Introducing Office Lens for iPhone

  

Recently I learned about Office Lens.  Office Lens is a handy capture app that turns your smartphone into a pocket scanner. It crops, straightens, enhances, and makes pictures of whiteboards and documents readable. Pictures of documents are automatically saved to OneDrive and editable on any device.

To learn more about Office Lens, go here!

Microsoft Office 365

This year my district transitioned to Office 365.  At first I was like, "What the heck is this and why do I have to change from Google?"  After I started using it though, it got easier, and there are so many features that I love.  I still have a love/hate relationship with Google.  It can tend to be overwhelming still sometimes. 

What I love about 365 is how EASY it is for me to access my work files at home.  I just sign in and open the files I needs.  Editing documents online can be a bit of a hassle at times, but overall I've found it pretty user friendly. I am still learning though, and that's what you really need to do in order to get really comfortable with it.

One of our elementary area technology coordinators posted to his blog a brief introduction to Microsoft 365 and what it is.  You can check out his video here.  It is geared towards educators working for my school district, but it still has some useful information.

If you are not following Microsoft Education on Facebook, I recommend you do so because they have posted some useful things to get you started!

I recently went to a conference and spent the whole day learning about Microsoft 365 features, including:
Microsoft Sway
Office Mix
OneNote
Class Notebook (through OneNote)

There is a lot more that you can check out at https://education.microsoft.com/!

Intervention on a Cart

After a rough beginning of the year, I've finally settled in and am doing well with my 8 groups.  I have one kindergarten group, two 1st grade groups, two 2nd grade groups, two 3rd grade groups, and an IREAD remediation group. I have about 35 students right now.

I posted a picture in one of my earlier posts of some fabric I got to decorate my cart.  I was able to put it on after some trial and error - NO to wall putty or hooks.  I used zip ties to finally attach it.

 

 

Unfortunately, I had to take the fabric off due to new fire codes for school buildings (no fabric allowed!).  I was really bummed but will be using the fabric to make a cute summer dress for my daughter.

 

 I'm still on a cart and push into classrooms.  It was very hard at first, especially after having a room for two years, but I've gotten used to it.  My cart can be VERY heavy to push around sometimes (just look at it!).  I go into classrooms and use their tables.  Sometimes it can be noisy, but it's just nice to have a table!  I do my best to stay organized, which helps.

Recently I put some pocket charts on my cart to list the objectives for each of my groups.  I only could find red, yellow, green, and blue on Amazon.  I could not find the other color charts anywhere, so I got creative, and bought some orange, purple, brown, and pink duct tape on Amazon.  I then took the tape and made the color charts I needed from another set of the pocket charts:

Viola! Eight different colored pocket charts to match each group!  Once I was done, I was able to put my objectives and testing levels, using dry erase sentence strips:

It's not the prettiest, and the charts do get caught on things as I roll it around, which can be frustrating.
 
Another way to keep me organized is by having a different color for each group - red, yellow, green, blue, orange, brown, purple, pink.  I found colored tubs from Really Good Stuff that I can use for each group:
Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue Book Holders with Rack
Orange, Brown, Pink, and Purple Book Holders with Rack

These have been PERFECT for what I need!  I just pull out the colored tub I need.  I also have a binder for each group, that holds all my documents.  I got a lot of my binders from this great website: www.bulkofficesupply.com/.  I get HUGE discounts on binders, dividers, sheet protectors, etc.  It is way cheaper than going to any office supply store, plus shipping is free with a $45 purchase.

I use iPads with five of my groups, so I picked up these nifty styluses from Amazon too!