Attention Coaches- You need Remind in your life.

Remind: Teachers and coaches, you need this in your life.

Remind, formally known as Remind 101, is a fantastic tool for teachers and coaches who need to communicate with students outside of the school day. Check out my video, below, for instructions and a demonstration on how to get started. 

Please let Jackie or Elizabeth know if you have any questions. 

Have a great day!

From Your Friendly Librarians

Amaze yourself with Emaze - Hit the play button below to see my blog on this tool (expand to full screen to see it better)

Online Posters and Presentations with Canva

Canva

   Canva is an online graphic design program that allows anyone to create beautiful posters, social media banners, and advertisements. While Canva does have some images, layouts, and backgrounds that cost $1, many of the images are free. The templates make it easy for users to create products that will fit the dimensions and style they want. One great thing about Canva is that it allows users to sign in with Google (see below). 

Once logged in, you simply select a design template from the list or create a design using your own measurements.

After your design is complete, just click Download and choose the file type you want. You can select to download a PDF version, or an image file. 

As always, if you'd like help with Canva or anything else, please come to the library!

-Your Friendly Librarians

Pear Deck

You may have heard something about Pear Deck since we have been talking about it lately, so I was surprised to realize that we hadn't done a blog post about it yet!  Pear Deck is an interactive slide presentation tool that can be used to engage and formatively assess students throughout your lesson. You can create your presentation within Pear Deck or upload a PowerPoint presentation, Google Slides or a PDF (note that you have a limited number of these uploads with the free version).  The picture below shows what your presentation edit screen looks like. In the middle is the projector view that students will see projected during class, on the right is the screen that students will see on their devices as you go through the presentation. You can have the same content on the student screen and the teacher screen for some slides, but then add questions, drawings or other interactive features for students on other slides.  Once you click "Start Presenting" students will access Pear Deck with a quick join code (or with the premium version it will be in their Google classroom).  

Why use Pear Deck?  

Pear Deck offers instant feedback for teachers so they can see whether or not students are understanding a lesson and can adjust the lesson appropriately.  It gives students more of a chance to be active during class presentations and thereby, helps keep them more engaged in the lesson. Teachers often struggle with having only a few students responding to discussion questions and this tool offers opportunities for all students to respond and be heard.  I read an article a few weeks ago about how Pear Deck is a good for introverted students because they don't have the pressure to raise their hand to respond to teacher questions, they can stay in their comfort zone and still express their ideas.  After students have responded, you can project their responses anonymously, which allows you to give a public voice to those quieter students who might not otherwise want to share their opinions aloud.  

Pear Deck is also a great tool for a student who doesn't always think through their responses before speaking in class. With a think-Pear-share strategy, students can think first, then respond to a question or prompt in Pear Deck and then orally share their responses. The traditional think-pair-share model is effective at getting more quantity and quality of student participation, though again, you don't always hear from each student. With Pear Deck, you see all the student responses in Pear Deck so you know what all students are thinking and can assess their understanding of your lesson.

Getting Started

Please see us in the library if you would like assistance getting started using Pear Deck. If you are interested, we still have a few premium Pear Deck subscriptions available as well.

Here is a link to many resources for Pear Deck to help you get started and learn about the features.

Short video about Pear Deck:

Stay Organized with Google Keep

Stay Organized with Google Keep

First of all, let me say that Google Keep is awesome, and I cannot believe we haven't blogged about it yet. I hope you will love it as much as I do :-)

Google Keep was created for people like me who LOVE to make lists. Google Keep (unlike the sticky notes on your desktop, and desk, and floor, etc) can go with you everywhere, making it the perfect place to keep your lists and notes for home and school. 

Google Keep can be used on your computer and phone, and syncs automatically when you open it. Not only does it allow for use on-the-go, all notes placed in Keep can be individually shared with anyone with a Google account. Personally, I use this feature for sharing grocery lists with my husband, to-do lists with my coaching team, and daily tasks in the library with Elizabeth. It is so convenient. Each note can also be color coordinated to allow to find what you are looking for faster. 

The final feature I'd like to highlight is the reminders feature. Each note can be given reminder settings that will, much like your Outlook calendar, send you reminder to complete the items on the list. These can be one-time reminders, or like our Weekly Library Task List Note, weekly reminders. 

All in all, Google Keep is a fantastic tool that I think everyone will love. That's all for now. Have a great week!

                                                                   Google Keep Site

-Your Friendly Librarians

Storyboard That

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Macbeth (partial) Storyboard  

                 

                               Storyboard (partial) of the French Revolution

Storyboard (partial) Of Mice and Men

StoryboardThat engages students in digital storytelling for many different academic purposes. StoryboardThat provides you (and your students) with free three frame and six frame storyboards. Every scene can be customized in hundreds of different ways from scenes to characters to text. Have you ever assigned a video project to students only to have the end result fall flat? StoryboardThat can help students plan their video projects effectively for better end results.  StoryboardThat can help ELA students map out stories, themes of stories or show character development. It could be used to show revolutions and explain concepts in any subject.  Here is a link to teacher ideas for using StoryboardThat (scroll down to see different subjects). As always, see us in the library for assistance with using this tool in your classroom!

