A stand-out webtool among standards-based grading platforms is a free online program called Kiddom (click for my review). Kiddom is designed to help teachers curate individual learning experiences with pages that are visual and easy-to-understand, and enable teachers to quickly determine student progress and where remediation is needed.

While it offers many appealing pieces (homework assignment and grading, easy communication, and built-in metrics), one unique to Kiddom is their robust K-12 content library. Designed to offer lessons, videos, lectures, quizzes, and more that differentiate for individual students, its real power is making the resources of the most respected names in edtech available with one click. This includes:

• ABCYa.com
• CK-12
• Desmos
• Everfi
• Flocabulary
• IXL Learning
• Khan Academy
• Learn Zillion
• Newsela
• PBS Learning Media
• Quill.org
• Rocket Lit

The library is searchable by topic with preview features for selections.

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There’s a lot of chatter about PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) on educator forums I participate in. I don’t have direct experience with it so I jumped at the chance to share Middle School teacher Karessa Parish’s experiences. In this article, she explains what PBIS is, lessons learned rolling it out, and a tool called Hero that helped make it happen in her school:

Studies show that students need a ratio of about five positive interactions to every negative. Up until a year and a half ago, our campus had this ratio all wrong. It seemed like we were giving five negatives for every positive. Our teachers were spending more time on a small percentage of the students who were having trouble or who were making trouble. We were spending 80 percent of our time focusing on 20 percent of our students, who were the ones with behavior issues. But that means 80 percent of our students were excellent and weren’t getting the recognition that they deserve. The result was that the vast majority of our students — students who were doing the right thing — were getting little positive attention from our faculty. We decided to refocus our attention to be intentional in recognizing positive everyday occurrences that had been overlooked for too long and we picked Hero to help us do this.

We wanted to flip the culture at our school. We had two objectives when we created our Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) program and started using Hero:

1. Motivate the students who weren’t following expectations
2. Celebrate the kids who were doing what they were supposed to be doing

Hero helps teachers and administrators monitor all forms of student behavior, both good and bad. Using any web browser or an Android or iOS device, teachers and administrators can capture student behavior where and when it happens, keep accurate attendance records, and assign warnings and consequences (or rewards for positive behavior) automatically. We have customized the software with specific behaviors, incentives, and interventions. Our students can track how many points they have accumulated through the Hero app, and they can redeem their points in the school store. We have a variety of incentives ranging from mystery brown bags with three or four trinkets in them to earbuds and t-shirts. We also host parties like student vs. teacher basketball games, Powder Puff games and time on the athletic field with snow cones. These parties are hosted every six weeks that students can use their Hero points to attend.

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In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: #13–The Powerful Right Mouse Button

Category: Hardware

Q:  What’s a fast way to access menus?

A:  Yes, and you’ll love it. If your mouse has both a left and a right button, the left one is for normal stuff, but the right one is for the most common activities performed from wherever you are–on the desktop, in a program, whatever.

If your PC two-button mouse won’t work (for whatever reason), there may be a right mouse click key on the keyboard (on the right side, by the Ctrl key) or you can push Shift+F10.

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Many Americans celebrate Armed Forces Day annually on the third Saturday of May. It is a day to pay tribute to men and women who serve the United States’ armed forces. Armed Forces Day is also part of Armed Forces Week, which begins on the second Saturday of May.

From Kidztype, a 1.5-minute video on the essence of keyboarding. Enjoy!

–Full disclosure: Kidztype is an Ask a Tech Teacher sponsor

More keyboarding:

Keyboarding 101

Touch Typing Basics from KidzType

My Students Think Hunt-and-Peck is Good Enough. What do I do?

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MTI 558: How to Leverage Tech to Teach Writing

This college-credit class starts in one week–Monday, May 28th! Last chance to sign up. Click this link; scroll down to MTI 558 and click for more information and to sign up.

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MTI 557: Building Digital Citizens

This college-credit class starts in one week–Monday, May 21st! Last chance to sign up. Click this link; scroll down to MTI 557 and click for more information and to sign up.

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I am honored to be selected as one of EdTech Magazine’s “50 Must-Read K-12 IT Blogs of 2018”! Without a doubt, the credit goes to my readers. I am proud that the resources, reviews, and materials I curate for you resonate with your teaching needs.

Do check out their full article to see all 50 selected blogs. It includes names of edtech experts you already follow and a few you’ll want to add to your list.

More edtech blogs:

Alice Keeler

Monica Burns

David Andrade

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MTI 563: The Differentiated Teacher

MTI 563 starts in one week–Monday, May 14th! Last chance to sign up. Click this link; scroll down to MTI 563 and click for more information and to sign up.

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It’s the end of school. Everyone’s tired, including you. What you want for these last few weeks are activities that keep the learning going but in a different way. You want to shake things up so students are excited and motivated and feel interested again.

Change your approach. Provide some games, simulations, student presentations–whatever you don’t normally do in your classroom. If you’re doing PowerPoints, use the last few weeks for presentations.  Make them special–invite teachers. Invite parents. If you never serve food in your lab, do it for these presentations.

Here are my favorite year-end Change-up activities:

6 Webtools in 6 Weeks

Give students a list of 10-15 webtools that are age-appropriate. I include Prezi, Google MapMaker, Scratch, Voice Thread, Glogster, and Tagxedo, These will be tools they don’t know how to use (and maybe you don’t either). They work in groups to learn the tool (using help files, how-to videos, and resources on the site), create a project using the tool (one that ties into something being discussed in class), and then teach classmates. Challenge students to notice similarities between their chosen tools and others that they know how to use. This takes about three weeks to prepare and another three weeks to present (each presentation takes 20-30 minutes). Students will be buzzing with all the new material and eager to use it for summer school or the next year.

Designed for grades 3-12. Need ideas on web tools?

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