District 109 is proud to partner with Discovery Education, which brings exciting content to life through a variety of digital tools. Because Discovery Education has so much to offer, there are many hidden gems that need some exposure! Click here to learn more about Global News, On This Day, and Virtual Events for teachers and students. Many of these features would be a great way to pique students’ interest on a range of topics and give them opportunities only available to schools partnering with Discovery Education.

Seesaw is a fantastic way for students to create a digital portfolio and independently document what they are learning in school. Through Seesaw, parents get a personalized window into their child’s learning, and students can give and receive feedback from their classmates. Check out the video below showing how much the students and staff at Walden are loving this new tool!

Creating a shortcut on an iOS device saves you time so that you don’t have to type in long email addresses that you frequently use for login purposes. This tip was hugely helpful for our K-2 teachers using iPads with their students. For the rest of you who are iPhone or iPad users, you may find this tip helpful to you too! Here’s a quick tutorial on how to do it!

Did you know that September 25th was National Comic Book Day? In honor of this underappreciated national holiday, we shared an article with District 109 staff highlighting the Top 10 Sites for Creating Digital Comics. Comics can be used in virtually any subject matter and are a fantastic way to incorporate digital storytelling into the classroom.

Do you use comics with kids? Leave a comment below to share how you used a comic-creation tool in your classroom. We would love to feature examples for other educators to see!

I completely take for granted this little skill that I use multiple times every single day: taking screenshots! If you have never taken a screenshot, I highly recommend using the Chrome extension called Awesome Screenshot. Once you give it a try, I promise you will find dozens of uses for it! Students love it too! The video below also gives a quick tutorial on how to take a screenshot on a Mac. Happy screenshooting! 🙂

When you publish something to the world, it is important to use a fair use image and give proper credit if credit is required. In District 109, we encourage our students and teachers to make publications public, so having a few sites available to gather fair use photos is extremely helpful! It’s time to ditch Google Image Search and think about some other sites that are free and fair use!

Summer is a great time to reflect, decompress, and re-energize for the upcoming school year. We hope everyone enjoys their free time while also taking advantage of a great opportunity to extend your learning just a bit during this time. Listen and watch to learn how five different members of the 109 family plan to take charge of their learning this summer!

Wonder Workshop has created “Smart Robots for Curious Minds.” These simple yet exciting little robots have made a tremendous impact on kids of all ages. Through the use of an iPad app, students are able to code the robot’s movements in a fun, accessible way! The Wonder Workshop robot, Dash, and his counterpart, Dot, teach kids basic computer programming while developing their problem-solving skills all through play.

Communication between teachers and parents is critical in order to build a strong home-school connection. With our dependence on cell phone technology, it’s no surprise that communication via text is now a reality for educators! Introducing an incredibly powerful communication tool called Remind.

Using Remind, teachers can create groups for parents and then send text message updates through the web or the Remind app. Teachers share the class sign-up code with families as a way to share updates about what’s happening in class.

In addition to sending group texts, the teacher can send personalized messages to any individual in the group and even open up a chat with the individual parent to invite a quick dialogue via text. (The parents can never text the teacher directly – don’t worry!)

As this year winds down, we encourage our teachers to consider launching Remind at Curriculum Night as a way to communicate with our students’ families.

One of the most engaging online writing apps that I have seen is called Storybird. Even the most resistant writers will take to this beautiful site that offers hundreds of illustrations to accompany students’ original stories and poems. Take a minute to watch how one of our fourth grade classrooms at Walden Elementary School is sharing their love of writing through original digital picture books created using Storybird.