Our Digital Hays Back to School

Our Digital Hays Volume 2 Issue 1 August/September 2019

Table of Contents What’s New in Our Digital Hays? Celebrating Innovation ○ Engaging Students from day 1 ○ What’s New in Our Digital Hays? ○ Starting a Google Classroom ○ Live streaming event for parent back to school night ○ Google forms for parent information and sign up and autocrat ○ What Can My Librarian Do For Me? ○ Tech Tips Upcoming events Meet the Digital Learning Team

What’s New in Our Digital Hays? ClassLink Single Sign-on Hays CISD curriculum and instruction and technology departments have come together to approve the purchase of an amazing tool: ClassLink. ClassLink is a single sign-on solution that allows you to sign in to your dashboard and automatically be logged in to all accounts. Every student and staff member has an account. This is a game changer for preventing time wasted trying to remember passwords. Click HERE for tutorials on how to use ClassLink.

Flipgrid Interviews Syllabus & Classroom Procedures Scavenger Hunt Have you heard of Flipgrid? Flipgrid is a video discussion social learning platform that One of my personal favorites is setting up allows students and teachers to record a syllabus/classroom procedures themselves, video reply, and post multimedia scavenger hunt. Built around questions on Grids that are hosted by a teacher. and collaboration, scavenger hunts can be highly customizable for quickly and What better first day activity than having effectively re-enforcing classroom best students interview each other and post it to practices as well as energizing the Flipgrid? Grids give lots of customized important (but mundane) dates & info that options including locking access to school are necessary the first day. One of the domains only. Students will love getting to added benefits is the informal observation use this powerful tool! piece. By letting students partner up themselves for this activity, you can see More Ways to Use Flipgrid in the Classroom who their friends are, who seems to be a little more introverted, and how your 15 more resources for using Flipgrid in the students react to choice. classroom Click here for a resource. Artful Goals BOY Pre-test Goal setting is a common practice during Yeah, I know. A pre-test doesn’t sound the first day/week of school, but this is not engaging at all. But, there are ways of necessarily engaging for students. Adding shaking up the format that can also a little color and creative choice to this provide valuable feedback to students. process can help students personalize Google Forms provides one such way. these goals even further while given a With a myriad of question options, visual that can be added to, revised, or students can demonstrate their prior referred to throughout the semester/year. knowledge in a variety of different formats, Pro-tip - do this with as a class for extra all while give you data that can be used to buy-in and a model to inspire! Here’s a few assess where students are at and how to resources to get started: proceed. As an added bonus, Google Forms can also be set as a quiz providing Sketchnoting instant feedback to students. Using this More sketchnoting resources data, you can group students by skill and Mind Maps differentiate instruction effectively! Vision Boards with Google Slides*

Google Classroom has added a plethora of new features in 2019 and doesn’t look to be slowing down any time soon. If you haven’t yet put your classes on Classroom, it’s time to take the leap! Offering a wide range of options, the Digital Learning Team has created a presentation that will walk you through the basics of understanding how this can be a fully functional digital learning space for your classroom. Click the picture above to get the full presentation! Some additional resources straight from Google are linked to the right.

Click this link to access a step by step tutorial to setup/schedule your live streaming event in Youtube. The live streaming event is a great way to make events in your classroom and on campus accessible to parents who can not make it to the location in person. When you create a live streaming event, Youtube will generate a unique URL for you to share. This way, parents can view the event live, or at a later time at their convenience without missing any information. You will also continue to have access to the recording any time you need it. Works best when using a Mac, or Laptop with a built in microphone and camera.

Do you need a quick and easy way to manage parent sign up at the beginning of the year or for an event during the year? Would you like to have an immediate, automated, and personalized response sent out to someone when they fill out your form? With Google Forms and the Chrome Add-on called Autocrat, you can create this process. Once a parent fills out the form and enters their email address a personalized message can be sent to them, from you! You will also have all responses collected and organized in a Google Sheet. Below are some tips and tutorials that will help you create your own form using autocrat so you are well on your way to streamlining parent sign-up/in. Here are some useful resources where you can learn more about the Google Chrome add-on, Autocrat and how to set up your mail merge job: Link to Chrome store to download AutoCrat Link to PDF step-by-step tutorial to get started creating an Autocrat (mail merge) job Link to video tutorial for setting up a personalized mail merge using Autocrat Link to a helpful smore page that includes step by step instructions with video clips If you would like assistance with this process, please feel free to contact your friendly neighborhood digital learning coach and we can create one together!



Click HERE for a full tutorial on how to use Destiny

Upcoming Events When: Every Month We are excited to introduce a new format to #haysedchat, the “Slow Chat”! Throughout the month we will post our 4 questions and you can respond on your own time! We will be posting our first question on September 2. We are looking forward to another great year of learning together!

Tech Tips

Meet the Digital Learning Team Emily Herrin is the Director of Digital Learning for Hays CISD. This is her 12th year in Hays CISD and her 19th in education. She has taught 3rd grade, 1st and 5th grade Bilingual, as well as served as a Digital Learning Coach at a variety of campuses. Emily is passionate about personalizing learning for students, meeting Director of them where they are and pushing for excellence! Technology allows us to Digital Learning innovate in our classrooms and engage learners. Timothy Gar Timothy Garrison is a Digital Learning Coach and Online Learning Specialist for Hays CISD. He has dedicated the last 18 years to public service in the Army and Education. As an educator, he has worked as a social studies teacher, instructional coach and an assistant principal. Online Learning Tim is passionate about collaborating with educators to create a learning Digital Coach environment that supports student and teacher goals.. bit.ly/requestdlc

Digital Learning Tracy Mulligan is a veteran educator with ten years of Hays CISD Coach experience in both elementary and secondary. Tracy has a Masters in Education in Administration and Supervision and specializes in Digital Learning blended and personalized learning models. She is a Google Certified Coach Trainer and is eager to help you design learner experiences that leverage technology to differentiate instruction and meet the needs of Digital Learning every student in your classroom. Follow her on Twitter @imacmulligan. Coach Eric Rodriguez is a District Digital Learning Coach with over 17 years of educational experience in all content areas, elementary through secondary. He received his BA in Behavioral Arts and Social Sciences from Sul Ross State University in Alpine Texas, a M.S.Ed in Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment from Walden University, and is currently a PhD in Education candidate, specializing in educational technology and design. Eric is a Google Apps For Education Certified Trainer and a member of TCEA. Eric’s philosophy in educational technology is, “make learning visible”. He enjoys helping teachers and students express their thinking to an authentic audience. Follow him on Twitter: @erod129 Brandi Snead is a District Digital Learning Coach with 12 years teaching experience in the classroom. The past 2 years Brandi has successfully implemented Blended Learning into her first grade classroom at Negley Elementary and would love to share her experience with you! She just graduated with a masters from Lamar University in Educational Technology and Leadership. She is extremely excited about starting this new journey in her life and is looking forward to helping other teachers implement new tech tools and learning in their classroom. Brandi’s passion is to help plan innovation integration to help with student growth and engagement. Digital Learning Request a DLC Website

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