February 15th Professional Learning

Our CISD February 15th professional learning day is robust with choice sessions. There are many excellent offerings focusing on data and assessment, but we would like to use this opportunity to highlight some of the sessions being offered that center around Schoology.

If you are looking for secondary Schoology sessions (including turnitin) look for these sessions below on Sched.

How to search for these sessions in Sched: 

Locate the search bar on the right hand side of the page. Type the title of the session and click Search. A list of all the times offered for that session should appear.

Comment below with the session you are most excited about. We look forward to a great day of learning. 

Foster Academic Integrity with turnitin

What does it mean to plagiarize? How are you helping your learners answer this question and avoid the pitfalls of plagiarism? We would get many different excellent answers if we surveyed the educators at our campus, but for this post, we will share a specific tool that our district has recently purchased. Have you heard of turnitin? Turnitin integrates with Schoology and provides tools to prevent plagiarism, to engage students in the writing process, and to provide personalized feedback. A few of the program’s main features include:

• Similarity report - generate a similarity report that cross checks your learners submission across websites, and other turnitin repositories and provides details of the potentially plagiarized sources.

• The Feedback Studio - allows for feedback in the form of quickmarks and voice comments. 

• The E-rater option - scaffold levels of grammar and writing suggestions for your learners’ work. 

• Rubrics - grade submission with the use of customizable rubrics. 

• PeerMark™ - peer review assignment tool that allows learners to read, review, and evaluate one or many papers submitted by their classmates. Educators can choose whether the reviews are anonymous or attributed.

Interested in learning how to use this tool? Let’s get together and explore how turnitin can:

• support redefining success for all learners?

• provide actionable feedback and encourage growth?

• leverage teachable moments and foster academic integrity?

• increase the efficiency of the feedback loop?

View this infographic for step by step instructions on how to set up turnitin, best practices, and examples for your content area. 

Interested in one-on-one or collaborative team support? Contact your campus Digital Learning Coaches, Instructional Coaches, or Librarians for support with Turnitin or lessons on Plagiarism. 

Flex Your Mind While Flexing Your Muscles

I love it when I leave a conference with an idea or strategy that I can barely wait to try. In October, I attended the Region 10 IDCC conference and have been sitting on this idea waiting for the New Year. January always brings resolutions and commitments to healthier habits, making it the perfect time to implement this new choice PL strategy I learned about from Ashley Gilliam, Region 10 Digital Learning Coordinator. No more sit and get PL, welcome to Podcasts and Pedometers!

Details for our Podcast and Pedometers PL

Earn flex while working on your New Year Resolution to move more!

Participants will choose a podcast or two from a provided list of educational podcasts. As a group, we will walk and listen to our individually chosen Podcast for 20 minutes. Then, for the last 10 minutes of the walk, participants will partner up to jigsaw their favorite podcast takeaways.

When are we walking? See DLC's weekly emails for upcoming dates and times.

Where do we meet? Meet early in the ROC to set up your device, choose a podcast, and find your walking partner.  We will walk indoor or out, depending on the weather.

How do I sign up? Just show up. No pre-sign up or commitment required.

What do I bring? Walking shoes, earbuds, and a device to access the podcasts.

How do I earn Flex? After each walk you attend, submit a short form reflecting on your Podcast takeaways. Each walk is worth ½ hour of flex. You can participate in as many sessions as you like, but may only request Flex for up to six hours.

What kind of podcasts will we listen to? Podcasts that share strategies for teaching and learning will be selected. Participants will also have the opportunity to suggest Podcasts. See Podcasts examples below.

Using Podcasts in Your Classroom

Ashley’s session also included resources related to using Podcasts with your learners.

• ListenNotes not only allows you to search by content, but you can also create and share clips! Read more about it here.

• Listenwise contains a searchable database for Social Studies, Science, and ELA Lessons and includes listening comprehension questions and discussion themes. Check out this Cult of Pedagogy podcast by Jennifer Gonzalas to hear more.

• And THIS… a podcast list for AP classes by subject!

Do you have educational podcast suggestions for our walks? Please share in the comments below.

Credit: Inspired by this post from Meredith Akers and Ashley Gilliam’s 2018 IDCC Region 10 presentation, Podcasts for Learning.

