Pre-writing
Graphic Organizers
Brainstorm ideas in a Google drawing embedded in a Google Document. Students will no longer tell you they lost their graphic organizer.
Record your Brainstorm
Many students brainstorms can not be captured quickly enough by typing or creating graphic organizers. A great solution for this is recording the brainstorm.
- Students can record their brainstorm and use the URL created to link in their Google Doc.
Use Voice Typing or Online Voice Recoder
Blog Post about Online Dictation
Drafting / Editing
Having different options to draft a writing piece allows students to choose a tool that works for them. Using multiple editing strategies that are collaborative in nature help give the student a larger audience and purpose for their writing.
Publishing / Evaluating
Publishing is no longer just a written piece. Images, links, videos, timelines, audio are all media that help tell the story. Students ability to use multiple types of media to tell their story empowers them to choose the media that best leverages their viewpoint and style to get their story told.
The list of tools under publishing is not intended to be a checklist that all students need to be exposed to, rather it is a list of options to get you to start thinking of media as an essential part of the story/paper rather than an optional piece to add.
Terms of Service
Please note that the Board of Education approved a revision to the LPS PolicyJS: Student use of the Internet to accommodate use of Web 2.0 web sites that have age requirements in their terms of service. This policy revision resolves the potential issue of students being "under-age" to use sites like Prezi, Wikispaces and others; students can use them in Littleton Public Schools.
The problem has been that when someone creates an account (www.prezi.com), the person creating the account has to acknowledge being of a certain age... usually over 13, but in the case of Prezi, over 17... to create the account that enables use of the site. Some teachers have raised concerns about telling students to ignore this requirement both on a legal basis and on an ethical basis. Even if the legality might be too small to be concerned, what are we teaching our kids if we tell them to ignore a company's terms of service?
The policy revision solves this problem. When any account created using an LPS email address, such accounts are now considered to belong to LPS, not the student. We can take over any LPS email address and reset the password of any account (with Prezi to stay with our example), thus taking control of it. This moves the accounts into the same status as a locker in a school.
Accordingly, the terms of service are being made with the district, not the student, even if the student is doing the actual account setup. Terms apply to the district, not the child, and therefore we are not in conflict with the law or the company's policy.
One caveat: if a teacher is directing students to create such accounts using their own, personal email accounts, then the policy is not covering that usage. Since all students grades 4-12 have their Google Email accounts (lpsk12.org), teachers should require students to use their LPS assigned email for creation of such systems to cover everyone involved.
The policy is linked here. Please also note that staff are directed to limit the personal information supplied to these types of accounts (keep it to a minimum to protect identifies).
Additional Teacher Resources
Teaching Channel: This video library has subjects for grades K-12. The videos also include information on alignment with Common Core State Standards and ancillary material for teachers to use in their own classrooms.