PowerSchool and PowerTeacher Gradebook

Conference time often brings considerable attention to PowerSchool Gradebook and we are hoping to offer some tips on using the software most effectively.  For a full tutorial of the Gradebook please click here.

1.  Launching the Gradebook

The new version of PowerTeacher Gradebook is no longer compatible with the "old launch".  Please use the "new launch" method.  Directions created by IT can be found here.

2.  The font may appear too small in the Gradebook

While this continues to be problem that we cannot fix completely, there are some things that might help:

• To make your text larger in the Gradebook, click on "View" in your toolbar, and select Zoom.    You may notice the comment box/text does not get bigger with this fix.  We have looked into this issue and it continues to be unresolved.  Because of this, we suggest using the magnifier tool.  To access the magnifier tool, you can click on the small magnifying glass at the top right of your browser.  Or, you can hold down the CTRL button and use the + and - keys.  (If you have a new laptop and haven't yet changed the default font of your computer, you will want to click here.)
• You might consider viewing your Gradebook using your projector.  While certainly not ideal, it will magnify the screen real estate enough to make comments a bit easier.

3.  Reports in Gradebook

Some teachers find it helpful to run reports for students prior to conferences. 

• Reports Tab in Gradebook: This will allow you to customize the report you'd like to run.  The steps below frame a basic report, but click here for some visuals and more detail regarding how these reports can be created.

• Make sure you've selected the correct class.

• Choose Individual Student Report

• Select Student and customize the screen for what you're looking for

• OR choose "All Enrolled" to get a report for each student

You can also run a report in the PowerSchool Portal (the screen where you take attendance) without being in Gradebook.

• Quick Look Up-This is especially quick and helpful for a parent phone call, or a student who is wondering where they are throughout the marking period.

• In the PowerSchool home screen, click on the backpack icon.  

• Select the student, and in the Select Screens dropdown menu, click on "Quick Look Up".  There you'll see grades to date, and an overall grade for the year.

Attention Seesaw Users!

Keep Seesaw in mind for sharing student work at conferences.  In addition, a few teachers had their students do a self-reflection video in Seesaw (or a separate app and uploaded to Seesaw) and the teacher will share with the parents at conference time.  Click here for an example sheet that can easily be made into an activity.  This example uses the Shadow Puppet app, but keep the Chatterpix app in mind too.

Google Tourbuilder, VPN, Snipping Tool Delay Button

Global Collaboration

For the month of October, we will focus on the "Global Collaborator" and we will focus on tools that provide students with the opportunity to engage with people and places outside of their own community. 

1.  Google Tour Builder

One of the best ways for your students to experience a new place is to take them on a virtual field trip, and Google Tour Builder is the perfect application to create your own trip that will help bring your ideas to life.  Think of Google Tour Builder as a combination of a slideshow presentation and a tour of Google Earth, allowing you to add text, images, links, and even video on one side of the presentation, coupled with a Google Earth interactive view on the other.  The software is really easy to use, which allows students to do their own presentations and share out with the class.  Check out this tutorial for the basics.

2. Benefits of the VPN

Whenever using your laptop outside of the district, please consider connecting to the VPN while working (please see a tutorial on how to connect to the VPN here.)  When you are connected to the VPN, you will be able to use any of the functions of your machine just as if you are at school, such as:

• Accessing the U: Drive
• Using Microsoft Outlook, including sending e-mails, managing your calendar, and viewing your to-do lists.
• Using the Follow Me Printers, including the ability to print the night before and release the document right when you walk in the building the next morning.

3.  Snipping on a Delay

We have talked about the snipping tool before, but a new feature of the tool includes a delay, which is handy for capturing items that require a click.  Simply click "Delay" and choose the amount of seconds you would like to wait.  Then, choose "New" and cue up what you want to capture.  The snipping tool with automatically capture the screen after the amount of time you have chosen has passed.



Office 365 Subscription E-Mails
Please ignore any e-mails you might receive regarding your Pennridge Office 365 teacher and student subscription.  Bucks County IU, whom we negotiate our subscription renewal process, is finalizing our contract with Microsoft.  Office 365 will not be interrupted or canceled during this process, so please continue to use Office 365 as you normally would.  As always please contact Chris or Erin for help or suggestions regarding Microsoft applications!

Nearpod Field Trips, Global Read Aloud, Guided Access on iPads

Global Collaboration

For the month of October, we will focus on the "Global Collaborator" and we will focus on tools that provide students with the opportunity to engage with people and places outside of their own community. 

