AACPS OIT Byte

By: Samantha Wilkinson Did you know that we've designed activities with the intention for students to get practice with AACPS applications? They are designed to be open-ended for creativity and for all levels.  Once students click on the Student Intro to Digital Tools app, they will have a toolbar where they can select Fun Activities . Students then get to choose a path: creator, explorer, gamer, or influencer.   For the creative mindset students, we have activities designed to stretch the imagination and explore their own ideas. Activities in creating their own comics in Wixie, writing a book , creating a piece of original artwork in Adobe, and even creating a meme in WeVideo. Each option has directions and either links out to the app or tells students where to go to get started. For the curious learner , who wants to explore unknowns and learn more about the world around them, the explorer page offers a lot of options. Some activities include learning about money management...

It's the most wonderful time of the year! It is also a wonderful time for building our students' tech skills. Check out these engaging seasonal/ holiday activities that will make hearts glow and spirits bright. Lumio: A collection of featured Winter themed Lumio lessons . Some of my favorites include the giving vs. receiving argumentative essay lesson where they have to give strong evidence about which side our society demonstrates more of an importance on. For our middle schoolers, the Middle School Math Choice Board is a fabulous choice for independent practice time. The Winter Close Reading activities are fabulous if you have any piece of text for analysis and Winter Woodland Friends is super cute for our littles working on drag and drop. Nearpod: There are wonderful lessons built about the history and culture of various winter holidays that include videos, collaborate boards, draw it activities and more for elementary students. You can find   Christmas Around the World...

When I think of my list of favorite Brightspace features, I’m immediately drawn to the possibilities for enhancing student feedback. Providing digital feedback isn't just tech-savvy; it's a game-changer for accessibility, ensuring students can easily access and benefit from personalized guidance. Brightspace rubrics shifted my feedback routine to incorporate images, audio, and videos, which increased student accessibility and engagement. Instead of just suggesting a student refer back to a particular content video or resource as feedback, I love the ability to link it directly in the rubric. This is all made possible through “Insert Stuff” and “Other Insert Options” within the criterion level descriptions and initial feedback. With these buttons, users can insert images (including Bitmojis!), insert existing audio/video content from the Media Library, or even link back to Assignments, Content, and more.                         ...

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...

 By: Samantha Wilkinson We have some spectacular seasonal technology activities to use with students this October. They bring in some fun as well as build valuable tech skills that align with the Maryland Digital Learning Standards . As Lumio says, "It's not a trick- dive into our basket of treats!" They are referring to the Lumio library . Dozens of October, Halloween and monster inspired activities including a Halloween Integer Crossword, poetry collection, brain breaks, autumn mindfulness, writing prompts and more. One that I love is the Halloween diamante poem lesson. This walks students through the parts of speech, has them do a sorting activity, complete a collaborative poem, and then write their own. Perfect for teachers to practice using the various interactive presentation types in Lumio. One of my favorite resources is the Halloween channel in Discovery Education. Have you seen it? With just a quick search you can find the channel. And the best thing is that yo...