Teacher Spotlight

North Shore 10th Grade Campus’ Science teacher Whitney Kenney enjoys integrating technology into her classroom.  Mrs. Kenney has been in education for 9 years, teaching in Mississippi, Tennessee, and now NS10. Ms. Kenney loves her ClearTouch panel. She even checks out the mobile panels for her learning stations and has 2 panels being used in stations. She uses Chromebooks with her students every day and enjoys the Lightspeed Audio system in her classroom. Ms. Kenney says that technology in her classroom keeps learning interesting for both the students and herself. She says technology is a lifesaver when it comes to documenting student work and participation. Some of Mrs. Kenney’s go to apps are Quizizz, Quizlet, and PearDeck for lectures/presentations. She is always curious about new apps and websites for her classroom.  

General

• If you are creating a podcast for your class, try incorporating Headliner on your next podcast.  A headliner is an online tool that lets you add a video to your podcast.  It also allows you to add other features like waveforms and transcription of your audio.  You can then upload it to YouTube to broaden your audience.

•  Thinglink is an awesome interactive platform that allows you to add text, links, images, and even videos to your images.  You can create visual experiences for student-centered learning.  Thinglink is also a great way to reach and engage students with diverse language backgrounds and reading levels.

• Classtools.net has a variety of tools for all teachers from random name picker, timers, to arcade game generators.  Have fun with some of the templates this site has to offer or use it for review with your students.

Biology

• Try:  Gizmos is an interactive website with simulation experiments for science that power inquiry and understanding. The site has a library of activities that can be searched by subject and grade level.  Here is an online Genetic Engineering activity simulates techniques to create corn plants resistant to insect pests or tolerant of herbicides.

• College Readiness Skill: Have your students create a podcast of what they are doing in the classroom.  Students can give a recap of the lesson or even their feedback on an activity or lab.  Students can also interview special guests or experts that are familiar with specific topics.  Here are a few ideas of software that your students can use to record on their device.  Garageband, Adobe Audition, Audacity, and Soundtrap

• Curriculum Integration Idea:  Log in to STEMscopes and use these three activities with your students on your upcoming Genetics unit: DNA, Transcription and Translation, Genetic Outcomes. These online activities give your students the opportunity to explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate their knowledge.

• Technology Integration Idea: Go to snow.live and browse the community lessons for genetic interactive lessons or log in to lessons.nuiteq.com and create your own interactive lesson that you can use with your ClearTouch Panel.

Chemistry

• Try: Are you tired of the boring slide templates in PPT, Google slides, etc? Check out SlidesCarnival for fresh new creative templates!

• College Readiness Skill: Gimkit is a classroom game-show platform where students compete by answering questions on their electronic devices. Instead of earning points, students earn virtual currency, which they can "invest" during the game to boost their score. They can compete against each other or collaborate in teams or as a whole class. Teachers or students can create Unit 8-Stoichiometry review games in Gimkit. Check out this Gimkit tutorial!

• Curriculum Integration Idea: Kami is an online document annotation and markup tool. You can highlight, underline, and strikethrough text in PDF and other document formats. You can also add text boxes, shapes, and images. Kami works with Google Drive and Google Classroom. With Kami, you can easily collaborate on documents in the classroom while avoiding the hassles of printing documents. Students can use kami to assist with the writing and balancing of chemical equations using the law of conservation of mass. (TEKS 8E)

• Technology Integration Idea: A useful and free Chrome extension is Remote for Slides. Remote for Slides allows you to control Google Slides on any device, remotely, without the need for any extra hardware. This would come in handy for presentations on Stoichiometry.  

Physics

• Try: Check out BouncyBalls as a fun and creative way to tackle classroom noise management!

• College Readiness Skill: PDF Candy is a free online PDF editor. It offers various tools for working with PDF files. The interface is modern and simple to use. You can convert files from PDF to other supported formats, like Word DOC files, JPG, BMP, or others. This is a great tool for utilizing all the resources on Electrostatics for both teachers and students.

• Curriculum Integration Idea: Instantly make guided, step-by-step directions for any website directly in the browser. Iorad is the quickest and easiest tutorial creator on the web. This Chrome extension can be used to create tutorials for students on how to navigate an academic tutorial website or create presentations on Electrostatics. The possibilities are endless!

• Technology Integration Idea: Webjets combines content and apps within one environment. Visualize and group information the way it best fits your workflow. Work with your favorite apps like Google Docs, YouTube, and Wikipedia right within Webjets. No more switching focus between many productivity tools and browser tabs. Webjets is similar to Padlet but can be organized into folders. This is a great tool for students to organize their resources into study boards.