You can get assistance at the INow website where you’ll find video trainings and printable tutorials. You can also email STIHelp@bcbe.org to get assistance with specific questions you might have.

One common issue that teachers face at the end of the semester is the need to manually enter or change the grade that will appear on the report card. This video demonstrates how to manually enter grades for individual students or for a whole class.

Teachers can access their grade books from home.  To access INow from home, remember that you will be required to login two separate times. You must first login to the INow server and then into the INow interface. Click here to log in or visit this site for instructions on accessing the site from home.

You may also want to remind parents that they don’t have to wait until the report cards are sent home at the end of the semester to see their students’ grades through the Inow Home Portal. Instructions and a link for accessing the site can be found at www.bcbe.org/inowathome

In Baldwin County, this resource is available to all students in grades 4 and 6. All students in these grades and their teachers have accounts set up so students can log in and start working right away. The STC at each school with 4th or 6th grade students has the account information and can share it with you.

Students learn by working through the lessons, developing practical, transferable computer skills using popular software programs. The Kto8 lessons use applications such as:

• Word
• PowerPoint
• Excel
• Access and Publisher
• Kid Pix
• Kidspiration

Kto8 Curriculum has over 600 lessons. The lessons include a complete lesson plan, grading rubric, activity instructions and an example of the completed student activity. View examples of lesson materials here

The content in each lesson is aligned to Alabama’s academic standards. When you log in as a teacher and assign lessons, you can choose to assign the lessons based on your state’s academic standards or on technology standards. Most teachers align what is taught in the computer lab with what students are learning in the classroom. This helps reinforce state academic standards while learning technology skills. View the objectives for each grade level here

Bubbl.us is a website that allows students to create graphic organizers and then export them out as an image. That image can then be placed in word processing document, a presentation program, or even a spreadsheet. Bubbl.us can save your graphic organizers on the website but it requires an account. When you first access the site you’ll see a little yellow “bubble” in the middle of screen. When you hover or click on the “bubble” you’ll see some menus pop up and you can start playing from there. It’s a very simple but yet very powerful tool that is sure to help your students get organized.

Check it out at https://bubbl.us

Arcademic Builders

Arcademic Skill Builders are online educational games that offer a powerful approach to learning basic math, language arts, vocabulary, and thinking skills. The games are a result of blending video game features into instructional research in order to achieve a high rate of student learning through increased time-on-task and engagement.

ABCya

ABCya.com provides educational games and activities for elementary students to learn on the web. Grade level lessons incorporate areas such as math and language arts while introducing basic computer skills.

Sheppard Software

Engage and motivate students with the hundreds of educational games, activities, quizzes articles and more at Sheppard Software. These educational games provide fun and focused repetition practice that enables automaticity and fluency to be achieved more quickly.

How Can I Use These Sites with My Students

Like any educational resource, these sites are not appropriate for all lessons or all students. You must pick and choose what fits your curriculum and which games provide the type of practice your students need. Instead of sending students to the homepage of one of these sites, send them to a specific game or activity that you want them to use.

1. Create a shortcut on your desktop – Right click on any blank area on the page and choose Create Shortcut. This will place an icon on your desktop that students can double-click to go directly to that page.
2. Place a link in your Moodle course – If you use Moodle with your students you can copy the address of the activity you selected and add it as a link inside your Moodle course. And you can use the new conditional rules in Moodle 2 to control which students have access and when they use them.
3. Place a link on your teacher website – Your School Insites web page has a section for posting links that you want students to use.

Converting video files can be done in three simple steps:

1. Drag your video file into the program
2. Click on the format you want
3. Click the convert button

You can convert videos to AVI, MP4, WMV, DVD, MP3, iPod, iPhone, PSP, Android, etc.

It will let you turn photos and MP3’s into slideshows with background music. Edit your slideshow: add, delete, and shuffle photos, enable panorama effect.

You can also edit your video with this program: Cut video parts from your file. Flip or rotate video. Join several videos into one file, add transitions between parts.

