You have no idea where to begin.

Here’s a peek into your future: On that first propitious day, everything will change. Your colleagues will assume you received a data upload of the answers to every techie question. It doesn’t matter that yesterday, you were one of them. Now, you will be on a pedestal, colleague’s necks craned upward as they ask , How do I get the Smartscreen to work? or We need microphones for a lesson I’m starting in three minutes. Can you please-please-please fix them? You will nod your head, smile woodenly, and race to your classroom for the digital manuals (if you’re lucky) or Google for online help.

Let me start by saying: Don’t worry. Really. You’ll learn by doing, just as we teach students. Take a deep breath, engage your brain, and let your brilliance shine.

That’s the number one skill–confidence–but there are a five other practical strategies that have worked for those who came before you. Consider:

Be a communicator

Talk to grade-level teachers weekly. Scaffold your lessons with what they teach. Ask them to stay during tech class and offer on-the-spot tie-ins between what you teach and they say in class. Yes, they might want/need the time for planning or meetings, but the benefit to students of this team approach is tremendous. And it benefits the teachers, also. Many of them are not yet sold on integrating tech into their classrooms. They know they must if they’re in one of the 46 Common Core adoptive states, but they don’t like it, don’t know how to do it, and don’t see why it’s so important. When they see you do it, they will be more willing to weave it into their lessons. For example, when they hear how you reinforce good keyboarding skills, they will be more likely to insist on those traits in their classroom.

Be a risk-taker

Flaunt your cheeky geekiness. Start a Twitter feed. Use your iPhone as a timer for a speed test or the iPad to scan in art for a digital portfolio. At any opportunity, share your geek glee with students. Let them see that tech is part of life, not a subject taught in school. It’s a habit, a time-saver, a facilitator, a joy. It won’t take long to convert them. A couple of admiring glances from friends or appreciative thanks from parents and they’ll be sold.

Be an explorer

Go to the grade-level classrooms and demonstrate how technology is part of learning. This can be via iPads, the class pod of computers, the netbooks, or whatever is available. Ask students what they are doing in class and offer tech methods to make it easier. For example, are they submitting homework in a pile on the teacher’s desk? Try a drop box–or email. Could they type reports instead of handwrite them (I know–this gets philosophic, so be prepared for that discussion)? Instead of hand-drawn posters where success leans toward the artistically-talented, could they use Glogster? Encourage students to plug in during class.

Be a negotiator

You need parental buy-in on tech ed, but it is a topic typically outside their comfort zone. I often hear from 2nd grade parents that their children know more than they do (I’m talking MS Office, internet use, and online tools). Understand that this frightens them and part of your job is to mitigate their fears. Here are some ideas:

• Have your door always open. Be ready and willing to talk with them about how to complete their child’s projects–not so they can do for them, but so they feel it is within their child’s grasp. Take as long as needed and welcome them to return.
• Answer parent tech questions, even if its about a home computer problem. My experience is these are often simple, but intimidating. If you mitigate fear, you maximize support for tech ed.
• Offer a parent class that teaches the skills students are learning. Listen to your group. What makes these intelligent adults nervous about tech? Solve it for them. I often start with an agenda and end with a free-for-all, where I answer questions or help parents create fliers for soccer teams or solve home-based tech problems. It’s all good. They leave feeling I’m a partner.

Don’t take life too seriously

This might be #6, but it may be the most important: Have a sense of humor about everything. You’re going to have computer meltdowns. It’s why robots can’t replace teachers, so embrace chaos. One of the true joys of tech is the puzzling. Why doesn’t the mouse work? Why does a website work on one computer and not another? Where’d the taskbar go? Let students see how much fun it is to engage the brain. Here are a few posters (here and here) to celebrate your status.

That’s it, just these five skills plus one. Any questions? Add a comment if you agree.