1.  Nearpod Virtual Field Trip

Chris and I have used a few Virtual trips in Nearpod already with students this school year, and they LOVE it!  It's so simple to add a virtual field trip to an already existing Nearpod presentation, or to simply create a quick field trip within Nearpod.  There are no special Virtual Reality Glasses or anything else needed!  Maybe you'll take a trip to the setting of a book your class is reading, or perhaps to a place where a music composer or Olympic athlete grew up, a board a ship in Ketchikan, Alaska, Glacier Creek in the Rocky Mountains, or the Botanical Gardens in Florida?   The opportunities are endless and can fit into all curricular areas!

1. Log-in to Nearpod
2. Select Create
3. Choose Add Content and Select Virtual Field Trip
4. Use the Search feature to find most any location you'd like!

That's it!!!


For all other features of Nearpod, please review "Nearpod in a Nutshell" that Erin created (previously posted in September).  Log in using the code APMCT.

Week 3's Book - You Hold Me Up

2.  Global Read Aloud

If you didn't read this week's book You Hold Me Up yet, we highly recommend it, as it fits nicely into our SEL curriculum, and can easily be found on EPIC! books, too.

Please know that you can participate as much or as little as you would like, and to contact Chris or Erin if you would like to be partnered up with another classroom at Pennridge to talk about the book.  Remember to share you pictures and/or stories in this Google Drive folder!

Week 4's Book - A Day with Yayah and
Week 5's Book When we Were Alone

Next week's book is A Day with Yayah by Nicola I. Campbell, followed by the final book in the read aloud When we Were Alone by David Robertson.  It doesn't appear there are tons of resources out there for this book, but we did see one in the Seesaw Activities Library if you're interested.  

3.  Guided Access on iPads

Do you have a student or group of students that can easily get side-tracked when using the iPads?  You might want to give Guided Access a try!  Guided Access limits your iOS device to a single app and lets you control which features are available.  Follow the quick steps in Erin's tutorial here, set a passcode and time limit, and you're ready to go!

Skype in the Classroom, Global Read Aloud, Sign-out Procedures

Global Collaboration

For the month of October, we will focus on the "Global Collaborator" and we will focus on tools that provide students with the opportunity to engage with people and places outside of their own community. 

1.  Skype in the Classroom

Skype in the Classroom brings other classrooms and destinations into your classroom.  The key to Skype in the Classroom is the Microsoft Educator Community, which allows safe and curricular driven experiences to connect with your classroom.  Please find a step by step video on how to register for the Educator Community on the Pennridge Around the World website crafted by Erin, which does a fantastic job reviewing experiences that have been really successfull in the past.

After much trial and error, we have found that regular Skype works much more effectively with classroom connections.  However, it is not possible for new teachers to sign up for a regular Skype name.  In this way, we have created a Skype username for each school to use for these connections.  Chris will send out an e-mail with this login information at the start of next week.  If you have a username that has worked please feel free to keep using it!

Pennridge teachers have had some great success with two different types of connections:

• Author visits - fantastic for making connections with literature, speaking to an author allows students to ask questions about a book from the source as well as learn from a writing professional firsthand.

• Zack Bush - Made for Me
• Sarah Sullivan - Passing the Music Down
• Pat Collins - The Deer Watch
• Fiona Burdett - The Gadoomfs
• Josh Lacey - The Dragonsitter Series
• Tricia Brown - Charlie and the Blanket Toss
• Peter Raymundo - Third Grade Mermaid

• Field Trips - Skype in the Classroom allows students to visit with people from places classrooms could seldom experience before.  Although there are trips that will connect to all different subjects, these trips are especially powerful in extending the Science and Social Studies curriculum.  If you are looking for a specific topic, please let us know and we may be able to help out.


• Fossil Lake: A Trip into a Tropical Ecosystem of the Past
• History of Slavery at Monticello
• A Virtual Field Trip to Ancient Corinth, Greece
• Discover Jurassic Fossils at Dinosaur National Monument
• Connect with Ancient Civilizations through Art & Architecture
• Debating Yellowstone's Big Issues
• History Mystery Skype at the Abraham Lincoln Library

2.  Global Read Aloud

Next week's book is You Hold Me Up by Monique Gray Smith, Illustrated by Danielle Daniel.  You can see the author read the book on YouTube here and about the author note here to get a sense for how the author uses the text with students.  In addition, this book can also be found on EPIC! 
 Please know that you can participate as much or as little as you would like, and to contact Chris or Erin if you would like to be partnered up with another classroom at Pennridge to talk about the book.  Remember to share you pictures and/or stories in this Google Drive folder!

