Welcome Back!

Welcome back to a new year!  It's an exciting time of year in the cycle of schools.  It's like New Year's Eve; the promise of a fresh start is inspiring and energizing.  The hope that year will be even better than the last - what can feel better than that?

Indeed, this year will be even better than the last.  You'll notice some changes around St. Paul Public Schools in terms of the integrated learning environment.  Technology moves fast and St. Paul is moving fast too.  

image from Apple

The presence of iPads is increasing in St. Paul Public schools.  Some buildings are working towards saturation of certain grade levels to ensure that each child has the opportunity to work in a fully integrated environment as they go through their education in St. Paul.  Other buildings are planning for carts for teachers to use on an as needed basis.

Nooks are will be used at several sites as access points for Achieve3000, research, and increased variety in classroom reading material.

Schools will have more money in site budgets than last year; we expect this trend toward mobile devices to continue to increase, furthering the pervasiveness of the integrated environment here in SPPS.   

image from Stevee at userlogos.org

The Moodle system was upgraded over the summer.  Moodle, now found at elearn.spps.org,  has even more potential to individualize education for our students.  Some of the new features include:

• Conditional Release:  You can't do this activity until you complete this other one, or maybe complete it with at least an 80%.  Or if you get less than 70% on this, then a remediation activity becomes part of your course work.  You can create learning paths.
• Mobile Themes:  This version of Moodle is designed to work with iPad, phones, and more. Think learning anywhere, anytime.
• Rubric Assignment Grading
• Activity Roles:  Make a student a teacher for a particular activity or let the Principal act as the rater in a brainstorming forum.
• Integration with Google Doc: The file picker allows you to submit a Google Doc as an assignment submission or link to a Google Doc easily.

You may also remember that YouTube was opened for staff last Spring. SPPS Apps (Google Apps for Education) is being enhanced to make account creation and use more streamlined. St. Paul Public Schools is opening the environment to create barrier free access to learning tools and we know the students can't wait!