Miss McHenry's Blog

Let's go and explore the world! So many of our students are not able to take a trip outside of their state or even city. With the technology that we have, we need to show students what is out there and explore those areas with them. Google has set up Google Earth which allows you to explore anywhere in the World. This can be an amazing tool to use in your classroom to not only explore the world but to use it as a resource for education. Google Earth - The Google Earth tool is one that should be used often in your classroom. It allows you to travel wherever you would like in the World! You can view different cities, bodies of water, mountains etc. You can view it from the outside looking in or you can go to the street view and see what it looks like if you were on the ground. The link above show you how to start your Google Earth tour. Here is a video to get you started! Google Tour Builder - Google Tour allows you to use Google Earth as a resource in creating a tour that c...

Students LOVE (usually) videos that catch their attention when in the classroom. If you can start a lesson or help a lesson become more engaged with a video, would you? My answer would be YES! YouTube can help you edit, cut and create your own videos that can fit you and your classroom. In YouTube you can subscribe to different users who could have educational purposes for your classroom. There are many teachers out there who have YouTube channels that you can subscribe to that may show math concepts, social studies, or science videos. A cool tool that you can do with those videos is to cut and edit them so that you don't have to show the whole thing. Using Edpuzzle can help you cut the videos to fit your needs. Here is my YouTube channel that is set up for my students. Incase you need a little pep talk, here is one of my favorite YouTube kids :) AutoDraw Google not only helps with YouTube ideas and connections, there are many other tools that you can use to with you...

While trying to teach in the 21st century, we need to be able to adjust some of our classroom structures to fit the needs of our students. One of those ways is to use Google Classroom. Google Classroom allows you to invite your students to an online structure of their classwork. Here is an example of my Google Classroom. In my Google Classroom I can add discussion questions, quizzes, resources, assignments, videos and reminders for my students. There are so many options for you to use it and all you need to do is to get your students connected to your Google Classroom. Here is a video to show you how to start to set up your own Google Classroom. Another tool that you can add into your Google account that can benefit your classroom is Google Photos . Google photos is a location on your Google Account that lets you save and add any photos from online or of your own. You can create a library that you are able to share with your students or anyone else with a Google account. I ...

Want to connect, share, edit, talk, create? Google Drive supports all of those things that can make teaching, learning and exploring easy. Here are a few tips that stuck with me. Google Docs: Google Docs allows you to create a word like document but it allows you to do so much more with it. Google Docs is a document that you can share with anyone who has an email. One of the best uses with Google Docs is that you can easily share the document with those who have a google account and then they are able to see, edit and add to your document. You can also change it to where they cannot edit the document. This is a great resource for schools, teachers, and students. I use Google Docs often with my students. It allows for me to edit and even grade their papers. It is user friendly and a great tool with Google. Here is a video showing how to use Google Docs. Google Slide: Google Slides is like PowerPoint, but you are able to access it on any computer that is connected to Google. Go...

I am all about finding shortcuts to make life easier on you. And this week I was able to learn how to make my Google Search life easier as well as my Gmail life easier. There are so many ideas and options out there to help you use these two resources to their full advantage. Here are just a few that I learned about this past week. Google Search: Google Search can also help you find clear and accurate definitions by just changing a step or two that you would usually do. In the Google search box you would type define:(word you are looking for). By adding the define and the colon, you are setting up your Google Search to find the definition right away as well as after that definition would be other sources that have that word in it. This video gives you more tips on how to use Google Search Effectively. Custom Search Engine in Google can help you create specific sites that you would like for you students to use when doing an assignment or project. My Custom Search Engine that I cr...

As an educator, we respect and love to learn to things. While I have used Google before, I have not used Google to its full advantage. Just in these past few days I have learned the power of Google Chrome, Google+, and google extensions. Here are some of those activities specifically that you could use in your classroom.  Edpuzzle - Edpuzzle allows you to edit any ED talk that is out on the web. ED talks are usually motivational or informative talks that can be added into your classroom conversation easily. This could be used daily or weekly in a classroom. This conversations could start how to treat others, how to work hard, or start a introduction on a new topic. Google+ can be used to join different communities, communities are specific areas that focus on a subject, that interest you. In those communities, you will see many different articles, pictures, comments or videos about that subject. These communities could be easily added into your classroom to where your student...