May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) History month. This month was chosen in honor of the first immigration of Japanese Americans to the USA, and the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad by Chinese immigrants. It is important to take time to share with your students the untold stories of the Asian American and Pacific Islanders that have enriched America’s history and culture, and their continuing contributions.

The Asian Pacific American Heritage Month website has resources for teachers to use instructionally that include primary sources, online events, collections, and exhibits. Bring awareness of social justice issues to your classroom and understand current events that are impacting Asian Americans, or read President Biden’s Proclamation for AANHPI History month. 

Parlay

For hybrid and online instruction, student-to-student discussions can be a challenge. A new tool called Parlay may be able to help. It allows teachers to set up discussion rooms for students that are either synchronous or asynchronous, and allow students to chat in a teacher-monitored room to communicate and collaborate on their work.

Free accounts are not time-limited and allow for 12 discussion boards at the same time.

Jamboard

Did you know that you can assign Jamboards to students in Google Classroom? Using the Add -> Google Drive tool in Classroom assignments you can add a template Jamboard that you have previously created, and "Make a copy for each student" to provide each student their own interactive whiteboard to work on.

This has great potential use for:

Working through math problems; completing scientific diagrams and formulae; annotating and highlighting text; or any other activity where students would benefit from showing their thinking.

SAMR-ize it and have students record a Loom screencast as they work, to talk through their thinking.

Wakelet

Do you love Pinterest and wish that something like it existed for schools? You're going to love Wakelet. It is a content curation tool for teachers and students to easily create "idea boards" around a topic. The boards can contain various rich content, such as: links to websites, images, uploaded documents, and text notes.

And, just like Pinterest, it's social and collaborative. See what other educators are collecting on their boards, or collaborate with your colleagues on bringing all your great ideas into one place.

On Windows PCs

You may see an orange dot on the Windows logo in the bottom-left of your screen. This is an indication that an update is ready to install. When you click "Power" from the Start Menu to shut down/restart your machine, you will see extra options to "Update and shut down" and "Update and restart." Be sure to click either one of these to keep your PC up-to-date.

On the Chrome browser 

In the top-right of your web browser, where you normally see the three-dot menu, you may occasionally see it replaced with a notice to "Update". This will turn orange, and then red, depending on how long your browser has been out-of-date.

On Chromebooks

When a new update is ready, you will see a pop-up notification to update your device. This will stay in the notification area until you have restarted and updated your Chromebook.