Also, you can fit the output file size to any limit (e.g. 700 Mb, 1.4 Gb, 4.7 Gb). This can help you reduce the size of your video files to make it easier to post them online.

Go to the Freemake Video Converter website

To access INow from home, you will be required to login two separate times. You must first login to the INow server and then into the INow interface. Use the following link and instructions to access INow:

https://inow-baldwinco.asc.edu/informationnow

After clicking the link above or typing the URL into your web browser address bar, you will receive a prompt asking you to connect to the INow server. The prompt you receive should look like this:

Enter your BCBOE network username and password into the appropriate fields. (You use your network username and password to login to your teacher/administrative workstation each morning.)

After correctly entering your network credentials, you will be taken to the INow Login Page. This is the same screen you see at school, and you use the same username and password that you use to login to INow at school.

If you have any questions, please email STIHelp@bcbe.org.

The only shortcoming  is there is no management piece to the app. If you need to do any management from the teacher side you’ll still need to log on at a computer to work with that side of the software. Over all the app worked nicely. I did have one small stumbling block that tripped me up when I first started working on it. As you log into the app, it asks for your AR website. I typed in the address and looked all over for an “accept” or “log in” button. To my dismay I couldn’t figure out how to get the app to accept my website. The trick is to look at where your enter key is normally on your virtual keyboard and it will say “Join” instead of “Enter.” If you click join you will be connected with your site. Thanks to Jennifer Carnley at Pine Grove for helping me out with that. It is important to remember that you need to be using Renaissance Place for the the app to work. The old stand alone AR program will not work with the app.

Find out more about the AR app here.

The site is a resource for educators to learn how to use YouTube as an educational tool. There are lesson plan suggestions, highlights of great educational content on YouTube, and training on how to film your own educational videos. Teachers can learn how to use videos to spark lively discussions to help struggling students.

With You Tube videos, you can:

• Increase student engagement

• Get free access to thousands of high quality educational videos

• Teach to every type of learner

• Use videos to lengthen in-class instructional time

• Expand your impact by reaching a larger audience

You can also sign up for the YouTube newsletter for teachers to receive updates about this project.

How Can I Use You Tube Videos with My Students?

Because there is inappropriate content on You Tube (not on the new Teacher channel) student computers are blocked from accessing You Tube.  You can still use videos you select with students by downloading the videos on your Teacher Workstation to show them in class - Learn how to download videos

In a flipped instruction classroom teachers provide students with resources such as videos, websites, and, yes, even paper handouts that they use at home to receive the instructions the teacher would normally go over in class. At home the student reviews the material during the time they would normally do homework. He or she might have one or two sample work problems to try on their own before returning to school. When the student comes to class the next day he or she works problems or completes assignments based on the instruction received at home. Often times  students work together and discuss what they learned the night before. During this time the teacher circulates the classroom providing help and guidance for students as they learn.

The next question that comes to mind for teachers is “How do I develop content for my students to use at home?” Teachers tend to think too hard about this one. There are several options for creating a flipped classroom. First, a teacher can create his or her own content to give the students. Baldwin County has a few teachers who do this already, although, they don’t use it exclusively for flipped instruction. Those teachers who create content mostly use a program called Camtasia Studio. Camtasia is a program that allows screen capturing and voice over. So a teacher could use SMART Notebook or Promethean AcitvInspire along with Camtasia to simulate what students would see on a whiteboard in a live classroom. You can see a video by clicking here that will show you how a teacher flipped his classroom by creating his own content.

So what if creating content isn’t a strong point for a teacher ? How are they going to be able to get content for students so they can use flipped instruction? There are a wealth of resources out there to help. One resource that has received a tremendous amount of coverage lately is the Khan Academy.  The Khan academy is a collection of videos that cover a wide range of topics. Most of the topics are related to math or science but their collection is rapidly diversifying and growing. You do have to sign up for an account, but students can use their Moodle log in name followed by @ibaldwin.org to create an account. So if Danny Smith wants an account he can use danny.smith0625@ibaldwin.org to create one. Teachers can then assign videos from the library for students. If a student doesn’t have access to the internet at home it’s possible for the teachers to download the videos from youtube and give them to a student on a USB drive.You can check out the Khan Academy here.

