Year: 2015

Teach students using whichever email program is installed at school, but warn students that theirs will be different. Also warn parents they will have to guide students to the correct spots on their particular version. This will avoid confusion when students go home and try to email homework. Teach To:, From:, cc:, bcc:, subject:, attachments, and basic rules of emailing (I’ll share a list that I’ve created from working with students and parents. It should keep you out of the trouble I got into in my early years).

If the lesson plans are blurry, click on them for a full size alternative.

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

Q: My internet stopped working on my laptop. Everyone else’s in the house works, but mine won’t connect. What do I do?

A: First: Make sure the laptop button that allows connection to the internet is on. More often than not, that’s the problem for teachers at my school. If it’s not that, it gets much more complicated. I’ll cross my fingers.

Questions you want answered? Click here.

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April 22nd is Earth Day. Celebrate it with your students by letting them visit these websites:

1. Breathing Earth
2. Breathing Earth YouTube Video–of CO2 use, population changes, and more
3. Conservation Game
4. Earth day collection
5. Earth Day—NASA Ocean Currents
6. Eco-friendly house
7. Eeko World
8. Ecotourism Simulation–for grades 4 and above
9. Electrocity
10. Footprint calculator
11. Home of the Future
12. My Garbology
13. NASA City

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Technology plays an important role in the classroom. Teachers can apply technology to help students learn through interactive games and simulations, or by taking advantage of educational resources online. Technology can facilitate communication and collaboration between students and between students and their teacher.

Students who develop a strong familiarity with technology in the classroom are better-equipped to remain proficient users of new technologies throughout their lives.

But in order to help students make the most of technology, teachers need to stay on top of it themselves. That can be challenging, especially for teachers who may have finished their own educations when the technological advances of the past 15 to 20 years were still in their infancy.

You can brush up on your tech skills by earning an advanced degree focused on helping you effectively integrate technology into your classroom, but you can’t just rest on your laurels. Changes are happening rapidly, and you need to keep abreast of them by staying informed, working with up-to-date devices and software as much as possible, and surrounding yourself with folks who are passionate about new technologies.

1. Keep Your Finger on the Pulse of Industry Trends

One of the best ways to keep your tech know-how up-to-date is to make it a point to stay current on industry trends. As the year draws to a close, search your favorite web browser for expected tech trends for the year to come. Throughout the year, you can keep tabs on which of these predictions came true by listening to tech podcasts during your commute or while doing chores at home.

2. Use Up-to-Date Devices at Home

You’ll feel more comfortable with new technologies if you use them regularly, so make a point of updating your own devices as often as you can. When you go to school online for an advance education degree, like a Master of Education in Instructional Design and Technology, you’ll learn how to make the most of tablets, computers, laptops, smart phones, and even newer technologies like smart watches or wearable fitness trackers. Visit big box stores regularly and browse through their electronics sections to see what’s new.

3. Surround Yourself with Technophiles

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There are 22 common Excel skills easy enough for fourth and fifth graders. When they’re done, they–and their parents (and you, by the way)–will feel that they’ve accomplished much more.

If the lesson plans are blurry, click on them for a full size alternative.

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It’s the end of school. Everyone’s tired, including you. What you want for these last few weeks are activities that keep the learning going, but in a different way. You want to shake things up so students are excited and motivated and feel interested again.

Change your approach to teaching. Provide some games, simulations, student presentations–whatever you don’t normally do in your classroom. If you’re doing PowerPoints, use the last few weeks for presentations.  Make them special–invite teachers. Invite parents. If you never serve food in your lab, do it for these presentations.

Here are five of my favorite year-end Change-up activities:

6 Webtools in 6 Weeks

Give students a list of 10-15 webtools that are age-appropriate. I include Prezi, Google MapMaker, Scratch, Voice Thread, Glogster, and Tagxedo, These will be tools they don’t know how to use (and maybe you don’t either). They work in groups to learn the tool (using help files, how-to videos, and resources on the site), create a project using the tool (one that ties into something being discussed in class), and then teach classmates. Challenge students to notice similarities between their chosen tools and others that they know how to use. This takes about three weeks to prepare and another three weeks to present (each presentation takes 20-30 minutes). Students will be buzzing with all the new material and eager to use it for summer school or the next year.

Designed for grades 3-12. Need ideas on web tools? Contact me at [email protected].

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A wide variety of topics, with one thing in common–they teach you about technology in education:

1. Common Core training–the Hunt Institute
2. Common Craft--videos on wikis, phishing, etc.
3. How-to videos–technology, reading, math, more
4. How to Videos for Web 2.0
5. Internet Movie Database
6. K-8 school-related videos. Tons 
7. Learn Zillion—teaching videos
8. Teacher Training Videos   
9. Teaching Channel
10. YouTube Education
11. YouTube Pure—removes comments

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Reading is defined as “the action or skill of absorbing written or printed matter silently or aloud.” Sounds dry, maybe even boring, but once a child learns to read, they get much more than an understanding of words, sentences, paragraphs, grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. It has been credited with providing an escape from reality, exercising the mind, saving lives, bringing people together, answering problems, and predicting success in school. It alleviates boredom in the bits of free time that pop up between soccer and dinner and it can be done alone or in a group.

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends…”
― Charles William Eliot

According to Early Moments, reading is associated with the following traits:

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April is National Poetry Month. For thirty days, we celebrate the value and joy that poetry brings to our world.  According to the Academy of American Poets, the goals are:

• Highlight the extraordinary legacy and ongoing achievement of American poets
• Introduce more Americans to the pleasures of reading poetry
• Bring poets and poetry to the public in immediate and innovative ways
• Make poetry a more important part of the school curriculum
• Increase the attention paid to poetry by national and local media
• Encourage increased publication, distribution, and sales of poetry books
• Increase public and private philanthropic support for poets and poetry

All across the nation, school, teachers, students, libraries, and families celebrate by reading, writing, and sharing poetry. Here are fifteen websites that do all that and more. Share them with students on a class link page like the class internet start page, Symbaloo, or another method you’ve chosen to share groups of websites with students (click here for updates on links):

Acrostic Poems

From ReadWriteThink–students learn about acrostic poetry and how to write it

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Mentoring Minds is an education publishing company and resource site created by former teachers. Their goal: Critical thinking for life–

” to develop affordable, effective learning tools that help children think critically, giving them the skills to succeed not just in the classroom, but in life.”

• Materials enable differentiated instruction, student practice, and teacher evaluation of progress. Through their dashboard, teachers can identify which students have mastered specific standards, what learning goals should come next for each student, and which students require in-depth interventions to meet the standard(s) being assessed.
• Professional development is available for teachers on core concepts like differentiation in the classroom, rolling out Common Core Standards, best practices for instruction, formative assessment strategies, and more.
  

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