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor of a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum, and creator of technology training books for how to integrate technology in education. She is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is webmaster for six blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, presentation reviewer for CSTA, Cisco guest blogger, a monthly contributor to TeachHUB, columnist for Examiner.com, featured blogger for Technology in Education, and IMS tech expert. Currently, she’s editing a techno-thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

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Once a year, we honor them, their sacrifice, and those they left behind. Here are some activities to help students understand the import of this day:

1. Folding the American flag
2. In Flanders Field–poem
3. Memorial Day Maze
4. Memorial Day Messages, Speeches, Oaths, Poems, Anthems,  and images
5. Memorial Day Poems
6. Memorial Day Poetry–poems
7. Memorial Day Prayer
8. Memorial Day puzzle I
9. Memorial Day Puzzle II
10. Memorial Day Quiz
12. Memorial Day Word Search
13. Patriotic numbers coloring pages
14. Primary source recollections of War
15. Quotes about Memorial Day/Wars
16. Remember our Warriors
17. Who you are remembering–Americans killed in action

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor of a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum, and creator of technology training books for how to integrate technology in education. She is webmaster for six blogs, CSG Master Teacher, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, Cisco guest blogger, a columnist for Examiner.com, featured blogger for Technology in Education, IMS tech expert, and a monthly contributor to TeachHUB. Currently, she’s editing a techno-thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

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If you purchased SL’s Fourth Edition, consider the tech changes in education since its 2011 publication:

• Windows has updated their platform—twice
• iPads are the device of choice in the classroom
• Class Smartboards are more norm than abnorm(al)
• Technology in the classroom has changed from ‘nice to have’ to ‘must have’
• 1:1 has become a realistic goal
• Student research is as often done online as in the library
• Students spend as much time in a digital neighborhood as their home town
• Textbooks are considered resources rather than bibles
• Teachers who don’t use technology are an endangered species
• Words like ‘blended learning’, ‘authentic’, ‘transfer’, ‘evidence’ are now integral to teaching
• Common Core Standards have swept like a firestorm through the education community, most timed to take effect after 2011

• Common Core Standards
• ISTE Standards
• essential question
• big idea
• materials required
• vocabulary used
• problem solving for lesson
• time required to complete
• teacher preparation required
• steps to accomplish goals
• assessment strategies
• troubleshooting
• how to extend learning
• additional resources
• examples, grading rubrics

In a broader sense:

• Each lesson reflects Common Core emphasis on comprehension, problem-solving, critical thinking, preparing students for career and college
• Students learn to understand the process, not replicate a skill
• Focus is on transfer of knowledge and blended learning
  
• Collaboration and sharing is often required
• Online support is offered FREE through co-teaching wikis and a help blog

Here’s the Publisher’s blurb:

The choice of hundreds of school districts, private schools and homeschoolers around the world and tens of thousands of students, this nine-volume tech ed curriculum [7th grade due in June, 8th grade due in July/August] is the all-in-one solution to running an effective, efficient, and fun technology program for kindergarten-eighth grade (each grade level textbook sold separately) whether you are the lab specialist, IT coordinator, or classroom teacher. Each lesson is aligned with both Common Core State Standards* and National Educational Technology Standards, and includes an Essential Question, Big Idea, suggested Assessments, required materials, vocabulary, problem solving, teacher preparation required, how to extend learning, examples, grading rubrics, additional resources, and how students can collaborate/share projects. Using a tested approach that promotes literacy, critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making, students learn the technology required to prepare for their future. The secret for you, as teacher, is knowing what to teach and when.

Each textbook includes a K-6 [6-8 for grades 7/8] wide-ranging Scope and Sequence, 32 weekly lessons, monthly homework (3^rd-5^th only), student Certificate of Completion, a comprehensive list of websites to support learning, articles that address tech pedagogy, and posters ready to print and hang on your walls.

Sound good? Here’s where to purchase:

Publisher’s website (print or digital)

Teachers Pay Teachers (digital only)

Site Licenses–if you want these Common Core lessons available in all classrooms, across all platforms (iPads, desktops, laptops, more) for one low price

For lesson previews, click here, scroll to 5-15-13 post, to the bottom.

