Category: Blog

Check out EduPaths which now has 300+ FREE Professional Development courses (& FREE SCECHs) for educators.

EduPaths is a FREE professional development portal for ALL Michigan Educators. EduPaths courses are designed to expand understanding on a wide variety of topics and help educators share best practices. Courses are available online and are completely self-paced and intended to help educators personalize their own learning plan anytime and anywhere.

It is FREE to register for an account, and once registered you will be able to access an ever expanding set of FREE courses. Click the link to their November newsletter.

  Here’s a snapshot of the courses now available for SCECHs.

[This posting from Dearborn Public is worthwhile and applicable in our district too.] With the holidays fast approaching, a rise in phishing attacks is traditionally seen as well. Phishing attacks can be frustrating to deal with. The best defense is to not fall for them in the first place. Unfortunately, we are seeing phishing attacks become “better” (i.e. harder to detect) and more polished.

What Phishing Does

Phishing is an attempt to do one of two things

1. Tricking users into revealing their credentials.
2. Getting users to install malware.

Credentials

Quite frankly, your credentials are very valuable. For many of our users, district credentials lead to student information, lots of valuable district information and more. Plus, many users “reuse” passwords. So, learning a user name and password on one site can lead to the ability to log into other sites.

Protecting Against Phishing

We employ several strategies to prevent phishing attempts from ever reaching our users. However, even the best of all of these combined will not be perfect. Occasionally, phishing attempts will land in your inbox.

Tips to Identify Phishing Attempts

• Be suspicious of “odd” grammar and punctuation
• Be suspicious of “odd” wording
• You probably didn’t “win” a gift card (especially if you never entered a contest)
• Be wary and wise about contests
• Be aware of “urgent” deadlines
• Watch out for shortened URLs
• Look at where the link is actually taking you
• Carefully review the actual URL of the site that you are on

Spear Phishing

Spear phishing is targeted at specific individuals. Unlike phishing (which usually blankets a wide variety of users), spear phishing aims to trick high profile targets into giving up their credentials.

Preventing Becoming a Victim

It is important to prevent becoming a victim.

• Use the Tips to Identify above.
• Turn on 2-Step or 2-Factor Authentication (here’s how for your Google account)
• Use a Password Manager.
• Be suspicious (especially when on a mobile device).
• Instead of clicking on a link, enter the URL of a website that you want to visit (or use a known bookmark)

[Please note, the P-CCS Tech department will periodically send out training exercises or notes to help staff hone and heighten their skills to avoid falling victim to a phishing campaign.]

You can quickly create new files directly from your browser with “.new” domains for several Google products. For example, you can type “Cal.new” into your browser to create a new Google Calendar event.

The current “.new” domains are:

• Docs.new
• Sheets.new
• Slides.new
• Forms.new
• Cal.new
• Keep.new 
• Sites.new

Note, the above are not case-sensitive (Docs, dOcS and docs will all work) and you can type either the singular (doc, sheet, slide, form, site) or their plural (docs, sheets, slides, forms, sites) before the “dot” new.

Educator and author Larry Ferlazzo shared his 2019 picks of potentially useful Web 2.0 websites that are accessible, free, classroom appropriate and browser-based at his blog.  Interested educators may want to consider skimming his posting to learn a bit more about sites such as EduCandy (https://educandy.com/),  Fluent Key (https://fluentkey.com/), and FlexClip (https://www.flexclip.com/) as well as consider checking out his 2018 picks and bookmarking his site for revisit.

Slido is a polling tool that has recently launched a Google Slides add-on and a corresponding Chrome extension. With Slido installed you can create polls directly in the Google Slides editor. The poll will appear as a slide in your presentation. The poll slide includes your question and the directions for your students to respond to your poll.

When your students responds to your poll, their responses will appear on the slide. By using Slido‘s Google Slides add-on you don’t have to toggle between your presentation and a polling website in order to view poll responses.

Boclips for teachers is a subject-rich platform with ad-free content that takes a lot of stress out of showing videos in class; videos are searchable by length, age range, and topic.

It’s a pressure-free place to start looking for high-quality videos to supplement existing lessons in traditional, one-to-one, or flipped classroom models.

It’s free, so sign up and try it out by visiting https://www.boclips.com/teachers

To see a listing of their more than 120 content partners and details to explore those channels, visit https://www.boclips.com/content-partners

The leaves are starting to turn and the days are getting shorter. Grab your PSL and enroll in a free REMC Virtual Course! Here’s your opportunity to earn 10 free SCECHs without ever leaving your classroom. No substitutes, and no paperwork required.

REGISTER NOW

Seven courses are offered in November. Each course is open for three weeks and consists of two (2) one-hour “live” webinars that are recorded, available viewing later and eight (8) hours of resource review, assessment developments and written reflection. All REMC courses are open to all Michigan school personnel. There are no registration or SCECH fees.

November 2019 Course Information

November courses begin on Monday, November 4.  The deadline for registration is Friday, November 1.

