Year: 2013

163 Websites for Teachers to Integrate Tech into Your Classroom

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This list has a little bit of everything, and will kick-start your effort to put technology into your lesson plans Here are the categories:

Analyze, Compare/Contrast
Assessments
Classroom Management
Communication
Critical Thinking
Digital Portfolios
Domain-specific Language
Geography
Lesson Plans
Listening
Literacy
Math
Parent Ed

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Dear Otto: How do I teach [wild and crazy] 7th Grade Tech?

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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 Patricia:

What are best practices for teaching technology applications in a computer lab? As a first year teacher technology applications teacher in a middle school (7th&8th graders mixed classes) I really struggled with engaging students to listen to assignment instructions prior to beginning an activity. Then once the activity started students would ask questions that had already been discussed if they had been listening. It was frustrating to have to repeat instructions 20plus times over again.

Middle Schoolers are a special breed. They definitely need to learn productivity software like word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, but–you’re right–it’s hard to get them to sit still. I’ve found it’s much better to give them big goals, general guidelines, deadlines, and let them go. I just finished editing a tech textbook for 7th grade and it includes units on problem solving, logical thinking, digital citizenship, programming. To teach these topics, you as the teacher engage students with Robotics, Scratch, games (select games that teach–i.e., Minecraft, Bridge Builder, SimCity), web-based communication tools (Animoto, Glogster, blogs, wikis). It’s self-directed, student-paced, so places responsibility for learning squarely with the student. As general lesson guidelines, try these:

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Tech Tip #61: How to Get Youngers to Use the Right Mouse Button

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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 week, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: Kids always get confused when I’m explaining directions that require the right mouse button. I’ve found an easy way to clarify:

“Right click with your mouse”

Student promptly clicks with their left mouse. I know–doesn’t make sense. It does to them. They’re happy to focus on the right hand and have no idea they need to go one level further. My comeback:

“The other right.”

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5 Must-have tools for Ed Conferences

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It’s summer, time for teachers to recharge their cerebral batteries. That could mean reading, going on field trips, spending time with online PLNs, or taking calls from family members who usually end up at voice mail. For many, it means attending conferences like ISTE June 23-26th and NEA July 1-2 to learn how the heck to integrate technology into their lesson plans.

If you aren’t a veteran conference attendee, you may wonder what you should bring. That’s a fair questions considering learning is no longer done sitting in auditoriums nodding off to the wisdom of a guest speaker behind a podium. Now, you might be asked to scan a QR code and visit a website, access meeting documents online, interact digitally, or use a backchannel device to share your real-time thoughts with the presenter. Besides a toothbrush and aspirin, what should you take to your upcoming conference? Here are five tools that will make you look and act like the Diva of Digital:

Google Maps

Some conferences take multiple buildings spread out over several blocks, and depending upon the number of attendees (ISTE last year had about 20,000), your hotel may not be around the corner from the Hall. Bring the latest version of the Google Maps app on your smartphone or iPad, complete with audio directions. All you do is tell it where you’re going, ask for directions, and Siri (the voice behind the iPhone) will lock into your GPS and hold your hand the entire way. If friends are looking for a Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts near the conference, Google Maps will find one. If you want Chinese, use an app like Yelp to find one patrons like.

Conference App

Most educational conferences have one. I find these more useful than the conference website. They are geared for people who are manipulating digital device one-handed, half their attention on the phone and the rest on traffic, meaning: they’re simple and straight-forward. Test drive it so you know where the buttons are, then use it to find meeting rooms, changes in schedules, updates, and (as the ISTE conference app proclaims):

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Common Core requires publishing. Technology makes that happen

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There are a variety of overarching themes in Common Core–‘integrate technology into classroom inquiry’, ‘encourage collaboration and sharing in student work’, ‘use technology to prepare students for college and career’. Each of these could take weeks to wrap into classwork, but there’s one organic tool that accomplishes all three of these while fulfilling a fourth recurring Common Core standard required at all grade levels: Publish student work. Look at this (credit: NGA Center and CCSSO:

