Digital Challenge #15 Winner for Best Caption #ipaded #wsdtech #meme

This week's winners for the digital challenge "Create the Best Caption" is Esmeralda from Orchard Middle School. Students had to caption this image (or meme this image, as the kids call it these days):

The judges liked her caption "When the song comes on that you've been waiting for" because the baby had fists clenched in excitement. It was also funny because we knew that cat could not have been singing a very good song. Esmeralda wins a bluetooth keyboard to keep and use at school and at home! 



Honorable Mentions go to Hannah from Washington Elementary and Faith from Orchard Middle School.  And here are all of the entries.

This week's digital challenge is to create the most persuasive or argumentative video.

Quizlet Collaborative Game Now Available #ipaded #quizlet

Quizlet is a great tool for doing flashcards and helping kids with academic vocabulary through games and study cards.  They recently released a beta version of a collaborative game that has some great features.  The new game can be accessed here and once a teacher logs in Quizlet will allow them to start a game and pull from the teacher's already created study sets.

Students go to quizlet.live and enter a join code and then enter their name and then Quizlet puts them into random teams to compete against each other to see which team can answer the questions first.  Two things set this Quizlet game apart from others.  One is that if a team misses a question they have to start all over.  Second, each team member only gets a certain amount of responses so one team member cannot dominate the whole game.  This is especially good if they're dispersed around the room and don't know who their teammates are.

The teacher can share their screen and show in real-time where each team is at in the race.  It's well thought out and very engaging for kids.

QR Code Scavenger Hunt #qrcodes #ipaded #wsdtech

QR Codes are a great way to get information to someone without them having to type in a lengthy URL or web site address.  At Orchard Middle School in Wenatchee the math team does a scavenger hunt for its students using codes spread throughout the building.  In order to get the next clue and eventually the prize students need to solve math equation and then decipher the riddle.  Got your Little Orphan Annie Decoder Ring?

Digital Challenge #14 Winner Stop Motion Using Google Slides #ipaded #wsdtech

Digital Challenge #14 Winner!  Congratulations to Finnley from Washington Elementary for her stop-motion animation about dogs.  She met all of the judges criteria and had a great story about dogs making friends and then convincing other dogs to make friends too!  Your prize of a movie night package is on it's way!

Digital Challenge #15 will be announced shortly.

Check it out here

Google Sharing Allows Expiration Dates #gafe #googledrive

A new feature (I think) a colleague pointed out today is pretty cool in that it allows you to share something in Google drive only for a specific timeframe.  After you choose who to share a document with a little clock appears to the right of their name that allows you to set the expiration date.  There are obviously a lot of great uses for this, for example in the classroom to limit how long students can be in a document.  Great job Google.  Keep it up!

Free & Easy Parent Teacher Conference Creation Tool #classtag

ClassTag is a great tool that's aim is to take the headache out of trying to schedule and remind parents to come to conferences.  First of all, it's free, which is always a bonus and secondly it's pretty darned easy to setup.  I was able to make a conference schedule and put in some email addresses all in about one minute.

The teacher simply indicates their availability day and time, adds parent email addresses and ClassTag does all of the heavy lifting by sending a customized initial email along with follow-up emails to keep parents in the loop.

Sunnyslope Hour of Code #hourofcode #wsdtech

Sunnyslope Elementary is hosting an Hour of Code open to all K-5 students and families in the Wenatchee School District.

Do you like playing Minecraft? How about solving puzzles? Would you like to learn more about Coding? Sunnyslope will host a Night of Code open to K-5 Wenatchee School District students and families. There will be many robotics and technology prizes from Academic Toolbox as well as the chance to win a Smartab kids Tablet. Bring your own device or borrow one of ours as we walk you through Coding games!

March 30^th  6:00-7:00PM   Sunnyslope Multi-purpose Gym

*Children need to be accompanied by an adult for this event.

English Flyer
Spanish Flyer

Add Captions to Google Drive Videos #edtech #gafe #googlevideo

I discovered a trick today after reading Gooru's blog about adding captions to Google Drive videos after they've already been uploaded to your Drive.  When you right-click on a video and choose 'View details' a window pops up on the right that contains Details and Activity.  Within the Details tab you'll see 'Caption tracks' and here's where you can upload a .srt file with your captions in it that will show up on the bottom of the video.  Instead of me explaining it all again I'll let this YouTube video do the talking.

Digital Challenge #12 Winners #ipaded #edtech #wsdtech

Congratulations to Clara from Orchard Middle School for winning this week's digital challenge. She created a very ethereal sounding song using GarageBand that put a smile on our face and left us wanting to hear more. It sounded like it could have been a song performed by Coldplay with a great piano introduction that crescendoed nicely and then tailed off to a pleasing conclusion. Nicely done. Clara received a $15 iTunes card for her prize.

Second place went to Kolby from Washington Elementary with his funky song that brought us back to the 70's. The only thing missing were the big hats, glasses and Earth, Wind & Fire t-shirts. We also liked the way his song started and ended and it kept us tapping our toes throughout. Great job, Kolby. He will receive a small prize too.

We had a lot of additional entries but they didn't follow the requirements or we were unable to open the files. Special nod goes to Austin who boldly recorded herself singing on video while using the iPad to play the instruments.

Listen to the winners here

Clara
Kolby