• Transforming Education – Maker Movement
• Leading a Culture of Change in your School
• Introduction to Personalized & Blended Learning for All Students, Level 1
• Literacy Instruction and Technology: Foundational Elements, Level 1
• A Practical Guide to Global Success Skills in the Classroom for the 21st Century and Beyond
• OER to Support Early Literacy
• Making the Most of your Google Classroom

Courses descriptions are provided below. If you have questions or need further assistance with your course registration, please contact Erin Rommeck.

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

Transforming Education – Maker Movement
November 4 | 10 SCECHs

The popular Maker Movement encourages making and creating in the classroom.  Authors Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager write in Invent to Learn, “Maker classrooms are active classrooms. In active classrooms, one will find engaged students, often working on multiple projects simultaneously, and teachers unafraid of relinquishing their authoritarian role. The best way to activate the classroom is to make something.” As an introduction to the Maker Movement, participants will learn about the resources and techniques teachers are using to transform their classrooms and educational environments to emphasize making, inventing and creating. Participants will also learn what is available to them through each of the local REMCs. Maker Kits are available through each REMC. Also, learn how districts can purchase maker resources from the REMC SAVE project.

Leading a Culture of Change in your School
November 4 | 10 SCECHs

Explore the essential needs of Leadership and Culture. This course is designed for school, district, and teacher leaders who wish to implement a change effort in their school or schools. Leaders is a broad category and can include coaches, teachers, technology specialists, aspiring leaders, or others interested in supporting school change.  This course will focus on technology initiatives and other ideas that incorporate change.

Introduction to Personalized & Blended Learning for All Students, Level 1
November 4 | 10 SCECHs

Getting started with blended learning is simple. Lay the groundwork with effective strategies to support professional growth and applications for student learning. Study different structures for in the classroom and outside the school. Explore the different approaches and find the best methods to support students’ blended learning experience.

Literacy Instruction and Technology: Foundational Elements, Level 1
November 4 | 10 SCECHs

The course opens by providing the foundational elements of literacy development from kindergarten to high school, and the importance of teaching critical thinking skills. The literacy component provides an understanding of the developmental stages of reading and writing for elementary teachers.  For secondary educators, the literacy component provides a deeper understanding of how students may struggle with reading content.  During the second half of the course, an array of technology tools and resources will be introduced.  The instructor will hare differentiated examples of technology integration for elementary and secondary classrooms. Participants will learn how to provide critical thinking opportunities in literacy, and design a lesson integrating technology and encouraging deeper thinking for their students.

A Practical Guide to Global Success Skills in the Classroom for the 21st Century and Beyond
November 4 | 10 SCECHs

Global Success Skills (GSS) are critical to student development to ensure students can successfully navigate college and career opportunities. A 2016 survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employees (NACE) identified a high need for entry-level students and employees to have practical skills in the following areas: leadership, communication, collaboration, and problem-solving. This course provides an in-depth understanding the Global Success Skills. Learn how to apply the skills in classroom instruction and professional growth lessons. Personalize learning experience by choosing areas to explore using the tools provided in class.

OER to Support Early Literacy
November 4 | 10 SCECHs

Open Educational Resources (OER) are free, high quality, openly licensed educational tools that can be retained, reused, revised, remixed, and redistributed. Participants will learn about, explore, and implement OERs to support early literacy initiatives. These resources may include Read Aloud, Oral Language, Phonological Awareness, Letter/Sound Recognition, and Emergent Writing Tools; Tools for Enhancing Dramatic Play; Lesson, Unit, and Project Plans; Screening and Assessment Tools; Early Childhood Books in the Public Domain; Interactive Simulations and Game-based Learning Programs; Online Course Curricula and Professional Learning Programs (for teacher support); and Tools for Supporting ELL and Special Populations. Additionally, the course will build upon the Michigan Department of Education’s Essential Instructional Practices for Early Literacy.

Making the Most of Your Google Classroom
November 4 | 10 SCECHs

Google Classroom is an easy way to organize and distribute your classroom assignments. You can share documents through Classroom, and create safe, two-way conversations between you and your students. Learn all the ins and outs of Google Classroom including how to add and grade assignments, post daily warms up, add parents and guardians, and much more. Plus, we’ll show you the many ways you can integrate multiple applications into Google Classroom. (e.g., Geogebra, Discovery, Flipgrid,  edPuzzle, etc.)

We are so thrilled you found an app or extension that you believe will help your students grow! We want to help, but please keep in mind that the scale and volume of devices that we currently manage is challenging for a small department, and we need to have a process so we can make sure everything is taken care of while we comply with federal laws like COPPA and CIPA, as well as measuring an app’s value in terms of the Triple E Framework.

If you are interested in adding another iPad app to your student ipads or having a Chrome app/extension be unblocked so that your students can install it, please make sure to fill out the appropriate form linked below. Once an app is requested, the app can be delivered to the App Portal on student iPads or added to the Chrome Web Store for P-CCS on the last Friday of each month!