to share strategies and programs that are demonstrating success. There are so many amazing things happening locally, we need  a  venue to collaborate. This years sessions include: Dream Big with School Improvement - Barb Johnson, Karla Hill and Kari Anama (Byron Center) Pillars of Digital Leadership - Dr. David Britten (Godfrey-Lee) “SI SE PUEDE” Latino Students can Succeed in School - Dr. Manuel Brenes (San Juan Diego Academy) Growing Your Own PLN - David Simpson (Forest Hills) Rockford Action Model for Success (RAMS): Strategic Planning Process - Dr. Mike Shib...

From Discovery Education - tour of the National Archives Register Today  for Of the People: Constitution Day 2014 September 17 at 1PM ET On  September 17 at 1:00PM ET , virtually transport students to Washington, D.C. for a tour of the National Archives and an up close look at the Constitution  with U.S. National Archivist  David Ferriero . Register to view the 30-  minute Live Stream: Constitution Day provides a great opportunity for classrooms across the country to learn about the document, as well as the National Archives. Students will take a short tour of the National Archives, learn about their document collection, and how historians are actively using primary source documents in their research. Students will also learn about the Constitution through a document analysis strategy that reinforces the skills needed to read, write, and think like a scholar. Hosts David Ferriero Archivist of the United States Additional...