Week 4's book is A Day with Yayah by Nicola I Campbell and Julie Flett

3.  Signing Out 

With the new windows update, it is important that students use the logout button as it is pictured to the right and stay away from switching users.  When too many people are logged in, it creates a logjam of users that impacts the performance of the machine.  In addition, laptops should be shutdown when being stored.  A quick suggestion:

• Most of the time students should click on the start menu, choose the profile icon in the start menu and choose "Signout."  

• If it is at the end of the day, students click on the start menu, click the power button, and then "Shutdown."

Congrats to the many students and classrooms who completed the EPIC! Book Fall into Reading Book Challenge!

Global Collaborator

Global Collaboration

For the month of October, we will focus on the "Global Collaborator" and we will focus on tools that provide students with the opportunity to engage with people and places outside of their own community. 

Global Read Aloud continues this week

We understand that classrooms are very busy places, and we wanted to remind you that participating  in the Global Read Aloud (GRA) is optional.  We would be remiss, however, if we didn't mention this global opportunity.  Some classes will simply read and discuss one of the stories, others might read more than one, and others might finds ways to collaborate across district or perhaps globally. That is up to you!

We invite you to use this Powerpoint to share about the GRA with your students.  Feel free to edit as you see fit.  To download your own copy, choose "Download As" under the file tab.

If you are looking for a teacher-partner in the Global Read Aloud, please click here and sign up with another teacher in Pennridge.

And finally...please take pictures!
We will be making a Global Read Aloud display board for 21st Century Learning Night in May.  We want to showcase all the amazing ways we have collaborated during this wonderful opportunity.  Please send any pictures you have or a short "blurb" of what you did throughout this event here or email Erin (ereichert@pennridge.org).    And although National DOT day is not part of GRA, many classrooms across the world were reading that book, and we encourage you to share those pictures and activities as well, for a separate board!

Our displays will certainly be much more powerful with pictures from your classrooms, and perhaps even with classrooms across the world.  

Week 2: Wild Berries by Julie Flett

Week 3: You Hold Me Up by Monique Gray Smith

Updates: EPIC and Seesaw

EPIC Fall into Reading: Top Classrooms and for a live view of how many books are being read!  The competition ends tomorrow!



Seesaw Social: Finally, we hope you'll join us on Saturday for our 2nd Annual Seesaw Social!  Please let us know if you're coming by using this form!

Touch Devices in the Elementary Schools

You may not have noticed, but the new computers in the Elementary school contain a touch screen that can be bent back and used as a tablet.  In this way, there is a "tablet mode" that allows the machine to switch between using the machine as a typical laptop and using the machine as a tablet.
There are 2 ways to get the below options:
1.  Start at the right of your screen and swipe left OR
2.  Click the notifications icon (in red) at the bottom right of your screen.

Some informational pieces about this feature:

• The touch features of the screen will work as a laptop or as a tablet, so students can operate the touchscreen and keyboard interchangeably as they use the device as a laptop.
• When the screen is folded back as a tablet, it locks the keyboard, which will prevent the keys from being used unintentionally.
• The student devices often do not switch to tablet mode automatically.  To switch back and forth, click the notifications button in the lower right hand corner of the machine near the clock, and then choose the "Tablet Mode" icon.  When Tablet Mode is highlighted it will work as a tablet, and when Tablet Mode is not highlighted it will work as a laptop.

Empowering Learners with EPIC!, Global Read Aloud, and Tech Assistance

FALL into Reading

Our focus on the ISTE standards entitled Empowering Student Learning with Technology continues with September's focus, the Empowered Learner. This week's post will also tie into our October standard:  Global Collaborator

This week's focus is using EPIC books!

For those of you who may not be familiar with EPIC!, we have created a brief tutorial to help you get started.  EPIC! is the Netflix of books!  You can simply add students, and even create groups to choose specific books (collections) and levels for that particular group of students.  For the week of October 1-5, they have challenged all classrooms to log 50 books, and those classrooms will receive a certificate for each student!

October begins the Global Read Aloud

 If you'd like to know more, please click here.

