Tech PD News ~ November 23, 2016

Why use the Epic app or website? Lots of reasons why........

If you are not using the Epic app or the Epic website with your elementary students, you are missing out.  Here is an overview of the amazing features within this FREE TO EDUCATORS tool.

With a quick free sign up feature for educators, you and your students will have instant access to one of the world's largest online libraries of books.

You, the teacher, can create student profiles that will allow you and your students personalize their reading interests and also track their reading progress.

Epic empowers students by allowing them to read books of their own choice and it may engage reluctant readers due to the amount of books and being able to choose and read online.  There is a wide range of both fiction and informational texts available to support all areas of the curriculum plus new books are added weekly to keep the library exciting and engaging.

Teachers ~ begin your process by setting up your free account at www.getepic.com/educators.. Make sure you note you are a teacher, not a parent, to get the free account.

What kinds of resources are available?

• Large selections of Read-to-me books
• Educational Videos
• Informational texts that are great for deeper learning and research
• Featured book collections such as Big Nate, Box Car children and more...
• High interest popular titles to engage reluctant readers

As a teacher, you can search books

• search term
• reader's age
• by lexile level

Epic would be a great asset to your classroom. Use it in the following ways:

• independent reading
• group reading
• Daily 5
• Leveled reading groups
• Listen to read
• Whole class or small group reading (on smartboard)
• Researching a topic
• Create questions around books in Epic through the Epic tool to check for student understanding.

Give it a try! You will not be disappointed!

iPad Lunch Bunch ~ November

During the November iPad Lunch Bunch, we talked about the following topics.  

Duck Duck Moose Apps

A whole collection of excellent Early Learning apps became free this summer thanks to Khan Academy purchasing Duck Duck Moose.  Click here to see a list of the apps that are available.  To investigate an app further, click on the picture of the app to learn more about the skills that the app covers, what standards may be addressed, as well as other information about the app and using it with your students.  

The Epic Library on iPads and Chromebooks

Epic is a great tool to use in your classroom, either on iPads or Chromebooks, because it gives student's instant access to over 20,000 books.  AND  teachers get free access to this library.  Click here if you haven't setup your free login. The teacher login is free to use in your classroom.  Once you have your login, use that login and password to login to the Epic app on each of your classroom iPads.   (or getepic.com on a Chromebook) These credentials will hold and students should be automatically logged in each time they use the app.   

You also can create individual student profiles in Epic.  The benefit of this is that you can view a student's reading activity, you can assign books to students as well as create and assign collections of books to students.  

There are also educational videos in Epic.  Videos are from the Smithsonian, Blue Wonders, Animal Wonders, and Encyclopedia Britannica. 

Finally, Epic now allows you to import student rosters from Google Classroom. This saves you a ton of steps in creating Student Profiles.

Read here to learn more:  https://www.getepic.com/faq