3B Provide instruction in and promote the use of digital tools for teaching, collaboration, and communication with students, parents, peers, and community members; and

3B Provide instruction in and promote the use of digital tools for teaching, collaboration, and communication with students, parents, peers, and community members; and

I created a google site for our Blue Team meetings two years ago as a way to connect team members which included, teachers, paraprofessionals and a librarian.However, many of the staff did not engage and welcome the change from email or paper copies of notes stuffed in mailboxes to a digital presence. Since I was just one member of 10 and many paraprofessionals did not seem to have time to access computers on a daily basis, my attempts to digitize team meetings fell apart.

This year in our new Lebanon Middle School, grades 5-8 are in one school. Teachers in the upper grades of 7 & 8, used Powerschool for grading daily. We completed attendance, input our grades and assignments into Powerschool and added comments to be run with the grades as progress reports. The lower grades of 5 & 6 had never used Powerschool in this way. I created a screencast and shared it with the other reading teachers so they could understand the way to input grades and also found other video/screencasts to assist them in learning Powerschool.

My Screencast of Powerschool Instruction for some teachers new to Powerschool

Additionally, I located a youtube training videocast from Powerschool to assist teachers in setting up the weights and values for their grade categories. Sometimes, finding the best resource might be located on the web and can  easily be shared. Powerschool Weights and Gradebook setup-Youtube

Teachers who were able to view both screencasts felt more empowered and were  able to use  this information to create their powerschool  portal page. Time  restraints necessitated  using this alternate digital format utilizing screencasting tools personally as well as finding suitable instructional tools from youtube.

I use digital tools on a daily basis with my students. I model, give them the opportunities to use computers, ipads, apps, google docs, their lebapps accounts, on a daily basis.