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor of a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum, and creator of technology training books for how to integrate technology in education. She is webmaster for six blogs, CSG Master Teacher, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, Cisco guest blogger, a columnist for Examiner.com, featured blogger for Technology in Education, IMS tech expert, and a monthly contributor to TeachHUB. Currently, she’s editing a techno-thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

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Then you got a job and reality struck. You had lesson plans to get through, standards to assess, and state-wide tests that students must do well on or you’d get the blame. A glance in the mirror said you were becoming that teacher you hated in school. You considered leaving the profession.

Until the inquiry-based classroom arrived where teaching’s goal was not the solution to a problem, but the path followed. It’s what you’d hoped to do long ago when you started–but how do you turn a traditional entrenched classroom into one that’s inquiry-based?

One step at a time, and here are fifteen you can take. One or more will resonate with your teaching style:

Flip the classroom

The night prior to the lesson, have students read the lecture materials so you can spend class time in hands-on discovery.

Don’t answer student questions–show them how to do it themselves.

When students have questions, you guide them toward answers. Don’t give them a fish, rather teach them to fish. When students understand the methodology, they can repeat the process. Without understanding, they are robots.

But this requires comprehensive teacher preparation to be ready for the multitude of directions a conversation can go, not just steer student inquiry where you’re comfortable. Inquiry-based lessons are process-, not product-oriented. How students reach conclusions is as important as the conclusions they reach. That critical thinking is what it’s about. Think back to your favorite school lessons. Were they where you learned the capital of every state or where you came to understand the scientific method? (OK, maybe that comparison doesn’t work, but you get my point–likely, your favorite lessons required you to think, not regurgitate).

Listen when students speak

It’s tempting to think you know what students are going to ask/say. Resist the impulse. Listen. Try to understand what their real question is, not what their words say. Watch them. Are they comfortable with your answer, or does it make them squirm? Take the time to travel the distance to a solution.

Encourage questions.

Class is ticking away and there are too many questions. If you take time to answer all of them, you won’t cover the material scheduled.

That’s OK. Take the time. Make the issues clear. An odd thing will start to happen. As students more thoroughly understand a concept, they will transfer that knowledge to other lessons and those will go faster than expected. By the end of the year, you’ll have covered more material in more depth. Cool, hunh?

Spend time on projects, not lecturing

There’s an old Chinese proverb, although Ben Franklin occasionally gets credit for these words:

“Tell me and I’ll forget.

Show me and I may remember.

Involve me and I’ll understand.”

Inquiry is about doing, not observing, action not inaction.

Lessons are fluid

Learning isn’t linear. It’s a web that grows out from the central question. As such, your lesson plan may change dramatically based on student inquiry. If you teach three fifth grade classes, each will likely be different from the other. That’s OK. Your challenge is to track what you did in each class and pick up from where you left off. That’s OK, too. It’s part of the job of teaching an inquiry-based class.

Publish and share

Inquiry-based classrooms share knowledge. This can be accomplished via a class wiki, blogs, websites, but it’s done. Students understand how to embed articles and projects into the internet or class network so its shared by everyone. They accept that part of their responsibility as a student is to ask questions about these shared materials, read and comment on them, and use them as resources. We all grow when one grows.

Reflection is included in every lesson plan

What did students learn? Where can they transfer it? You as teacher do that after every teaching experience. Your students do it also. Then you understand if what they learned was what you planned. Or something else.

You are a fellow learner

Students learn they are valued in the classroom experience. Their conclusions bend discussion, mold learning. In this way, they understand the importance of their participation in projects, reflections, and collaborative experiences. Encourage this. Accept that the inquiry-based classroom will be noisier than the typical class–and that’s a good thing.

Questions don’t have yes-no answers

Likely, they don’t even have a concrete answer. They are more ‘how’ and ‘why’, which requires investigation into multiple strands to answer well. Assessment, then, becomes the student ability to use problem-solving and thinking skills, not to repeat someone else’s conclusions.

Summative assessments are less paper-and-pencil and more hands-on, creative, and student-centered

They are less about answering teacher questions than sharing student learning. You might even have students create their own assessments in something like PuzzleMaker.

