Sixth Grade Farewell

The MSES community came together today to celebrate and wish our sixth graders good luck at GMS. The sixth graders performed a song and we all enjoyed video created by Mr. Carew. Check out the video below.

Digital Education

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

MSS Tech Happenings

MSS Technology  

in March

 

We spend the cold month of March learning new technology skills that student can use across the curriculum. Sixth grade students are in the process of making short videos. They used a program called Storyboard That to create a brief internet safety story. Then they work in groups to record the video. They will begin editing soon. Second and 3rd graders have been learning new word processing skill and 4th grade just completed presenting their PowerPoint projects. Our 5th graders have been designing brochures using The Print Shop. We should complete the brochure in a week. Look for them in the kid's backpacks. They are coming out great.

Collect Data Quickly and Easily with Google Forms

There are a number of great educational uses for Google Forms. You can conduct parent/student surveys, make self correcting worksheets that provide instant feedback, use then use data collected to inform instruction and maybe use them as part of a flipped classroom.  The forms are easy to create and can be saved and modified for future use. Check out the tutorial. This is just intended as an introduction. I'll be adding additional tutorials later on how to format spreadsheets for a quick item analysis and the roll forms can play in flipping instruction. Please let me know what you think.

Google Ad-Ons Add Power and Flexability

Google Docs and Sheets just took a big step forward.  Many user like the idea of using Docs and Sheets but miss some of the flexibility and power that they have are accustom to in other applications. Well things are changing.  Google just launched Add-Ons.  Theses new tools can be easily added and provide users with a new set of tools.  Add-ons may be new but are expected to grow over time. Check out the short video below for a quick overview that shows how easy these new tools are to use.


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Skitch Screen Capture

Do you ever need to share content from a website but you worry that the site may get updated or that there maybe some distractions on the page? If so,  Skitch is a great tool to solve these problems. Skitch is a free app that can be downloaded from the App Store or Google Play. Once downloaded you can easily capture an image of your screen, annotated it and then share it. Check out the video below to see how easy this is.


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Future Directors

Learning how to tell a story using a variety of tools is very important skill. Sixth graders started the video making process today.  They will be creating short videos that will help teach younger students how to be safe while online. We reviewed some sample videos and discussed some video basics. Now we are creating storyboards using a web tool called Storyboard That. The boards look great! I can't wait to see them when they are done. Kids can log on to the site to work their boards from home or use the tool for any other classes.