Now that iPads have been rolled out with all Miscoe Hill students, there are a few things you should know:

1. Soon you will be receiving an email from Artsonia.com about our online art gallery. Artsonia is a website established by art teachers for art teachers. It is a secure site. In the past three years, my students and I have uploaded thousands of images of student artwork. Check out our school gallery here to see how it works.

Your child has a gallery set up and waiting for artwork at Artsonia. All you have to do is authorize it. Be on the look out for an email from Artsonia asking you to verify the email address I provided. Follow the steps and you should be all set. If you have any problems, please contact me. Parents/guardians of 6th grade students – if you activated an account for your child last year, it will be the same account this year.

2. We are using Google Classroom as a learning management system in the art room. This allows for me to not only share resources with the students, but also for the students to turn in projects. Please note that when I post assignments to Google Classroom, they are to be done in class. I like to organize the posts in advance, but please don’t think it is homework. Ask your child to show you his/her art class on Google Classroom.

3. Certain websites must be enabled (un-restricted) if you have a privately owned iPad. Please enable:
www.safeshare.tv
www.artsonia.com
www.youtube.com (I will share direct links only, we will never be searching Youtube)
That is it for websites now, there will be more later, so stay tuned.

While we are on the topic of iPads and Websites, it is a great time to bring up Digital Citizenship. Richard Byrne, creator of the Free Technology for Teachers website shared some great digital citizenship games and tools in his post 12 Good Resources for Teaching Digital Citizenship. For parents of my fifth and sixth grade students, I recommend the games geared for elementary level students. Between Internet dangers and cyber-bullying, kids can’t get enough on the topic of Digital Citizenship, in my opinion.