Keep Pushing for EXCELLENCE

Teach Thought Online has posted a challenge to ALL teachers. Embark on a blogging quest for 30 days where you reflect on your teaching.  This will empower teachers to become stronger educators and will give teachers a platform to connect with a global audience.  A few of you have taken on the this challenge and have started to blog. This is an exciting endeavor!! I have provided links to both the Challenge and to two of our teachers' blogs. It is not too late to start blogging, reflecting, and developing as an educator.

30 Day Blogging Challenge

Kelly Briggs' Blog

Shari Patterson's Blog

On Tuesday and Wednesday of last week we watched a video as a staff and compiled evidence of student engagement. There is engagement happening not only in your classroom but in the rooms to your left and to your right. I say this to encourage each of you to step out of your room and walk around campus and see what others are doing. Spending just five minutes in another teacher's classroom can help give you a new perspective and more tools for your teacher "tool kit." The collegial collaboration that is occurring is fundamental. Adding the live classroom environment to this collaboration will help take all of us one step further in our quest for EXCELLENCE!

My tech tips for the week. I highly encourage each of you to download the following FREE apps to your iPad. These apps will be time savers for  you!!

Gmail App. This will save you a lot of time. Once loaded on your iPad and synced to your work Gmail and any other Gmail account you have, you can quickly access your email by one tap of the app. You can move easily between different Gmail accounts by simply tapping the account in the bottom left hand corner.

Google Drive App. This will save you a lot of time. Once loaded on your iPad and synced to your work Drive, you can access all of your Drive files by just simply tapping the icon.

Educreations App. This app is a virtual whiteboard. You can create lessons in advance and record your voiceover. Another idea is to use Educreations while you are teaching, save the lesson, and post to your website. Students can also find this app useful to create presentations for your class.

Pic Collage App. This is the app I use to make photo collages. It is a very useful tool to show many photos from an event on one screen.







Each of you already has iMovie on your iPad. Here is a short compilation of FHS that I made using iMovie on my iPad this weekend. I used the trailer template. You just need to place your pictures and videos in the template and adjust the tag lines. iMovie is another great tool to use in the classroom!!!

Many more great things are in store for Fairfield High!

Continue to be innovative, creative, and a model of excellence! 

HAVE A GREAT WEEK!