Another source for acquiring content is iTunesU. With iTunesU teachers can find material that has been created by professors at universities as well as content that has been created by reputable sources such as The National Archives. Some of the content might be video and some might be audio only. All of it can be download and used for flipped instruction. iTunesU can be accessed from the iTunes store. There is a tab at the top that says “iTunesU.”

The final place teachers can look for content is YouTube. While there is no guarantee that the material found on YouTube is going to be great, there are some really good videos that teachers can use with their students. To find out how to download a YouTube video from your teacher computer click here.

Once the teacher has all this content how does he or she get it to the student? Moodle is a great delivery format for flipped instruction. A teacher can load all the materials into one place for a student and even include items like quizzes as needed. The students could also use the forums for communication with each other after school hours. If Moodle is not an option for a student due to lack of internet connectivity, teachers could allow students to use the student station in their room to download all the videos needed so they could watch them at home without a internet.

If you think you might be interested in trying flipped instruction in your classroom please email me at jking@bcbe.org.

As part of the Digital Renaissance, we’ve recently upgraded our learning management system to the latest version of Moodle. This new version of Moodle offers many advantages:

1. Faster, more reliable access – The old Moodle server has become slow as many more teachers and students are using it every day. The new service is hosted in the cloud and more reliable than the old one.
2. New features
   • Conditional activities – Access to activities can be restricted based on certain criteria, such as dates, grade obtained, or the completion of another activity.
   • File repository – Students and teachers can now have private files posted on Moodle that they can access them from anywhere and submit them to the teacher for assignments. You can upload a file once and use it in multiple courses.
   • School home page – When students log in to Moodle they can be automatically redirected to see a page specific to their school. This will allow schools to have a common place for posting files, resources and announcements that they want all students to access
   • New site design – menus and blocks can be docked on the side of the screen to allow more space for viewing course content and make common items accessible with fewer clicks
3. Updates to existing features
   • Internal Messaging – allows students to communicate securely with teachers and other students to collaborate on class work
   • New and improved Wiki activity module
   • Enhanced grade book

How Do I Upgrade My Courses?

The current Moodle site will continue to be available through the end of the semester. Courses will be upgraded. When you’re ready for your courses to be upgraded, follow the instructions posted on this Moodle 2 info page. Notice that there are two ways to complete this procedure. If you have any questions or need any help, please contact Mike Johnson.

I’ve never used Moodle, how do I get started?

If you don’t have a course on the old Moodle site that needs to be upgraded, you can go directly to the new site and request a new course. The new site is at baldwin.mrooms3.net. An account has already been created for you. Use the lost password link on the right (below the login form) to have your password sent to you.

Once you log in, click the link in the middle of the homepage to request a new course. If you have any questions or need any help, please contact Mike Johnson.

How do students log in to the new site?

Student accounts have already been created on the new site and follow the same pattern as before. Usernames are firstname.lastnameMMDD. MM is the two-digit birth month and DD is the two-digit birth day. This information comes directly from INow so however the name and birth date are entered in INow is how they will be in Moodle.

One change to student accounts is that the new system limits them to only 20 characters. This only affects a few students with long names. If the username is longer than 20 characters, only enter the first 20 when trying to log in. This means some students may not have their full birth month or birth day included.

Passwords for student accounts are the same as before, also. The initial password for all students is the same as their lunch code.

So if a student knows their name, birth date and how to get lunch then they should be able to log in to Moodle.

How do I get help ?

IT Services will be offering online courses on using Moodle later this fall and again next semester. There’s also a Moodle Help course on the new site. A link to this course is available on the homepage. You can also contact Mike Johnson for assistance.