Teacher resources
15 Back-to-School Posts
On everything from get-to-know-you activities to getting yourself ready:
- New School Year? New Tech? I Got You Covered
- 5 Top Ways to Integrate Technology into the New School Year
- 5 Ways to Involve Parents in Your Class
- 3 Organizational Apps to Start the School Year
- 6 Tech Best Practices for New Teachers
- How to Prepare Students for PARCC Tests
- 8 Tech Tools to Get to Know Your Students for Back to School
- 5 Tools To Shake up the New Year
- 3 Apps to Help Brainstorm Next Year’s Lessons
- What Digital Device Should My School Buy?
- 4 Options for a Class Internet Start Page
- 5 Ways Teachers Can Stay on Top of Technology
- Back to School–Tech Makes it Easy to Stay On Top of Everything
- Dear Otto: I need year-long assessments
- 5 Tech Ed Tools to Use this Fall
For the entire list, click this Back-to-School category tag.
Tech Ed Resources for your Class–Lesson Plans
I get a lot of questions from readers about what tech ed resources I use in my classroom so I’m going to take a few days this summer to review them with you. Some are edited and/or written by members of the Ask a Tech Teacher crew. Others, by tech teachers who work with the same publisher I do. All of them, I’ve found well-suited to the task of scaling and differentiating tech skills for age groups, scaffolding learning year-to-year, taking into account the perspectives and norms of all stakeholders, with appropriate metrics to know learning is organic and granular.
Today: Lesson Plans
There are lots of bundles of lesson plans available–by theme, by software, by topic, by standard. Let me review a few:
- bundles of 5 lesson plans–These are great when you want to cover a software program, a tool, a grade, or a standard. Each calls out the higher order thinking skill engaged. Pick the one that fits your need. They’re affordable, focused, and often completed in just a few class sessions.
- bundles of bundles–15 for about $20 (less if you use a discount coupon). Stock up! Buy three bundles of five lessons to cover a wide-range of needs.
- 30 K-5 Common Core-aligned lessons–5 per grade level
- 110 lesson plans–integrate tech into different grades, subjects, by difficulty level, and call out higher-order thinking skills. These cover everything and are discounted this month. Check them out. They could be exactly what you need.
- singles–for as low as $1.99 each. Genius Hour, Google Apps, Khan Academy, and more.
- Holiday projects–16 lesson plans that theme to holidays and keep students in the spirit while learning new tools.
Who needs this
35 Take-aways from Summer 2016 Professional Development
Ask a Tech Teacher’s Summer PD 2016 just ended. A couple dozen of us–teachers, library media specialists, tech integrationists, and lab teachers–gathered virtually for three-five-week-classes that included:
We talked about curriculum maps, warm-up and exit tickets, backchannel devices, building a PLN, screenshots, and screencasts. We experimented with some of the hottest tech tools available for the classroom such as Google Apps, differentiation tools, digital storytelling, visual learning, Twitter, blogs, Common Core and tech, digital citizenship, and formative assessment options. And–maybe the highlight of the classes–we shared ideas and helped each other solve problems. It was run like a flipped classroom where class members read, tested and experimented from resources available in the weekly syllabus. They failed and tried again. Asked questions. They shared with colleagues on discussion boards, blogs, and Tweets. Once a week we got together virtually (via Google Hangout or a Twitter Chat) to share ideas, answer questions, and discuss nuances.
Classes awarded either college credit or a Certificate, based on effort not end product. Here are my takeaways as moderator of this amazing group:
33 Digital Exit Tickets That Fit Most Subjects
Exit tickets (or exit slips) are a time-proven method of checking understanding in the classroom. Often, this means students write down (with pen and paper) a two-three sentence take-away summary of the day’s lesson and turn it in prior to exiting the class. It’s easily understand, requires little preparation, and is done in minutes.
