Teacher Spotlight

Galena Park High School Campus’ Biology teacher Ana Reyes enjoys integrating technology into her classroom.  This is her third year in education all at GPISD. Ms. Reyes has a very technology-rich classroom and uses it to reach her students on a daily basis. She wants to engage and interact with them. She has an Interactive Panel, Chromebook Cart, and a Zspace computer. Along with the technology she also loves using different applications and websites in her classroom. Some of her favorites are Nearpod, Edulastic, Kahoot, Quizlet Live, Quizizz, Flipgrid, Padlet,  and Google Classroom.  Ms. Reyes integrates technology because learning should be brought into the 21st century.  “In my biology classroom, I engage my students with online labs, formative assessments, and online assignments.” Ms. Reyes class is very diverse and students are actively involved in the class.

General

• Use Wakelet to collect and organize your digital content then share and even collaborate with others. On Wakelet, you can add images, videos, pdf files, and web links for your team or students in one location for easy access. Here is a video on how to get started with Wakelet.
• Use the Add-ons feature in Google Slides to kick your presentation up a notch.  From your Google Slide, click on Get add-ons for access to the G Suite Marketplace and you can select a variety of add-ons such as Pear Deck, Nearpod, Lucid chart, Adobe Stock photos, and many more applications to enhance your presentations.

World History

• Try:  Letting students use Adobe Spark to create posters for events during this six weeks.  Here’s a great sight to help them with their poster creation skills and Adobe Spark makes it so easy too.   
• College Readiness Skill:  Help your students become college ready with rich multimedia lessons that use more than one technology tool.  Common Sense Media has an entire bank of Lesson Flow ideas for nearly any subject.  Each lesson flow contains apps as well as curriculum ideas to use them.   Check out this one on early Chinese dynasties.  
• Curriculum Integration Idea:  Have students use Flipgrid to check for understanding that they understand the Five Pillars of Islam or the reason for the Crusades.  Hearing a student’s voice can give you much better insight into a student’s level of confidence and they can’t copy.  
• Technology Integration Idea:  Postcards from the Edge of History!  Have your students create postcards from different people during your current period of history.  They can focus on certain events or negotiations, etc.  

U.S. Government

• Try: Fake News is Bad News -  a website that offers simulations that show visitors how misinformation is spread through social media.  
• College Readiness Skill:   Collaborating with others to create mind maps, lists, ideas, etc. is an important skill.  Use WebRoom to help students easily share ideas online
• Curriculum Integration Idea: 2020 being an election year, at some point you will likely talk about election commercials and their impact.  My C-SPAN (free registration required) has a collection of US election commercials dating back to 1952 with lesson plans on how to teach about them
• Technology Integration Idea:  Even though Constitution Day has already passed, TedEd has a great bounty of lessons on the creation of the founding document. 

Economics

• Try:  A more active role for Government in your student’s lives.  Help them to become more Civic minded in finding, researching and taking a position on issues in Civics in their community with Action Civics.    
• College Readiness Skill:  Just how do you return factory jobs to America?  American Factory is a Netflix documentary about a Chinese company doing just that in the heart of the “Rust Belt.”  
• Curriculum Integration Idea: Algeria has been a closed Economy, but their soccer team just might be changing that - learn how.  
• Technology Integration Idea:   Become more inclusive with this short podcast from Planet Money about the groundbreaking work and remarkable life of economist Edith Penrose.  And consider using this Podcast reflection sheet.  

U.S. History

• Try:  2020 being an election year, at some point you will likely talk about election commercials and their impact.  My C-SPAN (free registration required) has a collection of US election commercials dating back to 1952 with lesson plans on how to teach about them.  
• College Readiness Skill:   Have students use Flipgrid to check for understanding that they understand the causes of the Spanish American War or the reasons for Imperialism.  Hearing a student’s voice can give you much better insight into a student’s level of confidence and they can’t copy.  
• Curriculum Integration Idea:  Postcards from the Edge of History!  Have your students create postcards from different people during your current period of history.  They can focus on certain events or negotiations, etc.  
• Technology Integration Idea: Camera and Locomotive is the title of a fantastic mapped story published by the Library of Congress. Camera and Locomotive tells the story of the building of the Transcontinental Railroad and the development of photography in the United States. As you scroll through the story you will find interactive maps that are loaded with photographs taken during the construction of railroads.

Camera and Locomotive

African American / Latino-American History

• Try:  Having your students create presentations using Prezi to create more creative, memorable and imaginative presentations.  
• College Readiness Skill:  Collaborating with others to create mind maps, lists, ideas, etc. is an important skill.  Use WebRoom to help students easily share ideas online.  
• Curriculum Integration Idea:  Create exit tickets with Google Forms - they are fast and easy.  
• Technology Integration Idea: What if cell phones had existed during the time period you are discussing.  Have your students create text messages from different people during your current period of history.  They can focus on certain events or negotiations, etc.