DEcember 2025

Class Chromebooks
If you're interested in borrowing a Chromebook to use as a display device for your classroom board, reach out to the help desk! There have been a handful of inquiries about the internet capabilities of the new Mimio boards that are slowly being installed throughout the district. While we cannot yet go down that path for a number of security reasons, borrowing an extra Chromebook to keep in your class is a good alternative. Be sure to request an adapter as well, so that you can connect the Chromebook to your board. 

Clever QR Codes

Clever is requiring us to update and refresh our QR codes that students in kindergarten, 1st grade, and (part of) 2nd grade use to login to their Chromebooks. This change needs to happen by January 1st. You may have already heard about this from your building's CSA, but if not, be sure to reach out to them with any questions. As a related aside, students can use their QR codes at home if you have a webcam-enabled device. Go to clever.com and choose the QR code login option. This is helpful if students want to access educational resources at home that already go through Clever. 

Self-Paced PD Window is ending this month

If you have signed up to take any self-paced PDs this fall, the window to complete them ends December 29th. If you registered for them this fall but didn't complete them, you'll have to register again when they're relisted for the spring. Also be sure to apply for in-service credit before you complete the trainings. There were only three self-paced trainings available this fall but there will be more available in the spring, and they will be three hour trainings, to better fit the in-service credit 15 hour requirement. 

Connections Puzzle Generator

You may have previously heard me talk about an addictive puzzle called Connections. It is a NYT puzzle where you are given 16 words that you have to group into four groups of four words, which each group falling under some hidden category you have to determine. There are some clear and obvious connections to the practice of teaching and learning. Luckily you have access to a few free templates for creating your own custom Connections puzzles that focus on whatever you might be teaching. You can read about all that in this blog post I shared previously. However, it's still difficult to come up with an entertaining puzzle, especially if you choose to do this somewhat regularly. To help with that problem, I created a custom teacher tool on Magic School to help you plan your puzzles! I've done all the heavy lifting in terms of prompt writing to generate a good puzzle. The tool will ask you things like who your audience is and what topic you're trying to capture, as well as how "spicy" you want the puzzle to be. It will then give you plenty of suggestions, but you can continue the conversation to guide it to generate more. Here's an example puzzle I created with the help of the Connections Puzzle Generator tool. Check out this in-depth blog post and give it a try yourself! 

Resource highlight: Nearpod

Did you forget about Nearpod? Technology moves pretty fast these days, so I wouldn't blame you. Nearpod is an interactive presentation tool, that lets you bring together slides, interactive questions and activities, websites, PDFs, and more, into one lesson that students can join and participate in quickly and easily. As the teacher, you can choose a live lesson or a student-paced lesson. Live participation means you control the pace and when you move forward a slide, everyone is moved along with you. A student-paced lesson lets students progress through the lesson at their own pace. You may have experienced a Nearpod self-paced lesson recently if you've ever taken one of my self-paced PDs. Nearpod recently put out a few AI updates to their product, including the incredibly helpful AI lesson generator. If you haven't used Nearpod before, you might be wondering how you access it. Reach out to me (mneumire@cccsd.org) and I can get you set up with a Nearpod license. Check out everything I've shared about Nearpod here and don't hesitate to reach out with questions or ideas.