Thursday, September 17, 2015

International Dot Day

Ms. Catherine Jones, Purple Sage's librarian, has started using her newly acquired IPads to introduce activities for International Dot Day.  The students colored their DOT and with the app Quiver, the DOTS become 3D objects that spin.




Wednesday, September 16, 2015

REMIND

In Ms. Robinson's 4th grade class, she uses Remind to instantly contact parents about any event or school work to keep parents involved.

 "I love it because it is instant, especially with technology being such a big part of our lives today." 

Some examples of when Ms. Robinson uses Remind:
To remind parents of a school function that is happening the following day, a test that is coming up, and to check their email about their weekly newsletter. Ms. Robinson also plans on using it to send quick notes about something they did in class so they can have an open discussion with their student about what they are learning in class.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

The Brain

5th grade TAG students are studying the brain as a unit in their language arts class. They are reading Mick Harte Was Here, a book involving a bike accident resulting in a death due to not wearing a helmet. They will be researching about structures of the brain, multiple intelligences, and about bike helmet safety statistics. 

UT Research Engineering Scientist (and one of our moms), Ms. Elizabeth Osterndorff-Kahanek, who works on the effects of addiction on the brain, came in with a model of the structures of the brain and gave the students an overview of the function of each section. Then they watched her dissect a mouse brain to see the similar structures and viewed slides through her microscope. The students will complete a brain webquest tomorrow,


Wednesday, September 9, 2015

A Letter from the Community

"Woo Hoo!" Ms. Sara Nelson, our Purple Sage principal writes as she relays the following email from a parent, to our Office Staff and Ms. Barnard, our ITS.

From: Colleen Benefield 
Date: Wed, Sep 9, 2015 at 8:20 PM
Subject: Communication Kudos
To: Sara Nelson <sara_nelson@roundrockisd.org>


Just wanted to send an encouraging note that both the newly retooled Purple Sage Press and the school website look great!  The change in layout is much more appealing and professional.  And, I'm also happy to share that our daughter's teacher (Miss Walters) is using both her class website and email as communication tools.  I feel like we have open lines of communication and are being provided with timely and useful information.  I'm so happy to see that clear communication is now a priority at Purple Sage.  

Thanks for helping steer the ship in this direction!

Colleen 

Ms. Thornburg, our office specialist, is now using LucidPress, a Google App to write our monthly newsletter known as The Purple Sage Press.  It is linked to our newly designed website in both English and Spanish.  

Our district decided on redesigning our websites so that all schools follow a similar template to make it easier for our community to recognize where things are on different school websites when they have children in more than one school.  Each campus will include campus and district news.  We are also recommending our teachers or grade levels to have a website linked to their name in our directory.

We thank Ms. Benefield for taking the time to notice and express her appreciation of Purple Sage staff efforts to provide clear communication.


Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Acceptable Use Policy Presented

Each year we are instructed by our district to present our Acceptable Use Policy to our students at the beginning of the year before they begin using our technology.  This year we used our newly created Instructional Technology Department Digital Citizenship Website to present the introductory Prezi presentation and a video by NetSmartz.  The video we used was Router's Birthday Surprise. Something else new this year was that our ITS, Bunny Barnard, teamed with our librarian, Catherine Jones, and presented to each grade level in the library using some of our new equipment.  We had our data projector displaying the presentation and then we used our new 70" touch screen TV to create a Wordle made from the words that were stressed in our acceptable use policy.  The Wordle image was printed and displayed in the classroom along with the students' signed contract that they will abide by the rules in our acceptable use policy.


Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Learning about Little Bits

There is so much NEW technology this year!  The one thing new that the district has purchased for campuses to reserve our Little Bit Electronic kits.  Watch the video at http://littlebits.cc/.  Our ITS, Bunny Barnard, had the opportunity to discover and experience the learning from these little modules that snap together to create action. Here are a couple of pictures of her team's creative minds in action. The kit will be reserved in the Fall for our Library to introduce to students during our Makerspace days, and fifth grade is looking forward to adding this to their science unit in October. It will be fun to see what our amazing students can create!