Padlet - Online Collaboration Board

Continuing with the technology implementation ideas, here's one that Ann Hahn reminded me of this morning called Padlet (www.padlet.com). Padlet allows for you to have multiple users post to a "Wall" and everybody can then view the post. You can easily post text, links, images, videos, etc. to this.

To see a working one in action, see below. In fact, please contribute to the conversation as well if you get a chance.  Just double click below and a field should open up. Otherwise, here's the link to the padlet wall: http://padlet.com/wall/a3wz4nrhzh Thanks.

Matt Landry

Created with Padlet

Updating Staff Profile Page

Today's video shows you how to update the information on your staff profile page that is linked to the www.spartaschools.org website. Please take the time to update any information that has changed AND check your links to other pages to ensure that they are still active. If you have any questions, please let Stacey, Todd, Paul O, or myself at the high school or Gretchen or Pat at the middle school know.

Accessing School Files From Home - Remote Desktop Connection

Finally, you can retrieve the school files that you forgot to put on your flash drive or cloud and bring home with you.

All computers should have a feature called "Remote Desktop Connection" which will allow you to access files from another computer, assuming you have permission and login credentials to do so. This three minute video will walk you through the process. If you prefer written instructions, please click here for those.

Using Facebook & Twitter as an Educational Resource

I apologize ahead of time, but I'm going to hop on my soap box and let it fly.

 If you are not already on Facebook, you should consider doing so for the educational pieces you can find on there. Susan told me about a page on there that I can't repeat due to the f*bomb in the title, and that got me going with this last semester.

 With the need to incorporate more science reading in our classes, there are a ton of science related facebook and twitter pages out there. Some of my favorites include "Science is Awesome", "The Biology Space", "Greenhill AP biology", "Bozeman Science", "Edutopia", and "Science is a Verb" and on Twitter "OMG Facts". Anyway, these pages post science articles and journal links regularly that we can then use in our classes. Better yet, I've setup individual pages for all of my classes and repost many of the articles and monitor how often my followers check them out (which varies based on the class). I'm still posting these to my biology and AP biology pages this summer and find that as many as 20 students click the link I post each time (this number is typically higher when school is in session).

So, there's a great resource out there that we don't typically think about using as an educational resource, but maybe we should. For those of us that already have personal accounts, consider setting up a new account that you use for school only (at least that's what I did). If worried about personal interactions, then don't accept any friend requests and you will be in the clear. Also, this is a great way to better communicate with your students and parents. Finally, you can connect your blog to Facebook and Twitter so students will know when you've posted something new to the blog (I use twitterfeed).

 I have much more to say, but I'll shut up at this point. If you want any help with this, please let me know.

Importing classes from Powerschool to Examview Manager

Check out the following video to learn how to run a report in Powerschool that you can then turn into a class on ExamView Manager. You can also find written instructions on the U: in the ExamView folder. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at matt.landry@spartaschools.org