“The White House said Saturday the proliferation of testing in the United States — a problem the administration acknowledged it has played a role in — has taken away too much valuable time that could be better spent on learning, teaching and fostering creativity in schools. To curb excessive testing, Obama recommended limiting standardized exams to no more than 2% of a student’s instructional time in the classroom.”
Sounds like a good plan! Where do we sign up?
Anyway, here are the latest posts from the Burlington Blog:
In an effort to share some great resources for you to keep on your radar, sometimes I miss the obvious ones right under my nose. With this in mind, I want to make sure that you are keeping up the BHS Help Desk Blog. This blog provides some of the most useful information that you will find in regards to technology integration. Two recent posts that have been widely viewed are the following:
Now You Can Share & Embed Your Google Classroom Calendars with Parents! and An Important “Wi-fi Assist” Warning for iOS 9 iPhone Users.
The post below is actually a copy of a weekly e-mail that I send to our staff to promote our Burlington Public Schools Blog which shares the great work going on across our school district. I also try to give a quick technology tip/resource that I think would be useful. It is the 20th post in the series.
Share Your Student Work By Tagging It To #BPSCHAT
While it is great to see the growing number of staff sharing information on our district twitter hashtag, it would be awesome to see everyone sharing some of the great work by students on the district hashtag. I have embedded a few examples of what this could like below. Please share pictures and or posts at #bpschat or feel free to e-mail me photos to share from the district twitter account. If you have any questions, feel free to touch base.
A quick look at our BPS Facebook Page in 2015
We have been pretty active in using our district Facebook page to get out information to our followers there. One of the nice things about having the Burlington Public Schools Facebook Like Page is that there are a number of analytics that allow us to see which posts are most popular with followers. Having this type of feedback is great because it allows us to get a grasp of what type of things our followers like to see on the page.
As we look back at the first three months of 2015, the posts with the most likes have been those announcing the cancellation of school due to snow. All of these posts received between 2,000 and 3,000 views. However, the one post unrelated to a snow day that also approached this was a great post from Memorial Principal Deb Dressler last week highlighting the “We are all MEMORIAL” initiative started by two fifth graders.
 |
| Heartwarming story at Memorial School! – “WE are all MEMORIAL” http://bit.ly/1ELDYCe #bpschat #edchatma #stuvoice Posted by Burlington Public Schools on Saturday, March 28, 2015 |
Burlington Blog Update
The post below is actually a copy of a weekly e-mail that I send to our staff to promote our Burlington Public Schools Blog which shares the great work going on across our school district. I also try to give a quick technology tip/resource that I think would be useful. It is the 18th post in the series.
As we deal with this record-breaking winter, we’ve finally surpassed the 100-day mark of the 2014-2015 school year. Given the fact that it has been a little depressing dealing with “Snowmageddon”, I have decided to share an uplifting story about a father in Florida who was concerned about his autistic son and finding him a job that would highlight his strengths.
Burlington Blog Update
As we head into Super Bowl weekend, I couldn’t help noticing what they served for lunch at BHS today! Go Patriots!
I wanted to share a couple of writing resources that I learned about on Richard Byrne’s Free Technology for Teachers Blog:
The first resource is Common Lit, a collection of free texts for upper elementary and middle schools classrooms which are organized thematically. Here’s an overview from the Common Lit website:
Burlington Blog Update
The post below is actually a copy of a weekly e-mail that I send to our staff to promote our Burlington Public Schools Blog which shares the great work going on across our school district. I also try to give a quick technology tip/resource that I think would be useful. It is the 16th post in the series.
Another PD Opportunity to Increase Your Google Skills
Cambridge Public Schools is hosting Googlepalooza on February 19 which is the Thursday of vacation week. Here is the link to the site for more information. Please e-mail Rosemary if you would like to attend and we will cover the cost.
Burlington Blog Update
The post below is actually a copy of a weekly e-mail that I send to our staff to promote our Burlington Public Schools Blog which shares the great work going on across our school district. I also try to give a quick technology tip/resource that I think would be useful. It is the 13th post in the series.
Checking in on The Burlington Public Schools Facebook Page
Burlington Blog Update
Here are the latest posts from the BPS Blog:
The post below is actually a copy of a weekly e-mail that I send to our staff to promote our Burlington Public Schools Blog which shares the great work going on across our school district. I also try to give a quick technology tip/resource that I think would be useful. It is the twelfth post in the series.
This week’s recommended Tech Resource
 |
| Check out thegooru.com |
There continues to be good news from Google in regards to making things more seamless for people dealing with Microsoft Office files. I came across a great blog post from The Gooru, a phenomenal resource for learning how to better utilize Google apps. Here’s a bit from the post Edit Microsoft Office files in Gmail:
Even if you’re 100% Google, chances are you’re still going to interact with people who are working with Microsoft Office files rather than Google. Over the past year, Google has made a concerted effort to improve the interaction between Office files and Google Drive. That continues this week with three awesome updates to the relationship between Gmail, Google Drive and Microsoft Office.
The post then goes on to explain in detail three great updates from Google this week:
Burlington Blog Update
It is hard to believe that one-third of the 2014-2015 school year is behind us. It is great to be able to share the great work from so many teachers and students daily on the Burlington Public Schools Blog. With so many great things happening daily, it is difficult catch them all so please feel free to e-mail me directly with anything you would like me to share on the BPS Blog. Due to the surplus of material, I even added a Bonus Post yesterday on our day without students.
In addition, I want to remind everyone that I am happy to create an original blog post if you would like to share something from you or a student. I am also happy to come by and visit during an activity and create a post.
Here are the last eight posts from the BPS Blog:
My Un-Learning Journey 