Parent Communications with LMS

Since all of our students in the District have either iPads or laptops, most of their classes should be using some type of learning management system, or LMS.

An LMS provides teachers a way to share assignments and digital resources
It also provide students a way to submit assignments digitally to demonstrate learning.
This should be a routine part of our students' learning experiences.


There are several Learning Management Systems available.  Those most commonly used in our District include:

        SeeSaw - this is primarily directed towards our K-2 students, but works at all levels
        Canvas
        Schoology
        Google Classroom
        Inkling - All of our K-4 students can use this for PLTW Launch

Apple Classroom is something completely different, but is often a mistaken part of this conversation.  More details will be coming soon about this amazing tool.
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- These LMS applications are all free to use and available on iPads or laptops.

- Students' Google accounts may be used to log in to Canvas, Schoology, or Classroom.

- Canvas, Schoology, and Google Classroom all tie in very well with Google Drive documents.

- All but Inkling have some type of parent communication component.  This is an easy way to communicate with parents about what is going on in class.

- Paid versions of Canvas and Schoology may be tied in with Infinite Classroom so that class lists and course grades are synchronized daily.  Assignments created with Google Classroom may be also quickly used as assignments with both of these applications.
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Parent Communications:

Communicating with parents is an important part of continuing learning beyond the classroom and provide an effective means to support children outside of class.

with Google Classroom:

To add parents to your class roster Sign in to Classroom with your Google Account. ... Click the class. At the top, click Students. Next to a student's name, click Invite Guardians. In the text field, enter a guardian's email address. ... Click Invite to send the invitation. Once this is set up, notifications will be sent to parents via email.	Parents may be added to your class list if you see this box to the left of your classs list.
When invited, here is the link parents will be taken to.  They will need to 'Accept' being on this list.  The following screen will allow then to set their preference of how often they would like to receive email summaries.

with Canvas and Schoology:

Teachers may invite parents to any class as 'observers' and have similar viewing access as the students.  In Canvas, you actually add 'People'.  The drop-down shown here will determine their role. Parents may log into a course in the same way that their students do.  They can 'see' the course, but, as expected, cannot submit anything.

with SeeSaw:

SeeSaw works well for younger students.  They did a great job making this application easy for teachers and students.  It works especially well with sketches and pictures taken with the camera. Students can use a QR code to quickly enroll in a teacher's course. Once students are added parents/families may be added to receive class notifications or have a chance to view their child's work.

Please let me know if you would like to learn more about creating parent connections through Learning Management Systems.

Life in 100 years

What will life be like in 100 years?

             ... a project for 3rd and 4th graders.

Every student has an iPad so every student should be able to do this in their own classroom.

The Setup:

Install AgingBooth and Pages on every iPad from Self Service. A note:  If Pages does not work on your student iPads, please delete and reinstall from Self Service.  It should work just fine then.

Create a picture of what you could look like in 100 years.

Open the application Aging Booth.  Tap on Camera to begin.
Save the Image to your Photos

Write down some thoughts about what you think life will be like in 100 years.

Download this Pages template and share with the class. It includes space for a picture and space for students predictions.
Tap on the + in the upper right corner. Navigate to your selfie in the Camera Roll to insert your picture.

Double tap below the picture to type your name. Double tap in the text box at the right side of the screen. After having a minute to think about it, include at least one prediction about life in 100 years.

Share the project with your teacher.

Tap the ... icon in the upper right corner. Tap on Send a Copy and AirDrop to the classroom teacher's computer. Teachers:  Be sure that your computer is set to receive files by AirDrop from your students.

Teachers:  Please drop these files into a Google Drive folder and share with Mr. Gruman to be shared out by the Davis Centennial Committee.  The Committee and Mr. Gruman can be available to help out your class with this little project, too.

Photo Gallery:

Plain Text

Plain text is about as exciting as dry toast, but can be necessary part of using the same text in multiple places.  It's like Mini-Wheats with no 'frosting'.  

Every word processor uses its own background coding that is used for formatting.  There are some programs that do not play well with each other with formatting, even simple items like Return, Bold, and italics.

Here are some ways to quickly clear out the text formatting that you may difficulty with when copying/pasting between different programs:

A little note first...  Beware that this will clear out any formatting, including web links.

Using TextEdit:

This is in your Applications folder.  It is a primitive word processor that come with every Mac.  

Begin by pasting your text into a new TextEdit document.

Go to Format -> Make Plain Text  to remove all formatting.

Using Gmail:

Paste the text into the body of a new email.  

Click on the 'A' in your text editing palette.  Select 'Remove Formatting'

Remember the days of Microsoft Works and Microsoft Word and how they never seemed to work well with each other even though they were created by the same company?  Those issues are much less common now.  

Formatting can also be removed from a Pages document doing this:

 or a Word document by doing this:

Web Clip - Creating iPad Shortcuts

For those frequently used websites on your iPad, a Web Clip may be created to have it act just like any other application.  You may want to try this with websites such as MobyMax.

This link will give you quick directions.

This short video will show you how to create a web clip on your iPad for any website:

Student Testing on iPads

The NWEA MAP and  FAST assessments are administered to our elementary students as a measure of academic progress.  They are given multiple times each school year.


MAP is an acronym for Measures of Academic Progress and is created by NWEA, the Northwest Evaluation Association.  Answers to some common questions about the MAP test may be found at this link.   A description of academic growth with the MAP assessment may be found at this link.


The Iowa TIER (Tools for Innovation and Educational Results) Assessments were recently purchased by the State of Iowa from TIES, in Minnesota.  The FAST screenings (Formative Assessment for System for Teachers) are used as a part of an RTI (Response to Intervention) or a MTSS (Multi-Tiered System of Support) for our students.    These tests are provided at no cost to Iowa schools for students in grades K-6.

Both testing platforms recently made significant updates to be more compatible with tablet computers.  This included created free iPad Apps that students may use to take the tests.  In the past, they both had been geared towards use on desktop computers only.  There is still significant time put into creating student login accounts ahead of time by District personnel.

The NWEA Map testing application is now available on all elementary student and teacher iPads in our District.   It is either already installed on the iPads or available in Self Service under the 'Accounts' category.  It is also available on Apple's App Store, but Self Service is the preferred method of installation. Students at Grinnell-Newburg Schools in grades K-4 will be using this for the first time in the 2017-2018 school year.

Iowa Tier FAST Testing may also be completed on iPads using the Safari web browser. Click here to read more about FAST testing this coming school year.

In past years, classes would take turns using the building computer labs for both tests.  Now, students will be completing the test on their iPad in their classroom.  The iPad has a touchscreen interface instead of the mouse and keyboard of the desktop computer.  Every K-4 student is now issued their own iPad to use.  They remain on-site, but are used by students throughout the school day.

It will be interesting to see how the testing experience affects scores and the logistics behind getting all students tested.  I speculate that scores will either be unchanged or improve and that the logistics changes will mean that students will spend less classroom time disrupted by the test and return sooner to their normal routine.

In past years students frequently had difficulty completing the FAST test, but this was found to be primarily due to the hosting company and no fault of the schools.  With some significant changes in the last 6 months, this will hopefully not happen this school year.