Video: The Writing Process using Google Drive

Writing is an incredibly important and marketable skill. The process of teaching and learning writing has traditionally required the use of copious amounts of paper. With Google Drive, writing can be a near paperless activity.

Click here to find the Instructional Technology Specialist serving your campus. 

Kidblog moving to a pay only model - consider Blogger

The once "kind of free" Kidblog is moving to a pay only model in September.

From the kidblog pricing page:
Beginning September 2015, free trials are active for 30 days - upgrade for unlimited access

Another free service bites the dust. The service will now cost $29 per teacher per year. This is not a huge amount but with district, campus and personal budgets stretched thin, every additional expense seems daunting.

There are other options available. Austin ISD is a Google Apps For Education (GAFE) district. GAFE provides an array of tools for staff and students to use including Blogger. If you are considering student blogs for your classroom, consider Blogger. 

Students already have accounts they can access through Google Drive.

From the AISD Cloud, launch Google Drive.

Once Google Drive has loaded, open a new tab and type blogger.com.

There are ways to set your blog to private.
In your blog settings, set both privacy options to No.

Reader access can also be restricted. 

Also is settings, the blog can be set to only allows authors to read or allow all those added.

Using group lists, such as campusname.students@grp.austinisd.org, can make the process quick.

Instructional Technology would enjoy the opportunity to help you get up to speed with Blogger.

Logging into SchoolNet for the First Time.

New Austin ISD teachers are starting to login to Schoolnet. Some are experiencing difficulty.

To avoid this, new users should set their campus as their default institution, not Austin ISD.  When the correct campus is selected, the Teacher role will auto populate.  The document below explains the process.

Paperslide Videos (updated)

After having several discussions lately with teachers about easy and highly engaging student products, I have spent a good bit of time talking about the Paperslide videos that we have shared with a good many teachers over the past few years.  We liked it so much when we first heard about it in 2011 that we posted a story about it on this blog.

Since the post was being shared so much lately, I decided to update the broken links and repost the story.  Among the fixed links would be Dr Lodge McCammon's online resources which he has also updated and made even easier to use.

Please check out our old story (with new information) to see how a very simple piece of technology can engage students quickly and get them deeper into the content you are teaching.

Paperslide Videos! Easy Way To Use Tech AND Show Learning!

Have you used paperslide videos in your classroom?  Leave a comment below with your experiences.

Google will remove "old" Google Drive interface during the week of June 29th

Google will be eliminating the "old" Drive user interface and officially dropping support for older browsers next week. This means the version of Internet Explorer installed on the district image will no longer work with Google Drive. The district installs this older version for compatibility with some older systems still in use. Instructional Technology highly recommends using Google Chrome for Google Drive. For users with a strong preference for Safari or Firefox, verify the most recent version is installed.

From Google Apps Update:
"(T)he new Google Drive UI will be fully launching to Apps customers on the Rapid release track next week. The ability to revert to the old Drive UI will be removed with this launch.

The full launch to Scheduled release customers will follow on July 7.

Please note that the new Drive UI does not work with older unsupported browsers prior to and including Chrome 23, Firefox 23, IE9 and Safari 6, so it’s important to upgrade to a supported browser to ensure continued access to Drive."