TED Ed: Lessons Worth Sharing

Most of us are familiar with TED talks, but do you know about TED Ed?

TED Ed is platform for educators to create lessons around TED Talks, TED Originals (other TED lessons), or any YouTube video.

It works like this:
Search through TED Ed's nearly 100,000 strong lessons, created by experts, artistically rendered by animators.  Customise the lesson to meet your needs. Share it with your students.

OR...

Have a favorite YouTube hosted video? Incorporate it into your own TED Ed video. Here is one I created to teach the Dewey Decimal Classification System.

It's not just about watching the video! Embed questions, provide links for digging deeper, and promote critical thinking by positing a question that furthers discussion.

Signing up is free, and your videos can only be viewed by people who have a direct link.

Managing iPads When a Student Needs Limits

I hope you'll find these helpful for when a student needs some limits set, whether they are reminders or new information.

Guided Access: Lock a Student into One App

Watch a brief tutorial.  Great during stations or independent work for a student who can't focus.

I HIGHLY recommend using our COW/MacBook Air Combination for the code when you set up Guided Access. This is important because if you forget the code, there is no way to look it up. The code is one we all know, so if another staff member needs to unlock the app for the student, we can do so.

iPad Restrictions: Turn off an iPad feature for a student, like Air Drop, Camera, Siri, etc. 

Watch this brief tutorial. Great for when a student is abusing a specific feature. 

Again, I HIGHLY recommend using the school padlock combination for the password/code.

Backing Up Your Computer Files

We've recently experienced some issues with our network that have left some of us worried our computer files were lost. Some of us keep losing them. Here's my take on why this happens and what you should do.

Why: 

Your computer automatically syncs anything saved to your Documents folder to the district network (unless you've changed the settings to sync differently.) When the network is slow and you have a large amount of data saved there in your files, the syncing can just "give up."

What to do:

Short version: Save any files on your computer that you'd like to keep to the Google Drive folder on your computer. Then delete everything you have saved in the Documents folder on your computer. From then on, only save things to the Google Drive folder. If you're a person who saves things to other folders, such as your Desktop, you will also want to include this in your move over to Drive.

The details: Back up your existing files to Google Drive. You can save any file type to Google Drive, including photos, videos, Word documents, etc. Click the Google Drive triangle icon in the top right of your screen, do a spotlight search through the magnifying glass icon, or open the Finder window and look on the left side.  Google Drive is a folder. (If you do not have this folder, you do not have Google Drive set up on your computer. Follow these directions from step 4 on.)

Copy your files in their existing folders and paste them into Google Drive. You will want to make sure you get those from Documents especially, but may want to do so in other locations you have things saved (Desktop, etc.)

This is also a time to purge things you really do not need anymore. The files and folders synced do still take up storage space on your computer (even though online Google Drive storage is basically unlimited since you have a Google Apps for Education account.) 

It's also an important time to think about how you want to organize these files. I would recommend organizing folders in your Google Drive first for any existing documents plus what you'd like to transfer the files to from your computer. 

Then go back to your Documents folder and delete everything after you've transferred it.

From this point forward when you save any file, click "Save As" and choose the Google Drive folder instead of Documents. You can find your folders and it acts just as any other folder. 

Tip: You'll need to make sure the Google Drive icon appears in the bar at the top of the screen when you want to save files and have them sync online with Google Drive. (This is what saves them online and is the backup.)

Ahhh, doesn't organizing feel good? And making this change now may save you lots of frustration down the road.

**Other storage options: Dropbox and Box are free cloud storage accounts you can set up.