Robert Marzano, classroom researcher and education author, shares four uses for exit slips. Students:
- rate their current understanding of new learning
- analyze and reflect on their efforts around the learning
….and teachers:
- gain feedback on an instructional strategy
- gain feedback about the materials and teaching
Technology provides a great opportunity to update this popular activity so it can be collaborative, shared, and published for the benefit of all. A few weeks ago, I published a Google Spreadsheet as a collaborative way for all of us to share our Exit Ticket suggestions. Here are 28 ideas from readers. I love the variety:
Curriculum Companions Start August 8th
Start date for the 2016-17 online school year:
August, 8, 2016
Curriculum Companion Wikis (K-5 only) follow a tech professional as s/he teaches each lesson in the SL K-5 curriculum textbooks. Presented via video (10-15 minutes each), you can ask questions, start a discussion with other teachers using the curriculum, and access additional resources. It’s your mentor, your sidekick, your best friend in the tech ed field.
If you own any or all of K-5 Structured Learning technology curriculum (5th edition), you have free access to the grade-level wiki. Just look on the front page of the book for a code. If you don’t own the curriculum, you can purchase access on a yearly basis here.
K-5, 32 webinars per grade (192 webinars), 9 months
- comprehensive tech vocabulary
- how-to skills used in lessons
- a class Discussion Board
- shared resources
Detail
- Digital access: via video
- Language: English
- Length of time: one year
- Access: Yearly fee covers K-5 (no discount for single wiki)
Use access in each K-5 curriculum text to join for free. Or, click here to purchase.
Here’s a sample:
Tech Ed Resources–Organize Your Class
I get a lot of questions from readers about what tech ed resources I use in my classroom so I’m taking a few days this summer to review them with you. Some are edited and/or written by members of the Ask a Tech Teacher crew. Others, by tech teachers who work with the same publisher I do. All of them, I’ve found well-suited to the task of scaling and differentiating tech skills for age groups, scaffolding learning year-to-year, taking into account the perspectives and norms of all stakeholders, with appropriate metrics to know learning is organic and granular.
Today: Organizing your classroom
Overview
18 webinars (more added as they become available), approx. 30 minutes each, show how to set up your classroom to be tech-infused.
What’s Included
What You Might Have Missed in July
Here are the most-read posts for the month of July:
- Padlet: A Versatile Classroom Tooly in the Classroom
- 4 Ways to Use Podcasts in the Classroom
- Tech Ed Resources for your Class–Digital Citizenship Curriculum
- 10 Reasons to Screencast in Your Class and 7 Best-in-class Tools
- Why is the Supreme Court So Important — and How to Explain That to Students
- Photos For Class–Robust, Student-safe with built in citations
- Beyond Digital Literacy: How EdTech Fosters Children’s Social-Emotional Development
- Ten Reading-with-Tech Tips You Don’t Want to Miss
- 14 Ways to use Scribble Maps
I do have a bunch of new lesson plans and an update to the K-8 Technology Curriculum.
Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, CSG Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, CAEP reviewer, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, and a weekly contributor to TeachHUB. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.
What You Might Have Missed in June
Here are the most-read posts for the month of June:
- 12 Websites to Teach Mouse Skills
- Website Review: ProdigyGame.com
- 3 Online Keyboarding Programs Students Will Choose
- 9 Best-in-Class Digital Storytelling Tools
- 67 K-8 Hour of Code Suggestions–by Grade Level
- How to Create a Curriculum Map
- 3 Creative Tech Tools to Teach Writing
- 84 Math Websites for K-8
- Chromebooks in the Classrooms–Friend or Foe?
- 16 Great Research Websites for Kids
A few new resources available:
169 Real-World Ways to Add Tech to Your Classroom–Now
Updated K-8 Technology Curriculum (6th edition)
9 Google Apps Tips You Don’t Want to Miss
Here are the top 9 nine Google Apps tips according to Ask a Tech Teacher readers:
- Embed a File from Google Drive
- Google Apps lesson plan
- 8 Google Apps Tricks Every Teacher Should Know
- Google Hangouts–Are You Using Them Yet?
- How to Embed Student Work into Digital Portfolios
- Book Review: Google Apps Meets Common Core
- Dear Otto: How do I teach Google Drive to K/1?
- Google Gravity
- Google Apps Support Bloom’s Taxonomy–Take a Look
