We are continuing our series of tool updates. If you missed our previous post, click here and here. As a Microsoft district, I am focusing on Microsoft tools and Teams is up next. Teams, as a tool, was integral during our Remote learning time but it had some growing pains. I think sometimes Microsoft rushes tools out there for Education (EDU). Teams were originally created pre-remote learning for businesses to have a place to collaborate. While we had access to…
The first thing that you might not realize is that Flipgrid is no longer called Flipgrid, it’s been shortened to Flip! This was announced during the Flipgrid’s yearly celebration. With the announcement of the name change, Flip has a fresh look and a new mascot called Smubble. At the celebration, the Flip team focused on how over the last decade, users of Flipgrid pushed the product to become better. To them, it made the most sense to refresh the product…
Every year I review the updates to several of the Microsoft tools that are commonly used. This week I am focusing on PowerPoint. Before we get into the latest updates let’s take a brief look at the history of this powerful program. History A quick search into the archives of Microsoft shows that PowerPoint was created at some point in 1987 by a company that was not Microsoft. The company that created PowerPoint is called Forethought, INC and Microsoft bought…
We have come to the end the of the Blended Learning series. In this post we will look at ways that you can start to integrate Blended Learning strategies into your classroom. Before we get into the how, let’s look at our definition of Blended Learning. Blended learning is a teaching approach that blends both digital and in-person teaching methods. When it comes to this teaching approach let’s look at things that you are most likely already do in your classroom….
This week I am bringing you an incredibly special episode. Over the summer I met Karen Toro and Courtney Ciras from Alice B. Beal Elementary School. During the summer, as teachers, we can really develop new practices in a low-pressure environment. This also means that we get to try new things. With close to 25 years teaching experience combined and Karen coming up through the Springfield School system, these two were ready to try something new! This is where Courtney…
Today, we are diving into the different ways a teacher can run a blended learning classroom. A quick recap of our last post. We discussed how blended learning can be beneficial to the way you run your classroom and I pointed out three ways that blended learning can work for you based on the description I got from teachers that I have been working with. Recap: Blended learning is a teaching approach that blends both digital and in-person teaching methods. Blended…
This week’s podcast we interviewed Denise Cote, a Middle School English Teacher from Springfield’s Conservatory of the Arts. Mike and Denise talked all about the use of technology in the district for the last 17 years! During the interview you will learn how Denise first adopted technology in her classrooms and how that technology continues to enhance her teaching. Denise has also been a proponent of Professional Development and has taken on the 22 Tools Challenge head on. When the…
As I sit back and reflect on the past two years of education, my mind began to think about aspects of remote and hybrid learning that worked and aspects that could be improved upon. For most of us reading this blog post school is in person; we might be tempted to go back to 2019 and run our classroom pre-Covid. I believe that would be a mistake, since there was a lot of great learning that took place and for…
Welcome to the start of a new school year. For the first episode of the year we spoke with Sarah DeFeo. This interview was recorded near the end of last year and we thought it would be a great way to start this year. Sarah teaches at White Street Elementary School and has been there for the last eight years. Sarah came to teaching 2nd grade as a career change. Throughout the interview we discussed how technology has been used…
Summer was way too short! I still hold out that summer is here until the end of the Big E (The biggest fair in all of New England), even though we are back in school. We’ve had an exciting summer around here at Digital Learning and Assessment (DLA) and we can’t wait for the school year to begin. We hope that all the changes that we have made over the summer help you all use technology more efficiently. Over the…