That’s it–eleven ideas. Any handful of these approaches will morph your classroom from passive to sparkling, from boring to brilliant. In the comments, share what happened the first time you tried to remove the pedagogic anchor and set your class lose, the simple goal: learning?

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor of a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum, and creator of technology training books for how to integrate technology in education. She is webmaster for six blogs, CSG Master Teacher, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, Cisco guest blogger, a columnist for Examiner.com, featured blogger for Technology in Education, IMS tech expert, and a monthly contributor to TeachHUB. Currently, she’s editing a techno-thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

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Q: My kindergarten and first grade students are too young to create their own slideshows for Open House (or any parent day) and I’m just too busy. What’s an easy way to display their work digitally for parents that also involves the students in the preparation?

A: I had this problem last year. I simply ran out of time trying to prepare so I offloaded the work onto the students. I was worried it would be too much, but it turned into a wonderful experience for students and parents alike. Here’s all you do:

• Go to the start button
• Go to Computer in the right column
• Select the folder with the pictures you want displayed as a slideshow
• Select Slideshow from the toolbar

If Slideshow doesn’t show up on the toolbar, do the following:

• Right-click on the folder with the pictures you want displayed as a slideshow
• Select the last tab–Customize
• Select Pictures from the drop-down menu
• Say OK

Be prepared for students being very proud of themselves when their parents are amazed at their work.

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Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor of a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum, and creator of technology training books for how to integrate technology in education. She is webmaster for six blogs, CSG Master Teacher, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, Cisco guest blogger, a columnist for Examiner.com, featured blogger for Technology in Education, IMS tech expert, and a monthly contributor to TeachHUB. Currently, she’s editing a techno-thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

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Age:

Kindergarten/1st

Topic:

Keyboarding

Address:

Big Brown Bear

Review:

My K/1s love Brown Bear. It focuses only on key placement. I mention hands on the keyboard, elbows at their sides, but want them to focus on one thing (as Kindergartners like doing)–key placement. I set a goal of ’22 in 30 seconds’ (Brown Bear has a clock that ticks down) and then let them move on to something else like Starfall. Every few minutes I drop the goal–’Now I’m looking for 15!’ They love this game approach. I also have Type to Learn Jr, but they prefer Brown Bear (it’s free, btw).

Click for more keyboarding tips.

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Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor of a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum, and creator of technology training books for how to integrate technology in education. She is webmaster for six blogs, CSG Master Teacher, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, Cisco guest blogger, a columnist for Examiner.com, featured blogger for Technology in Education, IMS tech expert, and a monthly contributor to TeachHUB. Currently, she’s editing a techno-thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

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• You look at a movie trailer and think, “I have that typeface.”
• You get sudden attacks of bittersweet nostalgic feelings when thinking about your long-lost old Commodore 64, Sinclair ZX-81, TRS-80 (or other hardware), and use large amounts of money/time trying to track one down.
• You are wearing ten year old spectacles, made of steel.
• You realize you never cook, eating only take-away pizza.
• You seriously consider devoting a web page to your computer. (Not the brand, mind you, but the actual computer itself)
• You get depressed when you get less than 10 e-mail messages a day.
• You plan to get two Masters degrees.

