Year: 2011

Book Review: 55 Technology Projects for the Digital Classroom

55 Technology Projects for the Digital Classroom: Everything you need to integrate computers into K-8 classes

by Jacqui Murray

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The all-in-one K-8 toolkit for the lab specialist, classroom teacher and homeschooler, with a years-worth of simple-to-follow projects. Integrate technology into language arts, geography, history, problem solving, research skills, and science lesson plans and units of inquiry using teacher resources that meet NETS-S national guidelines and many state standards. The fifty-five projects are categorized by subject, program (software), and skill (grade) level. Each project includes standards met in three areas (higher-order thinking, technology-specific, and NETS-S), software required, time involved, suggested experience level, subject area supported, tech jargon, step-by-step lessons, extensions for deeper exploration, troubleshooting tips and project examples including reproducibles. Tech programs used are KidPix, all MS productivity software, Google Earth, typing software and online sites, email, Web 2.0 tools (blogs, wikis, internet start pages, social bookmarking and photo storage), Photoshop and Celestia. Also included is an Appendix of over 200 age-appropriate child-friendly websites. Skills taught include collaboration, communication, critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, creativity, digital citizenship, information fluency, presentation, and technology concepts. In short, it’s everything you’d need to successfully integrate technology into the twenty-first century classroom.

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Tech Tip #34: My Program Froze

As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: I’m writing a very (very) important paper and all of a sudden, the screen is frozen. I can’t save it, or anything else. What do I do?

A: Programs do freeze for no reason sometimes, but not often (I’m assuming you take care of your computer–defrag, don’t download with abandon, update it occasionally). Before you declare a dog-ate-my-homework sort of catastrophe, try this: (more…)

LESSON PLANNING

#45: How to Use MS Word to Teach Geography

Where Am I?

Use MS Word target diagram to organize the Universe. Start with the student’s town in the center and build out. Show students how to color the diagram. For olders, add a table at the bottom with the location and a fact about it. This is a great way to show kids how they can organize their thoughts with pictures, diagrams, tables—lots of ways other than simple text

[caption id="attachment_929" align="alignleft" width="182"]Sample diagram Sample diagram[/caption]

Grade Level: 3-5

Background: Using MS Word.

Vocabulary: diagram, graphic organizer, solar system

Time: About 30 minutes

Steps:

  • Open MS Word. Add a heading to the top.
  • Add a title–Where We Are–centered, bold and font 14. Use this to point out the toolbar with the four alignment tools, bold, fonts and font size (more…)