Kindergarten: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.K.6 With guidance and support from adults, explore a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.
First grade: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.1.6 With guidance and support from adults, use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.
Second grade: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.2.6 With guidance and support from adults, use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.
Third grade: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.3.6 With guidance and support from adults, use technology to produce and publish writing (using keyboarding skills) as well as to interact and collaborate with others.
Fourth grade: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.4.6 With some guidance and support from adults, use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing
Fifth grade: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.5.6 With some guidance and support from adults, use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing
Sixth grade: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing
Seventh grade: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.7.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing
Eighth grade: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.8.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing

This vertical planning is typical of Common Core where grade-level standards are built from core constructs and scaffolded off prior years.

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Book Review: Common Core Lesson Plans

THE KEY TO ALIGNING YOUR K-5 CLASS WITH COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS

30 Projects that integrate technology into core lesson plans

The Key to Aligning Your K-5 Class with Common Core State Standards is for classroom teachers, technology integration specialists and lab professionals, as a resource for aligning your technology program with the Common Core State Standards now implemented in forty-six states. You will find it a foundational tool for scaffolding technology into the areas of math, language, reading, writing, speaking and listening as is required in CCSS. Overall, they are authentic approaches to student-centered learning, asking the student to be a risk-taker in his/her educational goals and the teacher to act as guide. The essential questions are open-ended and conversations organic and inquiry-driven, ultimately asking students to take responsibility for the process of their own learning.

It can be used as a resource book, to provide exciting new lessons that seamlessly blend technology with lesson plans and involve students in the many new tools available to enrich their educational experiences, or a road map, plotting the vertical planning and differentiated instruction fundamental to CCSS goals.

There are thirty lessons, five per grade level. Each includes:

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Tech Tip #60: How to Add Shortcuts to the Desktop

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: How do I create a shortcut on my desktop so I can find my programs easier?

A: There are two ways to do that:

click on the icon on the start button and drag and drop it to the desktop, or
right click on the icon on ‘all programs’ (click start button, then select ‘all programs’ at the bottom) and select ‘send to’, then select ‘desktop (create shortcut)’

That’s it.

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93 First Grade Websites That Tie into Classroom Lessons

These are my 93 favorite first grade websites. I sprinkle them in throughout the year, adding several each week to the class internet start page, deleting others. I make sure I have 3-4 each week that integrate with classroom lesson plans, 3-4 that deal with technology skills and a few that simply excite students about tech.

Here’s the list (check here for updates):

Dear Otto: Common Core requires publishing student work. How do I do that?

Here’s a great question I got from Rox in South Africa:

In my lab I can only do with my learners software that I can get for free. I would like to do some publishing work with them – do you know of publishing software that is free and appropriate for Grade 4 to Grade 6. I have learnt so much from questions asked by others and your kind, informed answers – Thank you

This is a great question, Rox, one that all teachers are addressing right now because Common Core makes ‘publishing’ fundamental to their standards–

Kindergarten: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.K.6 With guidance and support from adults, explore a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.
First grade: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.1.6 With guidance and support from adults, use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.
Second grade: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.2.6 With guidance and support from adults, use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.
Third grade: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.3.6 With guidance and support from adults, use technology to produce and publish writing (using keyboarding skills) as well as to interact and collaborate with others.
Fourth grade: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.4.6 With some guidance and support from adults, use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing
Fifth grade: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.5.6 With some guidance and support from adults, use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing
Sixth grade: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing
Seventh grade: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.7.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing
Eighth grade: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.8.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing

Thankfully, technology provides many differentiated ways to accomplish this, from the mundane to the fancy:

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Tech Tip #59: Shortkey for the Copyright Symbol

Q:How do you create the copyright symbol in Word?

A: It’s easier than you’d think. Hold down the Alt key and press 0169. Use the keypad with the num lock on–don’t use the number row. I could not get this to work until someone pointed out that you must use the keypad. Duh.

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