• You already know what you want to write both Master’s papers and your dissertation about, and you just graduated from College.
• You can discuss the philosophical and physical differences among the tangos.
• Although vaguely insulted by pocket-protector jokes, you still find them funny.
• Someone asks you what languages you know, and you reply Upper Slavic, French, Esperanto and C.
• You spend more than 10 minutes contemplating how traffic lights work.
• You can talk for hours about how, in 25 years, the whole country won’t have E-Mail addresses.
• You design detailed floor plans before moving all of your furniture around.
• You’ve created a new variety of rose.
• You set up your own newsgroup.
• If you know the correct pronunciation of Tex, Linux, and TCL.
• If you paid $6000 for your computer and $500 for your car.
• There’s a newsgroup dedicated to you because of your netly activities.
• Someone mentions the Q Continuum, and you know what that means.
• Everyone in the neighborhood brings you (to) their computers to figure out what is wrong.
• You can hold detailed technical conversations in a second language.
• You are on the Obscure Software and Computer Crap Junk Mailing Lists
• You can explain how AppleTalk Networks work.
• Sleep and nighttime are no longer irrevocably linked
• WAIS is your life.
• You walk past a Con and people know who you are.
• You have a definite philosophy of stacking wood for fires.
• You hear the word “Scuzzy” and the first thing you think of is not an adjective.
• You went to a high school where the only team with a winning record was the Chess team.
• You rig up elaborate mechanisms to do really basic tasks.
• You know about USENET cultures in groups you don’t even read.
• You get REALLY excited when people from countries with limited access to the ‘net are frequent visitors to your pages.
• You don’t hand in final papers unless they’ve been formatted on a desktop publishing program.
• You write web pages about your web pages.
• Your favorite part of Geometry was proving theorems.
• You’ve ever contemplated collecting graters.
• You can remember your web address faster than your phone number.
• You’ll spend a long time customizing a computer you’ll use one day to the absolute pinnacle of comfort, but you won’t bother to spend two hours sewing up a skirt, and wear the damn thing sarong style.
• You do your best work after 11 p.m.
• You work in a building where you need a badge to move between floors.
• You calculate the odds of getting one of the primo parking spaces in relation to your apartment, factoring in time, weather, season, etc, and are accurate over 80% of the time.
• You can count the number of moderately good hacker/computer dude type films on one hand.
• You’ve bought one of those license plate holders on which you can have your URL or E-Mail address embossed
• You can track the geek gene through your family tree.
• You froth at the mouth when someone talks about the “Information Superhighway.”
• You are a member of the USENET elite, invoked in posts in threads to which you have not posted.
• You can sing Tom Lehrer’s element song.
• Not only is your computer in the center of your room, it’s set up to allow ‘netting from your couch, as well as your desk chair.
• You arrange your jobs so you can telecommute.
• You organize your CDs, so the tops all face upward, alphabetically, or by record label (If you do more than one of these, you are an Anal-Retentive Geek).
• You spend a lot of time figuring out which of 100 adult goldfish are the most fertile, have the strongest genes, and combined to produce tiny little goldfish.
• You carry an 264-gig flash drive to and from work.
• You can sing any song from Grease 2. If you do the hand movements while singing, you should get out more.
• You plot to get your grandmother on E-mail.
• You’ve contemplated devoting a web page to World News Now, Kevin, Thalia, Bill, Shielah, Nissan, Okido, Asha, Dick Schapp, Willis, or, natch, Barry.

Click for 10 Steps to Become a Better Geek poster.

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor of a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum, and creator of technology training books for how to integrate technology in education. She is webmaster for six blogs, CSG Master Teacher, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, Cisco guest blogger, a columnist for Examiner.com, featured blogger for Technology in Education, IMS tech expert, and a monthly contributor to TeachHUB. Currently, she’s editing a techno-thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

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Because everyone learns differently.

You don’t use a textbook. Sure, it’s a map, showing you how to get from here to there, but that’s the problem. It dictates how to get ‘there’. For an inquiry-based classroom, you may know where you’re going, but not quite how you’ll get there and that’s a good thing. You are no longer your mother’s teacher who stood in front of rows of students and pointed to the blackboard. You operate well outside your teaching comfort zone as you try out the flipped classroom and the gamification of education and are thrilled with the results.

And then there’s the issue of assessment. What your students have accomplished can’t neatly be summed up by a multiple choice test. When you review what you thought would assess learning (back when you designed the unit), none measure the organic conversations the class had about deep subjects, the risk-taking they engaged in to arrive at answers, the authentic knowledge transfer that popped up independently of your class time. You realize you must open your mind to learning that occurred that you never taught–never saw coming in the weeks you stood amongst your students guiding their education.

Let me digress. I visited the Soviet Union (back when it was one nation) and dropped in on a classroom where students were inculcated with how things must be done. It was a polite, respectful, ordered experience, but without cerebral energy, replete of enthusiasm for the joy of learning, and lacking the wow factor of students independently figuring out how to do something. Seeing the end of that powerful nation, I arrived at different conclusions than the politicians and the economists. I saw a nation starved to death for creativity. Without that ethereal trait, learning didn’t transfer. Without transfer, life required increasingly more scaffolding and prompting until it collapsed in on itself like a hollowed out orange.

