February Tech Tips

 February Tech Tips

Dawn's Digital Diary: 

This digital scavenger hunt is good for grades 3-12 and is actually a lesson on Creating Google Slides.  The idea is to use this as a front loading and independent discovery lesson.  Pass out the lesson and see how much the students are able to figure out on their own. Then, provide the answer slide deck to help them learn the areas they were unsure of.  This is a great way to have students do some self exploration and often they find other nuggets of learning along the way.

Google Slide Scavenger Hunt

Google Slide Scavenger Hunt Answer Deck

Cheryl's Creative Corner:

Have you heard of Breakout EDU challenges? In a spin on the popular escape room challenge, a digital version combines: a virtual “room” (often a Google site or Google Form) filled with clues that must be figured out. A digital lock made from an online form (usually a Google form) that students try to unlock. These Digital Escape or Breakout Rooms can be done virtually as the whole class, through Zoom breakout rooms or even asynchronously. They can be purely for fun, such as celebrating a holiday or for building community and SEL. Consider also adding this as a preview or review of content area instruction. I have attached a link to a Valentine's Day Breakout EDU for Primary Grades. It will have you make a copy of the Google Form. Feel free to tweak it and make it your own, or use it as is. Want to learn how to make these fun activities from scratch? Come by my Tech Coaching Lessons, which are scheduled weekly and found on my website's main page.

Aaron's Awesome Additions

What is Naviance, and should I be using it with my students? And how do I login to Naviance?

The answer to the first question will be answered in more detail in the slide deck and video I have linked to below. But in short, Naviance is a powerful online career and college planning platform that all of our students 6th grade to 12th grade have access to. It's kind of like the old book What Color is My Parachute, combined with career and college yellow pages posted online. Secondary site teachers and admin likewise have access, but accounts for staff are created by me from scratch, they are not automatically generated like student Naviance accounts are. 

YES!!! You should absolutely be using Naviance with your students. Aside from all the career planning goodies, there are also tools for students to make SMART goals (specific, manageable, attainable, realistic and timely), something that could be useful across curriculums. 

With respect to logging in, I have good news. Both staff and student logins have been integrated with our district Google logins. So now, given that you have a Naviance account when you are logged in to a district Google account, you can simply click on the Google apps waffle and scroll down to the Naviance Staff button and login. A visual for this is in the slide deck below. Note: Students can still login to Naviance Student through Clever if that is what they are used to doing.

An Introduction to Naviance Slide Deck

Naviance - Tech Fest Spring 2021 Video

Andrew's Annex

Hey everyone! If you are a secondary teacher (grades 7 through 12) then you are most likely running Zoom sessions with your students that require students to authenticate in by logging in to Zoom with their @vacavilleusd.org email addresses. What if you have a guest speaker scheduled for your class? 

Here's a short video showing how to toggle the authentication requirement on and off for a guest speaker once you've been added to the proper group:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Djq8zuce4GRq1TPQILBvl-WlsIwQl9Sb/view?usp=sharing