Quick Tip: Creating a Google Account using your school email

By now, I'm sure you've heard about Google Drive along with some of the useful apps that are available.  The benefits to using something like the Google apps are that they are stored in the cloud, so it's possible to pull them up from different buildings on different devices without having to carry around a flash drive or other media that can fail you.  If you play your cards right, it can also mean less paper, which is a big deal for the many many SLPs who travel between buildings.

Most people think you have to have a gmail address to have all the access to the whole kit and kaboodle of Google.  It creates an ethical dilemma.  You obviously don't want to use your personal email address to store information about your students or school building.  Additionally, if you share a document with a coworker, you don't really want it to come from "Alli_cat423" or whatever was available when you signed up.

The truth is, you can sign up for all the bells and whistles of Google without the hassle of coming up with a Gmail address.  In fact, you can use your school address to get an account, which is nice for that coworker who wants to share PLC notes with you, as it's a whole lot easier to plug in your work email than to remember the correct combination of numbers after your name that you might have to create with a new gmail account.

The first thing you'll want to do is go to the Google Drive website.  If you already have an account, don't fret, just sign out and follow my lead.  As you can see from the picture above, you want to Add Account.

In all things silly Google, you will end up here.  When you said Add Account, it thought you meant you already had one, and wanted to enter that, or that someone with an account was sharing your computer.  You really want to create an account, so that's your next click.

Be ready for the secret move.  Are you ready?  Here it comes.

When you are filling in your information, there's small print under the "choose your username" that you don't want to miss.  It's easy to do, because if you're me, choosing a username induces panic as apparently my name is way more common than I realized until I had to start choosing usernames.

When you click on the link, it will replace the username line with a place for your current email.  That's where you enter your school address.

Two things you need to know about this:
1. You will not get Gmail.  Your school email will be tied to this account, and any notifications Google sends you will go there.  It gets you access to Drive, Google Keep, Calendar, and other tools, just not Gmail.
2. When you sign in, you will use your entire school email address as your username.  No leaving off the @blahblah.org. 


Next week, I'll be posting about my current adoration of Google Forms and instructions on creating a parent contact log.  Stay tuned!

New job, new standards!

As I mentioned previously, I am shifting from elementary to early childhood.  One of the big shifts for me will be in my goal writing.  I've been using my Common Core Goal Matrix as a handy one page reference for writing goals.  Of course, I can still use it for my kids going into Kindergarten, but I have to learn a new set of standards, as well.

In Illinois, we have the Illinois Early Learning and Development Standards, which was revised in 2013 to align with not only the Early Intervention Standards for the state, but also Common Core.  The document itself has a lot of GREAT information, and each standard is broken down into three benchmarks that build on each other until "mastery".  Unfortunately, it's also 134 pages long.

At my meeting on Friday, I learned that our district gives parents the option of what my coordinator calls a "trifecta" meeting.  If the team feels further evaluation is needed after an evaluation, parents are given the option to hold the domain, evaluation, eligibility review and IEP all in the same day.  We have about 30 minutes between the end of the eval and the start of the eligibility review to enter our evaluation report and develop goals if necessary.  Needless to say, I'm going to need a good TPBA report template for myself to help streamline!

The other thing I quickly realized I'll need is a way to organize the standards so I can write goals that align with them.  This summer, I got a glance of our new criteria for evaluation that my district will be using.  Posting learning objectives is one of the requirements.  

The first thing I did was list all of the English Language and Social/Emotional Development standards on one sheet.  

Now you can see why this is 134 pages!

 
Whew!  It's certainly a handy document to have, but it doesn't really break down the standards, and it isn't organized by goal areas quite the way I'd like it to be.  We know as SLPs, standards for some of the areas we work on are easier to find than others.  For example, unlike in the Common Core Standards, speaking clearly is only in an overall goal area, not in any specific objective- which means I have to find the best fit for goal areas like phono/artic and fluency.  There are some great objectives related to game play (I called it cooperating, because while I know learning how to play games is a big thing for many of my students, I cringe to think of the administrator wandering through my room and my objective being, "playing a game").  I also included objectives for increasing independence, pretend play, and shared/joint attention, including the staples of following directions, grammar, asking and answering questions, listening comprehension, retelling, pragmatics, artic/phono, and fluency. There are a total of 21 objectives.

Since everything in the CCSS world is in "I can" statements, that's the format I stuck with.  Parents are going to be introduced to them in kindergarten, and if the student has an older sibling, they probably already have exposure to it.  

There are 21 objectives in total in the areas of increasing independence, pretend play, shared/joint attention, following directions, grammar, asking and answering questions, listening comprehension, retelling, pragmatics, artic/phono, fluency. "I can" statements in kid-friendly language based on the information provided in the standards. The relevant standards are in the bottom right corner.

 I'm still not confident about my office location, so for right now, I plan on printing these out and putting them in sheet protectors secured with binder rings so I can easily flip through.  I'm also planning on printing 4 to a page, laminating, cutting apart, and securing with a binder ring for a to-go pack that I can bring with me in the classroom or to meetings.

If you do purchase this product and would like to see a goal area not included, please just let me know, and I will do my best to accommodate!

I tried to minimize color on this one, but if you are a person who goes for black and white, that's an option, too.  

Both products will be on sale during the big TpT back to school sale.  The color one can be found here, and here's the link to the black & white version.

I hope that if you serve the population I do, this will be helpful to you!