Jeff Madlock
Show Notes – S1E6 – Guest: Kimberly Wright
Open
Welcome/Intros:
Hello and welcome to this episode of EduTechGuys Radio brought to you by Southwest Arkansas Education Cooperative and Hope Public Schools, both located in Hope, Arkansas. (Introduce ourselves. First speaker will then read the Show Outline after last person does their intro).
Show outline:
We will have EduTech news and updates followed by a conversation with Kimberly Wright, a TLI Teacher Leader for an elementary school in El Paso. We’ll listen to our featured artist of the week, Tim Goynes and share other tips and information during this hour.
Starting off with EduTech News,
Last week, the Arkansas Board of Education agreed to the Governor’s plan to go with ACT/ACT Aspire for standardized assessment in 2015-16 school year. We reached out to Hope Allen, Director of Student Assessment in Arkansas, for information and she has graciously provided us with a few key updates regarding assessment for the 2015-16 schools year:
All students in grades 3-10 will take the actAspire. This replaces both the PARCC Assessment and benchmark science testing.
We will still have NCSC (often called “Nic-Sic”) and alternate portfolio for our cognitively disabled students.
All 11th graders will have the option to take an ACT assessment paid for by the state.
And, the state will negotiate for INTERIM assessments through ACTAspire to be included at no cost to schools.
In E-rate news, according to an article in the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Online, the statewide plan for internet access to schools is on hold because Centurylink is checking the documentation regarding how the state filed its e-rate and how it is planning to implement the statewide network. (That article is available at http://tinyurl.com/nwausac1)
If you are on the Arkansas State Sys_Admin list, be sure to look for the email from Rick Martin regarding the improved statewide APSCN network.
Comments, etc about the news items/lead-in to Kimberly Wright
Kimberly Wright (TLI Teacher Leader at Cooley elementary, El Paso ISD)
PodStock
what you like, what you hope to learn, what you will be sharing.
I’d like to talk a little about your education “history,” that is your education experience then you left edu and then recently returned.
Maybe talk about how you’ve kept up with education topics, specifically things edutech related if you want/can, what brought you back and what differences you’ve noticed. buncee, class123.ac,
Talk about what you have going on in general, educationally/jobwise etc. and anything else you might want to talk about that are of interest. Podstock… been to all but 2. Small conference, in wichita KS,
Music Interlude
Featured Artist of the week Tim Goynes
Tim has served as the interim Jazz Guitar Professor at UNT, and has been serving as the Professor of Guitar at Texas A&M University – Commerce since 2009, as well as teaching guitar and piano at the Guitar Sanctuary, in addition to playing in three exciting bands around the D/FW area
Song title – Brienz
“Collect our thoughts”
Google App Feature of the week
Choice Eliminator (as shared by Susan Gilley) (Twitter: @uniqsuseq) for Google Forms. As each person fills out the form, selected choice is removed so that the next person cannot see that choice. Think of parent/teacher conference time scheduling, as Susan discusses in her article on the Portical site.
Google Classroom APP – Students and teachers will now receive system notifications about new content in the Classroom Classes.
Google Camp started yesterday and is free! https://camp.withgoogle.com/
It’s Ocean Week – “NO, it’s Billy Ocean week!”
EXTRA CONVERSATION IF TIME ALLOWS:
Article in District Administration regarding Apps rollout in schools
other topics?