Eleanor Amplified!

The Radio Adventures of Eleanor Amplified podcast for kids 8-12 with entertaining, fictional stories about a world-famous radio reporter, Eleanor Amplified.  Designed to get children interested in journalism, spark conversations and make smart choices the episodes are 10-15 minutes of action packed adventures!

Great for a listening station or as a whole group!

Listen to Episode 1

MoxieReader on SALE!!

Tired of paper reading logs?
Looking for a new way to motivate your class to read?
Want to help students find the right book for them?

Check out MoxieReader!  It is on sale through September...  $19.99 for the year (regular price $63)


What is MoxieReader from MoxieReader on Vimeo.

Track, motivate and personalize what your students are reading at home and in the classroom!

Read&Write For Google Part 4 - Word Prediction and Translations

Word Prediction

Read&Write can help students who have difficulty typing or spelling when working on a Google Doc.  It works similar to your phone's text suggestion feature when your are texting.

 In a Google doc or slide, click the Prediction button.

As you type, a box will appear with word suggestions. Hover over a suggested word and it will be read aloud.  Click on a word and it will be placed in your writing.


In your Options menu you can customize the Prediction Tool.


Translator







The Read&Write toolbar also has a word translator button.  Click it on and highlight a word to see that word translated to the language you have chosen in your Options.















Coming Soon...
Part 5 - The Rest of the Tools!

Gather Resources!

Wether your looking for an SIPD idea or you need some research and resources to support your learning, online webinars and courses are a perfect place to start!


  

EdWeb.net has  over 1200 previously recorded, free, 1 hour webinars.  The extensive list of topics include bullying, differentiated instruction, library media, school gardening... 



The IEA's Online Learning Portal has a huge selection of free online, self-paced courses about Assessments, Class Culture, Technology in he Classroom, Teaching and Learning and other topics.



ASCD's free, on-demand webinars address timely and relevant topics like student engagement, classroom technology, and instructional strategies. 

Education Week has free upcoming and on-demand webinars on Language Arts, Math, Assessments, Common Core, Technology and Special Education.

TeachersFirst OK2Ask Archives has almost 200 free, archived webinars focusing on a wide range of topics form technology integration to digital storytelling to tools to use in reading/writing instruction.

Intel Teach Elements offers free courses for teachers that focus specifically on technology in 21st century classroom topics.

Other resources to check out
Education Closet (a few free webinars)
BrainPop Webinars
PBS TeacherLine (a few courses are free/cheap)
Library of Congress Online Modules
https://www.youcubed.org/ - Math Resources!

Read&Write For Google Part 3 - Highlighter Tools

Read&Write has a 4 different color highlighters and a clear highlighter button in the tool bar.   The different colors can be used to classify and categorize words on a website, Google Doc, Google slide or a PDF. 

The Collect highlights button will open a new Google Doc and automatically sort your highlights by color and includes a link to the original site!

Super cool!  You can highlight and sort parts of speech, story elements, topic sentences, evidence from the text and so much more!!!


Coming Soon...
Part 4 - Word Prediction and Translations
Part 5 - The Rest of the Tools!

Noisli - Improve Focus with Customizable Background Sounds

Would some of your students benefit from background noise that improves productivity or helps with relaxation?

Check out https://www.noisli.com/ a simple and quick way to reduce distractions while you work.

When you find a combination of sounds that suits your purposes, you can save it as a Combo.  Combos can be played back from the website or the Chrome Extension

Read&Write for Google Part 2 - Vocabulary Tools

The vocabulary tools work on websites, google docs, google slides and PDFs. 


Highlight a word and click the dictionary or picture dictionary button to display a pop-up window with definitions or pictures!

Use the toolbars colorful highlighters to highlight multiple words on a page and click the Vocabulary button to open a google doc with a table containing the words you highlighted, definitions and pictures!

Coming Soon! Part 3 - Highlighter Tools
Part 4 - Word Prediction and Translations
Part 5 - Audio Tools

Home Button in Chrome & ClassLink

​To set your home button in Chrome...

Go to your Chr​ome settings

Enable the show home button.

Type the website you want to open whenever you hit the home button.

Hint:  If you want it ti be the ClassLink page for RTSD26 staff, type http://launchpad.classlink.com/rivertrails

If you want to be able to use the Sign in with Google button on ClassLink, you must
1.  Log into ClassLink
2.  Go to the profile dropdown arrow on the top right
3.  Click My Profile
4.  Click Sign In Options
5.  Connect to Google.

Read&Write for Google Part 1 - Read Aloud Tools

Read&Write for Google is an extremely powerful Chrome extension.  One of its many abilities is the the text-speech feature that can read aloud websites, google docs, google slides and PDFs.

The read aloud tools are super simple to use.  

1. Open any website, doc, slide or PDF.
2. Click the Read&Write Extension  to open the Read&Write tool bar
   (If you do not have the extension, search for it at Chrome Web Store and add it to Chrome.
   
3. Highlight the word/sentence/paragraph where you want to start reading.
   (Tip: To highlight one word, double click the word.  To highlight a whole paragraph, triple click any word in the paragraph.)
4. Click the play button.
   

Bt default, Read&Write is set for continuous reading.  To stop you must click Pause or Stop. However, some students may benefit from having only one sentence or paragraph read at a time. 

To turn off continuous reading, go to the Read&Write Options by clicking the arrow on the right of the tool bar.

Under Speech, uncheck the continuous reading box.


You can also change the readers voice and reading speed.









To pause a read aloud, click pause.

To clear a selection and start over, click stop.

When you click the Hover Speech Button,

Read&Write will read aloud most sentences, captions or titles you hover over.  There is a fraction of a second delay, so be patient!  To turn off Hover Speech, click Stop.


Coming Soon...
Part 2 - Vocabulary Tools
Part 3 - Highlighter Tools
Part 4 - Word Prediction and Translations
Part 5 - Audio Tools

Gmail Signature

Add a signature to your Gmail

1. In Gmail, click Settings settings and select Settings.
2. In the General tab, scroll down to Signature and click the button next to the text box.
3. Type your signature, and use the format toolbar to add font styles, colors, images, links, and more.
4. Click Save changes.

Want to get your signature little fancier?  Create a signature in Google Drawings.  Download it as a .png.  Then insert that image in the signature box in your gmail settings (see above).

There are is also a chrome extension I wrote about a while ago that help you create signatures:

WiseStamp