MRVED Update - February 24, 2021

MRVED Business

Upcoming Meetings

February 24, 2021 - Superintendents' Council

March 12, 2021 - Title III Paraprofessional 

April 1st Common Inservice Day

With warmer weather on the horizon, April 1st will be here before we know it. The MRVED will continue to work towards our Social Emotional Learning goals for our common days. Since we can't all come together again, the MRVED is creating a website that will include SEL activities, as well as a handful of webinars that teachers can watch with specific discussion questions. Teachers are encouraged to utilize the activities and/or videos in groups (PLC, Grade Level, Content Area). There are some excellent, high quality activities, and videos for teachers to access. Look for the website roughly a week prior to the event.

Also, as part of the April 1st date, the MRVED will be piloting an idea to try to effectively collaborate amongst our districts from a distance. The collaborative time will take place between 10:00-12:00 on April 1st. Instead of the MRVED controlling which virtual platform will be used, we are leaving that up to the teachers who wish to start a collaborative meeting. Teachers will have the power to decide what and when they want to collaborate, all you have to do is place a video call link into the document listed below. Please have your collaborative group and link listed on the document no later than Friday, March 26 at 3:00 PM.

If you wish to collaborate around a certain topic, or grade level, or even content area, please sign-up using the document linked below. 

Collaboration Zone Sign-Up

Look for more information from your district pertaining to a schedule for the day. The SEL videos and activities can take place at any time during the day or even after. The Collaboration Zone will take place from 10:00-12:00 on April 1st.

Updates

MN Social Studies Standards Update

Since releasing the first working draft of the social studies standards in December, the Minnesota Department of Education has received significant feedback from throughout Minnesota. To provide time to review all of the public comments, the department is building more time into the process of revising the standards. The Social Studies Standards Committee meeting scheduled for Tuesday, February 2, is canceled. The second draft of Social Studies Standards will be published later this spring. This will provide the time needed to thoroughly review the feedback received. The next Social Studies Standards Committee meeting will be held Thursday, March 25. Watch the social studies standards page for updates on the Social Studies Standards revision process, future public comment periods, and meetings. With the extended time period to provide time for feedback, review and revision, the final draft of the standards will not be completed until fall of 2021.

There are also two bills working their way through the MN House and Senate. One calls for the complete disbandment of the committee, while the other calls for a halt in activities until next year. There was also a bill introduced to completely stop ALL standards review. It is not known at the moment if any of these bills has enough support to make it to the Governor.

Online Relicensure Webinars

With the cancellation of MELT, I have had a handful of teachers contact me looking for places to watch webinars to meet relicensure requirements. Be mindful of any "free" professional development websites. Many are filled with advertisements and/or not good quality. I have been recommending the following resources:

ASCD - ASCD is one of the leaders in professional development for education.

MDE - Minnesota Department of Education offers training on a variety of topics throughout the year.

Learning Forward - Need to be a member to access, but membership is not too expensive

Always check with your local continuing education committee to ensure the webinars meet your local requirements.

Resources

Relationship Article

Many of our students are back in the classroom. One of the most prominent phrases I hear from teachers is, "The kids are so happy to back with their classmates." You can really tell the kids lacked peer to peer relationships throughout distance learning. Now that most are back, we also need to remember those that continue with distance learning. How are we creating relationships with those students? How are we helping foster the peer to peer relationships. Edutopia provided a great article by Liz Kolb, titled A Focus on Relationships When Students Aren't Together. The article provides some good activities for teachers to reach those students at ta distance. Give it a read today!

Editing Videos in Google Slides

I was recently asked about how to shorten a video that is stored in Google Drive. There are different options for this. You can upload the video to YouTube and use the YouTube studio editor. You could also use another web application like WeVideo. While researching the topic more, I also found another way to edit Google Drive videos; use Google Slides! Check out this post from Jeffrey Bradbury on how to do it. Sometimes the most complicated problems have the simplest solutions.