Link to instructions for using StoryboardThat (for teachers and students).

Tutorial Video for StoryboardThat: 

Digital Book Talks and FREE AUDIO BOOKS FOR THE SUMMER

Hello from the library!

Digital Book Talks:

This past week, I sent out a document containing 10 digital book talks for you to share with your students. If you missed that email, here's the link again.

We are going to try sending out one of the documents each week to help promote some of the awesome ebooks we have purchased for the students. I hope you find this helpful. If you have any recommendations or requests, please email me (Jackie). Thanks!

There will be another set of Digital Book Talks coming your way soon. Stay tuned!

FREE AUDIO BOOKS:

People who know me know that I LOVE coupons, the clearance section, and any way to save some money, so when I heard that everyone can get two FREE audio books each week for the entire summer, I had to check it out.

Sync YA provided two, high-quality audio books every week from May 5th- August 17th. These audio books are themed pairs of high-interest titles with the occasional classic YA title thrown in to rekindle interest in that book. This year's titles can be found here.

The best thing about these free books is that there are NO strings attached. They don't try to sell you anything, they just want people listening to these great books. If you would like to sign up, go to http://www.audiobooksync.com/ and sign up to receive the email or text message updates. That way you will never miss out on these free audio books! (See the graphic below)

The only thing you will need to take advantage of this awesome offer is an OverDrive (which everyone has through Fargo Public Schools- the login is your normal computer login). You can also choose to put the free OverDrive app on your phone to listen on-the-go.

Once we get closer to May, I will send out more instructions and a reminder about this awesome resource. I'd also love to share this with your students. Please contact Jackie or Elizabeth if you'd like us to come and help your students get set up with the OverDrive app and these free audio books.

Have a great week!

Your Friendly Librarians 

NoRedInk- Grammar Practice and Assessment

NoRedInk is an online grammar and writing program that allows teacher to track their students' progress. This is a free program for teachers that makes grammar and writing instruction more fun by incorporating the students' favorite characters into the lessons. Teachers can assign lessons and quizzes or allow students to practice on their own. 

To make an account, follow the instructions below:

1. Go to www.noredink.com/

2. Click Sign Up

3. Select "I'm a Teacher"

4. Select "Sign up with Google"

5. Once you have your account set up, add your first class and manage your students.

6. Once all of your students have been added, they can take the diagnostic test and you can start assigning lessons and practice. Explore the "View as Student" option to learn more.

As always, if you have any questions or would like help with this or any tech tool, 

please see Jackie or Elizabeth. We are here to help!

-Your Friendly Librarians

Smore

Follow this link to go to the full Smore explanation (if scroll bar isn't working)

Piktochart

Link to Piktochart Instructions

Vocaroo- Voice Recorder

Vocaroo Voice Recorder

Vocaroo is a simple, online voice recorder that allows you and your students to record audio. After the recording has been made, Vocaroo allows you to save the files as a mp3 or share via a link. These links can be emailed out or turned in via a Google Form (Check out our recent blog post on Google Forms if you'd like to try that option).

The home page is easy to navigate with a simple "Click to Record" button. 

  

For a step by step walk through of Vocaroo, check out these instructions, watch our video (below) or stop into the library. We are always happy to help!

Have a great week!

-Your Friendly Librarians

New Features in Google Forms

New Features in Google Forms

Google Forms has rolled out some new features along with a brand new look. Watch the video for a step-by-step tutorial on the new options for your classroom.

Some highlights include:

• Response summaries
• Adding videos and images to questions
• A cleaner looking dashboard

As always, please see the library team if you would like assistance with this or any other technology tool in your classrooms. We are here to help! Have a great day :-)

-Your Friendly Librarians 

Triventy: A Quiz Game Tool that allows Collaboration

If you like using Kahoot to review information, Triventy is a similar tool that adds an element of collaboration. Both Kahoot and Triventy are free tools where you can create fun quiz games to play with your classes. The advantage of Triventy is that you can have students collaborate to create quiz questions. You can invite students to add questions to your quiz via Gmail. Once the invitees create an account and follow your link, they can add questions to your quiz. You could assign groups of students to different areas of content and they could create review questions for your quiz over that material. In this way, Triventy offers students an opportunity to be more involved in reviewing the information and take more ownership in the review. When the "invitees" (your students) are adding questions, they do not see the questions from the other invitees. That way, the questions from the other students remain hidden until you actually play the quiz game.

Want to give your students a grade for their quiz questions?  Every time a question is displayed in the quiz game, the name of the person who created the question will be shown on the screen. Therefore, you have some accountability in who has created each question. Of course, as the creator/administrator of the quiz game, you always have access to see, edit and delete all quiz questions in advance of playing the game so you can screen them for content and appropriateness. For more information about how to use Triventy, see the video below or see us in the library.