Take a Picture of Your Chromebook Screen!

There´s a great set of keystrokes to use to take a picture of your Chromebook screen, or a part of your Chromebook screen!

For a complete screen: press Ctrl key and the Multi-screen key (located on the top row of the Chromebook keyboard.)

For a part of the screen: press Ctl key, Shift key, and the Multi-screen key.  Your cursor will become a crosshair, so you can click and drag across the part of the screen you want to grab.

After you let go of the keys, the system will copy it to your clipboard, so you can paste it into the document, slide, web site, etc.  

We used this when creating avatars on Avatarmaker.com.  The images wouldn´t download, so the students just did a screen grab of their avatar, and pasted it in their book talk slide stack.

Tech Troubleshooting- Chromebook resolution is too large

I´ve been noticing lately that some of our Chromebooks have a screen resolution that is quite large.  That means that students may not see all that there is to see on a site, and some of the content may ¨fall off the edges" of the Chromebook.  An example is below- image 1 is a larger screen resolution than image 2.  Watch this very short video to fix the problem.


Image 1:



Image 2:

Exciting New Experiences at my New School!

I'm excited to be working with a great staff at Collins Intermediate school.  We have a bit over 750 students enrolled, and that is a lot of 5th and 6th graders!  Although the school is large, we have a family atmosphere, and we enjoy working together to help our students succeed!

One emphasis on professional development is a structure called Instructional Rounds.  The staff began exploring this way of continuous improvement last year, and this year we made a schedule using a Google Sheet so that teachers can sign up to visit another teacher's classroom.  Teachers can visit someone who is teaching the same content, or they can switch it up, knowing that good teaching strategies and management can be used no matter what you are teaching! 

After the teacher(s) visit a host classroom with our Instructional Coach, Pat Mills, they spend a few minutes debriefing.  Wow, you can really use what you saw quickly in your own classroom!  Or, you can get affirmation about strategies you are already using, which is just as helpful!  We have also enjoyed starting conversations about instruction happening in the host classroom.

I am attending this year's Instructional Coaching Institute lead by Jim Knight. I am learning a lot about myself and strategies to use with the teachers I'm working with at Collins.

Here are a few pictures to give an idea- it's so simple to implement, and yet has really given us insight, support, and ideas for our own students and classrooms!

Our Last Day: Makey Makey Time and Blog Addresses

Today is our last day of Digic@mp!  We have been working on using Makey Makey devices to play music and use as a game control.  We used bananas, carrots, and other stuff to play music! We used playdough to create large buttons to tap on to play a PacMan game.  We made sure we posted videos and pictures of what we did, and Mr. McAdams, a reporter from the EastTex Advocate, came to take pictures and interview students!