Breaking Out Shakespeare Style

Our English IV classrooms turned into asylums last week. When the learners from three different classes entered the library they were greeted with an escape room challenge. Taking place in the digital world with the help of Google Sites and Google Forms, learners searched for clues and solved puzzles to open the locks that would lead to freedom.

Each class read a different Shakespearean tragedy and combined their knowledge of tragic heroes in order to break out of the asylum. The challenge was masterfully designed by the educators. It required learners to discuss the content in order to solve the puzzles. Sound easy? Click here and experience the challenge for yourself.

Stephanie Ball, English IV educator, was pleasantly surprised at the high level of learner engagement during the activity. She shared with us during our reflection interview, that “the learners talked about how much fun they had in class and really enjoyed how challenging it was." Check out the video below to see the breakout in action. The learner reactions are priceless!

"I think the coolest part of the digital breakout was seeing the students be collaborative and competitive in finding new ways to learn the content. They were impressed by how much thought and effort went in to planning the activity. I think they realized how much fun it could be when your teachers are passionate about your learning and willing to put in the extra time and effort for them to enjoy the lesson-- made them feel special and proud. They wanted to figure things out for themselves. I was amazed how some of the learners who never did ANY work for class were some of the BEST at unlocking the clues and even finishing FIRST in the class! It was awesome how everyone no matter their learning style could find themselves valuable and able to contribute to their team in one way or another. I am thankful to our DLCs who met with us weekly to show us the ropes on the technology end and our librarians for being excited with us to exhibit the outbreak on a large scale combining all three classes in the library-- they were on board to shut down the library for us, display our logo, and even turn out the lights to set the ambiance and tone of the activity. Overall we had a blast and I am so proud of my team and my students!" -Courtney Orloff, English IV Educator



Educator Advice Before Jumping In


 “Come in with a plan and understand what you want your kids to get out of the lesson before attempting to build a breakout.” -Kristen Davis, English IV Educator







Interesting in Building Your Own?

Besides the high level of engagement, digital breakouts highlight the use of the 4Cs in the classroom. Learners demonstrate their knowledge of content through collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity. If you are interested in building a digital breakout for your learners, we would love to design with you. Comment below or send us an email for support.

Region 10 Video Storytellers Contest

Learners are capturing their own stories daily thanks to easily accessible technology. Take advantage of this opportunity to motivate learners to tell the stories of your content.

 We would love to see their submissions, too. Post links in the comments below.

Computer Science Education Week

Computer Science Education Week and #HourOfCode are right around the corner. This year we will be celebrating the week of December 3rd. If you would like your learners to join in this district-wide coding challenge, you will find all of the resources you need for a stress-free Hour of Code on this CISD Hour of Code website that our Digital Learning Coach team has worked to create.

Your learners can complete a self-directed Hour of Code with Learner Choice Menus. On the choice menus, learners may select any of the four topics. Each topic has a learn, do, and reflect portion to complete.

The reflection piece will be done district-wide through Flipgrid! Learners may dive deep into one topic, or explore all four.

Once your learners have participated in the Hour of Code, we encourage you to celebrate and award them their Hour of Code Certificate of Completion. A digital version of this certificate is available through the Flipgrid reflection topics. These could be easily added as a celebration to Bulb. We also want to encourage you to participate and reflect in the Hour of Code along with your learners!

Please use #HourOfCode #CISDCode2Learn & #CISDOurStory in your Tweets!

Want to extend your learning during Computer Science Education Week? Join our Twitter Chat, Critical Thinking for 21st Century Learners! See the invitation below for more details.

Let us know if you would like help designing or implementing Hour of Code activities.

Redefining Digital Portfolios

So, we all set up our Bulb digital portfolios. Now what? How can this tool benefit the learners in your class? I challenge you to think about digital portfolios as more than just a place for learners to showcase their best work to a broader audience, but also as a place to document the history of the student’s learning journey by accompany those artifacts with reflection, self-assessment, and future goal setting.

Coppell Digital Learning Coaches, Alli, Brad, Kelly, and Kasey recently hosted a webinar that explored critical thinking through Bulb.



What I loved about the webinar was how the discussions focused on teaching learners to think critically about their own learning process. If you missed it, click on the host’s Bitmoji image above to access all of their curated resources.