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The Digital Backpack. Your Resource for Online Learning
Group of paper plane in one direction and with one individual pointing in the different way, can be used leadership/individuality concepts.( 3d render )
Tips and Tools
Katie Tasch Bielecki

Using Genius Hour to help students cultivate their passions and transform their world

The most powerful thing we can do as educators is to invite our students to explore. Service-learning and project-based learning are two ways to allow students to explore and get involved in their communities. These two experiences continue to be woven into Katie Bielecki’s teaching and have spurred on the implementation of Genius Hour in her classroom.

Tips and Tools
Denise Gallemore

Using Roadmaps to create deeply digital lessons for students

Roadmaps is an open educational resource that allows teachers to create interactive, graphical, collaborative, and adaptive deeply digital lessons that are easy to use. This tool promotes collaboration between students and teachers which is why Denise Gallemore regularly uses it in her 5th-grade social studies and ELA classroom.

Girl standing in front of a chalkboard with code written on it
Tips and Tools
Taylor White

Using computer science and computational thinking in the kindergarten classroom

Kindergartners have the ability to do a lot more than we often expect from them. Taylor White’s use of computer science and computational thinking lessons opened her eyes to what kindergartners have the capacity to do at a young age. While she witnessed them break down problems with machines and codes, she began to see it bleed into how the students broke down problems with their peers.

Podcast with Keith Tramper
Podcasts
The Digital Backpack

Podcast: Digital Well-being

 In this episode, we chat with Keith Tramper about digital wellbeing. We discuss what digital wellbeing is, how it relates to our lives, and

Tips and Tools
Lauren Graham

Using Piktochart in the Classroom

Some of my students were struggling with specific aspects of taking a course online, as well as certain assignments. They would send me emails that

illustration of graduation cap and diploma
Summer Learning
Lisa Rohde

Top 10 reasons students choose online summer credit recovery

When a student fails a class — or perhaps multiple classes — they may come to the realization that taking classes over the summer is the only way they can graduate on time with the rest of their peers. For students facing this situation, taking summer courses online can be a great way to recover the credits needed for graduation without missing out on their existing summer plans.

Educating AP Students Across Locales

In 2016, Michigan Virtual, in conjunction with partner schools in the Virtual School Leadership Alliance, published a report on educating students across locales. This report

Lauren Nalepa's Welcome Graphic
Tips and Tools
Lauren Nalepa

Using Google Slides to showcase student art and create an inviting online classroom

As an online teacher, Google Slides been the answer to all my hopes and dreams. Using it is like making a collage, but my fingers don’t get sticky! Pretty much everything I post in my online courses is created in Slides. One of my favorite ways to use Slides is for a Class Gallery, a place where students can showcase their artwork.

screenshot of the seesaw app on iPad
Tips and Tools
Erin Mastin

Using SeeSaw to help students set, achieve, and reflect on their goals

Young students often have a hard time thinking about actions, consequences, and, generally, anything that takes place in the future, so setting goals is not an easy task for them. In this article, Erin walks you through how to use the iPad App, SeeSaw, to help students set and achieve goals.

Screen capture of one of the videos Dan Spencer shares with his students
Tips and Tools
Dan Spencer

Using videos to spend more meaningful time with students

It’s my dream is to have a classroom that feels like a Starbucks with students spread all over the room, engaging in a variety of activities, working in a group on a lab, or working solo on an assignment.But how do you make this type of independent learning a reality? For me, the answer was the camera on my phone. I know, nothing fancy, no bells or whistles, just my camera. Thanks to the work shared by Ben Rimes, the power of the camera allows me to be in multiple places at once.

Podcasts
The Digital Backpack

Podcast: Student Agency and Google Classroom

Welcome to Digital Backpack! In our first Digital Backpack cast, we chat with Traci Smith, a high school English teacher at De La Salle. She

Photo of Alanna and Kim
Tips and Tools
Kim Garvison & Alanna Prieditis

Using Calendly for scheduling student meetings

One of the biggest challenges as online Spanish teachers? Regularly scheduling time to connect with each student in our course to listen to and assess their language development. We needed to find a tool that would eliminate the need for several back-and-forth communications to simply set up an appointment for each short assessment. We not only wanted a tool to help share available time slots for appointments, but also one that would sync with our calendar. That’s when we discovered Calendly.

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