Resources and Webinars on Best Practices for Teaching with Technology

Materials examine the philosophical underpinnings and practical applications of creating and maintaining a successful digital environment and culture. An established online presence starts with creating norms, fostering connections with students, and integrated diverse teaching strategies; which will in turn promote successful online distance learning.

Google Classroom is our Learning Management System for grades 3-5. It is the "digital home" for classroom content, assignments, and interactions. Being a Google for Education product, Classroom integrates well with other Google tools including Google Docs, Slides, Forms, and Calendar. These materials will help teachers use Google Classroom effectively with students.

Schoology is the Learning Management System for grades 6-12. It is the "digital home" for class content, assignments, and grades. Schoology also offers a powerful means to communicate with students and for students to communicate with each other and their teachers. These materials will help teachers explore all that Schoology has to offer to enhance student learning experiences and class content organization.

Formative assessment is informal, ongoing, informative, based on student learning outcomes, and can be useful to students, teachers and parents. This module will explore technology tools that can be used to bring formative assessment into the classroom in unique ways. The benefits of using technology for formative assessment include the potential for increasing student engagement, ease of data collection, and the wide-variety of formats available to reach all levels of depth of learning.

Students benefit from feedback that is frequent, timely, and detailed.   This self paced guide and resources will present a number of methods to provide feedback to students digitally using rubrics, annotations, audio/video, and peer review.   Using these tools to individualize feedback will help students stay on track, personalize their learning, and build trust and connections. 

Blended Learning refers to the practice of combining online learning experiences with more traditional in-person, non-digital classroom learning experiences. The Blended Classroom can take on many different models from use of technology in the class setting to use of technology at home. These materials will provide teachers with an introduction to Blended Learning concepts and models for adoption in their own classrooms.

This guided learning experience  will provide you with the resources you need to create,  implement and share interactive, collaborative and engaging lessons. Google Workspace for Education supports students as they show their thinking, demonstrate empathy, foster and expand personalized learning experiences and, eventually, share their work with authentic audiences.

"Universal Design for Learning is a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn." (www.cast.org)

The resources linked above will take you to a series of resources put together by the Newton Public Schools Student Services Department. It includes information on UDL and technology resources to help make learning accessible for all students.

Asynchronous instruction refers to instruction that does not occur with a teacher present. While it need not exclusively involve video, video is a major component of digital asynchronous instruction. The materials in this section will provide teachers with tools, tips, and strategies for more effective use of video during asynchronous instruction periods including how to incorporation interactive components into asynchronous video activitives. Some tools for students to directly use video will also be presented.