Thursday, September 24, 2015

Class Symbaloo - New Year, New Website!

Hey-lo everybody. If you have been following me for a while you will know about my Class Symbaloo from last year that was filled with educational games. This year, I decided to make a Class Symbaloo again but I wanted to change up the purpose of my Class Symbaloo. Whereas last year it was devoted mostly to educational games, this year I use it as a repository for educational things for my students to do during Down Time.

They can choose from various educational Youtube channels, such as How Stuff Works, reading material, such as Wattpad, enrichment resources, such as Hour of Code, and book hunting resources, such as Goodreads! (Don't get me wrong, I still like the educational games but I have those linked to relevant material we are covering on their Online Textbook <--check out my last blog post about this!)


Include a Request link

One thing I recently added to my Symbaloo was a link to a Google Form I created where students can request other educational sites they are aware of that would fit in well with our Class Symbaloo. I receive daily notifications if students have added anything to that form & then I can decide whether to add or not. I didn't really introduce this to my students because I knew that if I did, I would be bombarded with requests for game after game! Instead, as some of them continue to use it day-to-day, they have started to spot the new link there & explore it! So far, I have received legitimate requests & I am enjoying this greatly.


Interested in setting one up?

Shoot me an email asking for help & I shall help you out in any way I can! If you would like to use mine as a template & go from there, go for it!

As usual, my cyberbuds, email me your comments & requests for future topics! I would also love any more suggestions for my Symbaloo, especially the Enrichment section! Subscribe here, like me on Facebook, and follow me on YouTube.

Thursday, September 17, 2015

Building an Online Textbook using Google Sheets!

Sorry I haven't posted lately but with the new position, it has been so so crazy! Things are finally starting to slow down & I just couldn't hold back from sharing this with you!

This year, I really wanted to have a digital textbook, can't stand having students  lug those giant books around when they can instead use their school device for it! The problem? Well, our curriculum for Lit & LA is 10 years outdated, therefore, the subscription is expired & I can't get access to it. My solution? I sliced up that book & scanned it in to my email!

After this I still had to wonder about how to get said PDF's to my students. I could email, but that would be redundant! So what I did was create a Google Sheet & link to any stories or resources that we would be working on. I then published this Google Sheet & shared the published link with my students on our Google Classroom & Class Symbaloo (email me about either of these if you are interested in learning more!). They then bookmarked this link! My online textbook has anything they need to access while we are working on a concept: diagrams, notes, interactive games, the stories we are reading together, etc.

Why Google Sheets?

What I love about Google Sheets over a class website is that I can put various links on my Online Textbook as soon as I have created & "hide" certain ones from the student view until I am ready for them to access said files.


UPDATE:

Check out my step-by-step video tutorial on how to set one up! As always, email me your comments, tips, or requests for future topics! Subscribe to this blog, like me on Facebook, & follow me on YouTube. Stay tuned; I'll try to start posting weekly again here soon!

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Setting up Students Blogs

This is just a really quick post for you guys, what with school starting I will be a tad busy in the upcoming weeks!

This week in class we have been setting up our classroom blogs. They will be using these blogs to tell others about what they are reading. To do this, I sent students a view only copy of this Google Slide presentation, where there are step by step directions that make setting up a blog through Blogger easy-peasy. Included in this presentation is a link to a Google Form for them to send me their URL's plus a Google Doc with the directions for their actual posts! Feel free to make a copy of the presentation & revamp it for your room! I'm all about sharing!