Week 1:  October 1-5- My Heart Fills with Happiness by Monique Gray Smith
Lucky for us, this story is part of EPIC!  We encourage all teachers to read or listen to this book in their classrooms for this week.  You can read it whole group, or assign it to your students!

You can also have the author read it to your class with this link.

Global Collaborator: 

Once you've read the book, we encourage you to share your reading experiences with another teacher in the district.  Perhaps your classes will share via FlipGrid or Padlet?  Perhaps you'll all read the book and Skype together to discuss the book!  Please keep Chris and I in mind when planning to collaborate with another class!  Let us know if you're looking for a class to share with!

Seesaw Corner:  Week 1- My Heart Fills with Happiness- Seesaw Activity- click here!

Note:  Week 2:  October 8-12- Wild Berries by Julie Flett

The last 2 posts today are review from past posts, but are beginning of year reminders!

2.  iPad Use and Cleaning techniques

 It is very important that students close down app AND websites on the iPad when they are done using the iPads.  Most students are familiar with closing down apps by clicking the home button 2 times, and then swiping the app up and off the screen.  However, it's also important to close down any websites used, so student information, test scores, etc. is not shared.  To close down a website, you will click on the website and see 2 squares at the top right (see picture).  By clicking on them, it will show you all websites open and make it easy to "x" them out from there.

Please teach your students both techniques to "clean up" before the next class uses the iPads!

 In addition, if you are a teacher who uses iPads often, please be sure to take a look at iPad Management!  Attached here are iPad use posters you can easily print and display in your classroom!  (All of these links are also found on the Tech Integrator's website under Tutorials for Teachers).

3.  PowerTeacher Gradebook

If you are having trouble viewing your students in your gradebook, please make sure that you have selected the appropriate year and class in the top left. If you are not using Gradebook and you'd like to know more, please reach out to Chris or me.  It is an unbelievable tool, and we'd be happy to help!

Empowering Learners - Seesaw

1.  Empowering Students With Technology

Throughout this school year our blog post will be featuring technology tools that empower student learning.  A strong resource for understanding these possibilities comes to us from the International Society for Technology Education (ISTE), which has created a student centered set of standards that represent much of Pennridge's focus on technology.

This month we have focused on the "Empowered Learner".  We will focus on tools that provide student choice and voice within their classroom activities.  Check out last weeks post on Nearpod if you missed it!

This week's feature: Seesaw

Few applications empower student learning like Seesaw.  Students are encouraged to reflect upon their learning, illustrating growth as well as the challenges they have faced and overcome.  In addition, the end result is a online portfolio of their learning that really demonstrates how technology can give students the tools to grow academically, socially, and emotionally.

While we have focused on Seesaw quite a bit already, we wanted to spotlight the Activities Library, which provides fantastic ideas that are already developed for you - just make a copy and send it to your students.  You can also customize activities very easily to fit your needs.  Some examples:

I am an Empowered Learner - Although slated for 2-3 graders, this activity could be easily adjusted for goal setting at the beginning of the year.

Global Read Aloud Activities - Seesaw is a great way to introduce the Global Read Aloud Initiative in October.

• Duck! Rabbit! Reading Response - While this excellent primary lesson does focus on a specific text, the thought provoking questions could be customized to most any picture book character.  This book and many other books are available electronically through the Bucks County Library System as another resource to the fantastic libraries we have at Pennridge.
• Make Predictions About Your Book - Although focused on a specific text, this activity can be customized to fit any book.
• Reading Storyboard - A fantastic text reflection activity for any text and most age groups.

The last 2 posts today are review from past posts, but are beginning of year reminders!

2.  Moving Photos from iPad to a Computer

District management software has locked down the iPads for connecting to computers.
Please load Google Drive (found in the Self-Service app) onto the iPad that has the pictures, and open Google Drive with your Pennridge Account. You can then select all the photos and save them to your Google Drive. Next open Google Drive on your laptop and all the photos are now available to you.  Click here for a printable tutorial on how to do this!

 Click here for printable iPad Rule posters to hang in your classroom.

3.  Please be sure your students are appropriately signing-out of laptops. 

Students should click the Start Window at the bottom left and find their name at the top.  Then, students will select Sign-out.  At this time, it is very important NOT to close the lid of the laptop until the signing out process is complete.  Some students are rushing this, and therefore, the device is not successfully signing out and the device will run slower until properly signed out.