AACPS OIT Byte

You may have heard of The Hour of Code, a global movement by Computer Science Education Week and Code.org. The idea was to give students an introduction to coding through fun activities and videos. We hope you will participate this year for National Computer Science week, December 4-10 . Below you will find a resources and applications that we have in AACPS to facilitate an amazing coding experience. Hour of Code Activities for PreK through high school. No coding experience necessary.  Filter topics by content to find something that works for your classroom. Topics include Art, Music, AI, Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies and more! Explore the Hour of Code library directly from Classlink.  Minecraft Hour Of Code Resources for teachers and students on doing an hour of code with Microsoft’s new computer science tutorial specifically built for 2023. Microsoft recommends their tutorial for anyone age 7 and up.  New Minecraft Hour of Code at aka.ms/hourofcode R...

By Kerri Lambert, Teacher Specialist, AACPS Office of Instructional Technology As we head into Thanksgiving and the winter holiday season, teachers are looking for ways to keep students engaged in learning. Many of the activities they may implement involve research into other cultures, holiday traditions, and other seasonal project based learning activities. With this in mind, it seems the perfect time to take a closer look at our third Maryland Digital Learning Standard which focuses on students being knowledge constructors. Here is the standard: Students curate (select and evaluate) a variety of digital resources to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts to make meaningful learning experiences for themselves and others. Students: a) plan and employ effective research strategies to locate information and other resources; b) evaluate the accuracy, perspective, bias, credibility and relevance of information, media, data or other resources; c) curate (select and evaluate) info...

  On Oct 26, the Office of Instructional Technology hosted our Fall eCoach Day. Along with eCoaches, this year we also invited curriculum specialists, media specialists, Brightspace champions, and central office staff. This resulted in 163 participants learning new information about effective instructional technology integration and projects. This virtual tech conference, with a game show theme, offered a mind-blowing 36 unique sessions . Topics ranged from SEL to accessibility features to arts integration to engaging ELLs and dozens of content connections. We offered courses from 9 of our vendors including Adobe Express, Wixie, WeVideo, Typing Club, Lumio, Nearpod, and more. Lucky for us, we had curriculum specialists from various offices team up with us to present as well. The most special offerings were hosted by our AACPS teachers, with several mini-sessions being offered on special projects they do in their classrooms, along with tips and tricks. The day kicked off in Google M...