CoolTools 2018

This topic is great! So far I have signed up for a NYC public library card, a GoodReads school account with focus on YA fiction and a GoodReads personal account to get some recommendations for my own summer reading. I also used some of the YA lists to help with book selection. I loved the “Groups” page. I liked how teachers used it to create private reading groups for book reviews and would love to hook up with one of the groups from another country so the kids could interact. I also found the “What’s the Name of that Book?” feature handy. Another feature I passed on to our ENL, Reading and Special Education teachers is the ICDL website. It may seem like this would be too young for high school level, but many of the immigrant and refugee students who either never had formal schooling in their home country or are in Special Education programs would love using these e-books. Similarly, I sent the link to Storybird out to our English and Special Education teachers. I know they would

I played with Classroom, Docs, Drive, Slides and Forms. Previously I had some exposure to Google Docs and Google Drive, mainly revolving around sharing documents with teachers and being able to edit them back and forth. I love being able to save things to Google Drive and have access to them anywhere. In school I now use Drive to help students print. Since students don’t have access to the printer, I have them share their Docs with me and I am able to print for them. I was not as familiar with Slides and Forms. I found Slides to be close enough to Powerpoint that it was pretty easy to manipulate. I could definitely see using slides in presentations for both students and teachers. I had never thought of making the slides interactive. I liked how you could use the Snipping Tool to create matching games within Slides. Forms was very easy to use and even intuitive. I played with making a survey with it and Forms knew what type of answers fit best with the question I was asking, be it shor

Awards for new things I learned: I have done CoolTools for the past couple of years and I always look forward to this topic to find tools for both professional and personal use. I have been taking some other Online Learning PD courses about Google and just recently learned about Google Drive. I LOVE being able to get my documents from any location and share them with others easily. Best Tool I can share with students: I did not know that EasyBib had an add on for Google docs and I know my students are really going to appreciate that. Tied with: JustRead-- I am an adult and I get distracted by the advertisements. Our students have trouble enough reading without additional “drama,” the simplified “cleaner” pages are super helpful. Best Tool I shared with teachers: Super Teacher Tools  had so many fun things to try out. As a teacher I would have loved the seating chart generator and the random name generator. This time of year teachers are all looking for ways to review- the game sections

The ELLs at Edison High School are some of my favorite students with whom to work. Many of them view education as the privilege it truly is, reminding us all to be thankful for the opportunities we are given. A large portion of the articles I read seemed to be more focused on elementary suggestions. However, since some of the students have either not had formal education or have had their education interrupted, these strategies can work with the older students as well. I try to buy books that students request and also to have books about students' home countries in the library. They are very excited to show you where they have come from and I enjoy learning about their cultures.  One thing that I have struggled with is deciding how much of my collection to purchase in languages other than English. At present I have very few books in Spanish... which is our largest contingency of ENL students. However, I have just found out (after my budget was largely spent) that we will be gett

Fake news used to be easier to spot. Satire was often over so over the top, it was nearly impossible to miss. Remember SNL: Jane... you ignorant slut....? On television, or in print reliable sources were well known, "branded," if you will. Nowadays, via computer, there are so many sources that it can be overwhelming to try to verify them. In Thing 21: News Literacy, I watched the opening video, "The Problem with Fake News (and how our students can solve it") and read the article, "Truth, truthiness, triangulation: A news literacy toolkit for a 'post-truth' world." Even this much information was a lot to digest for me-- and I am an adult with a Master's Degree. I know I could definitely use the video on the 5Cs with my students and apply it to various websites. I also found the rules of thumb and news literacy vocabulary helpful, although I would pick and choose which to introduce because there were so many of them. I also enjoyed the FART,

Screen shots-- while I had used the snipping tool to take screen shots from my PC, I had no idea I could do this on my phone. (All I had to do was hold down the Power and Volume down buttons at the same time.) I did find out that Snaggy only exists as a website, not an app. The Snaggy app is a dating website to "find your next soulmate." LOL. I'm all good there... The exercise also prompted me to think about how I could use screenshots with students. I definitely would use them to give directions. I played with Pixlr on my phone a bit. I was using my husband's computer and didn't want to install Flashplayer without his permission in order to use it on the computer. I appreciated the tips on how to use Printscreen and how to scan items with my Evernote app. Later, I plan on going back to the lesson later to create my own animated gif. This lesson is fun, but there is so much to it. My husband just informed me that I've been "playing on the computer"