So how do you create the inquiry-based classroom? Here’s advice from a few of my efriend teachers:

1. ask open-ended questions and be open-minded about conclusions
2. provide hands-on experiences
3. use groups to foster learning
4. encourage self-paced learning. Be open to the student who learns less but deeper as much as the student who learns a wider breadth
   
5. differentiate instruction. Everyone learns in their own way
6. look for evidence of learning in unusual places. It may be from the child with his/her hand up, but it may also be from the learner who teaches mom how to use email
   
7. understand ‘assessment’ comes in many shapes. It may be a summative quiz, a formative simulation, a rubric, or a game that requires knowledge to succeed. It may be anecdotal or peer-to-peer. Whatever approach shows students are transferring knowledge from your classroom to life is a legitimate assessment
8. be flexible. Class won’t always (probably never) go as your mind’s eye saw it. That’s OK. Learn with students. Observe their progress and adapt to their path.
9. give up the idea that teaching requires control. . Refer to #8–Be flexible
10. facilitate student learning in a way that works for them. Trust that they will come up with the questions required to reach the Big Ideas
    

In the end, know that inquiry-based teaching is not about learning for the moment. You’re creating life-long learners, the individuals who will solve the world’s problems in ten years. How do you ensure they are ready?

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor of a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum, and creator of technology training books for how to integrate technology in education. She is webmaster for six blogs, CSG Master Teacher, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, Cisco guest blogger, a columnist for Examiner.com, featured blogger for Technology in Education, IMS tech expert, and a monthly contributor to TeachHUB. Currently, she’s editing a techno-thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

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Q: I’m copy-pasting between a Word doc and an Excel doc on my computer. I know how to do that, but here’s the problem: I have three Word docs open. I don’t want to close the other two because I’ll need them soon. It takes a lot of time to click down to the taskbar, bring up the Word group and find the correct Word doc. Is there an easier way?

A: Oh yes, Much easier. Use Alt+tab. That takes you to the last window you visited. If you’re toggling between two windows, this is the perfect solution. I use it a lot for grading and report cards.

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Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor of a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum, and creator of technology training books for how to integrate technology in education. She is webmaster for six blogs, CSG Master Teacher, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, Cisco guest blogger, a columnist for Examiner.com, featured blogger for Technology in Education, IMS tech expert, and a monthly contributor to TeachHUB. Currently, she’s editing a techno-thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

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Do you have a tech question?

Dear Otto is an occasional column where I answer questions I get from readers about teaching tech. If you have a question, please complete the form below and I’ll answer it here. For your privacy, I use only first names.

Here’s a great question I got from Cheryl in Indiana:

It seems that my well-structured primary tech classrooms fall apart when it is time to print. Some students just keep pushing Print & end up printing multiple copies, 25 students scramble to the printer to collect their printouts. Total chaos! Any ideas?

I have a two-step solution to that:

• Teach students how to print. I take lesson time to show them the print box, the varied spots where things can be changed, and how to do it right. After that, I know it’s not lack of knowledge causing problems
• I don’t let them go to the printer. First, it gets to be the lab water cooler–everyone hanging out back there, chatting, while they wait for the stuff to print. That’s no good. Second, I’ can’t monitor that everything printed is appropriate if they’re taking papers from the printer. Third, if they print more than one, I want to chat with them about it.
• Consistent offenders aren’t allowed to print. I’ll email it to parents/teacher, but they lose the privilege

Most times, they are cured when I talk to them. I never let it slide because it would descend into chaos.

Does that help? Any other pieces I didn’t mention?

Good luck!

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Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor of a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum, and creator of technology training books for how to integrate technology in education. She is webmaster for six blogs, CSG Master Teacher, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, Cisco guest blogger, a columnist for Examiner.com, featured blogger for Technology in Education, IMS tech expert, and a monthly contributor to TeachHUB. Currently, she’s editing a techno-thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

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