Tell me if this sounds familiar:

With the 2023 New Year, you resolved to build your Professional Learning Network–finally, to stop living in the 20th century where your world revolved around a sticks-and-bricks building, a landline phone, and the mailbox. You joined all the big social media platforms (X, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging–just for starters). The plan was to learn from the movers and shakers in education, have them as a resource when you needed help on a lesson plan or to select the perfect webtool for a project. You committed hours to it, and then days, eager to make this work because everyone you know talks about how much they learn from social media. Now, six months into it, you know too much about your followers’ lunch plans and almost nothing about their educational pedagogy. You’re frustrated, angry, and ready to give this whole failed effort up.

Without knowing anything about you other than that paragraph above, I’m going to predict that you became overwhelmed by the volume of information that flooded your inbox every day. The purpose of a social media-based PLN is to extend your reach beyond the narrow confines of the bubble you live in, not lose everything important in constant noise.

Before you unplug, try these seven steps to clean up the clutter, smooth out the wrinkles, and put you back in the driver’s seat of your online life:

Keep your stream pure

Only accept friends in your professional area of interest. This is less like a speed-dating party and more like a job application. When you come across a promising educator, visit their social media, pass judgment on whether they fit your needs, and then make a decision.

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Time: About 30 minutes

Steps:

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I used to be pretty good at accounting because I was a whiz with spreadsheets and data analysis. That changed when accounting began relying heavily on technology. Well, to be honest, traditional accounting–financial analysis, auditing, and tax knowledge–might still revolve around my sweet spots, but the rest, I now hire skilled professionals.

And I’m not the only one who realizes the importance of tech skills in accounting has changed. One of our Ask a Tech Teacher members has a great article outlining the tech skills you’ll want to look at if you’re interesting in pursuing an accounting career after high school:

7 Highly Useful Tech Skills to Develop if You’re Aiming for a Career in Accounting

In the digital era, the accounting industry has tightened its embrace of technology, transforming traditional roles into tech-oriented ones. Undeniably, tech skills have become just as essential as understanding debit and credit for accountants as computers become necessary for work. 

These technological competencies allow accountants to streamline their work, provide more in-depth analysis, and enhance decision-making processes. Whether you’re just stepping into the world of accounting or aspiring to advance your career, sharpening your tech skills will unlock new opportunities and make you a much sought-after professional in this industry.

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1. Autumn Facts for Kids
2. Don’t “Leaf” Out Fall’s Most Valuable Lesson
3. EEK! A Tree’s True Color
4. Fall Bucket List For Families Printable
5. Fall Crafts, Decorations, and Printouts
6. Fall Books & Short Stories For Kids about Autumn
7. Primary Games’ Fall Fun
8. Science Made Simple: Why Do Leaves Change Color in Fall?
9. Why Leaves Change Color

Click for an updated list (more…)

Reliable internet sources are the same as those you would search for in the library. You want:

• primary sources
• unbiased sources
• sources with the background and training to understand the topic

Young students have difficulty understanding these rules. They have barely learned about ‘primary sources’ and have no idea how to select unbiased ones. As for the final point, the ability to select sources with relevant background–that usually comes with age and experience, not something students get for most of their academic career.

With that in mind, there is one guideline that will help even novice researchers find reliable sources: the extension. Here are the most popular extensions in order of reliability, dependability, and trustworthiness:

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Here are eight online resources for quick animations. For updates on this list, click here:

1. Animate with Krita–free Photoshop-like program for animation (see video below)
2. Animation and 3D Templates from MS
3. Brush Ninja–free and no registration required
4. ChatterPix–make anything talk
5. Draw and Tell–for K-2
6. PowerPoint–a video showing how to create animations in PowerPoint
7. Puppet Pals HD (free app)–Create your own unique shows with animation and audio in real time
8. Wick Editor–free, open source, to create games, animations, and more

If you’re not familiar with creating animations, here’s a longish video on using one popular program:

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Before teaching students Photoshop (or GIMP), acclimate them to photo editing with a program they are likely comfortable with: MS Word. For basic image editing, Word’s pallet of tools do a pretty good job (Note: Depending upon your version of Word, some of these tools may not be available; adapt to your version):

• Open a blank document in MS Word. Insert a picture with multiple focal points (see samples). (more…)

In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: How to backup a doc in 5 seconds

Category: Problem-solving

Q: I’m paranoid about losing lesson plans, report card comments, and other school work. I backup, but is that enough?

A: Truth, I am the most paranoid person I know about technology. For backup, I have an external hard drive, Acronis, a 512-gig flash drive for ‘important’ stuff (which turns out to be everything), and still I worry.

Here’s my additional five-second backup: Every time I work on a document I just can’t afford to lose (again, that’s pretty much everything), I email it to myself. In MS Office, that’s a snap (see Tech Tip #61). Other programs–just drag and drop the file into the email message. I set up a file on my email program called ‘Backups’. I store the email in there and it waits until I’m tearing my hair out. I’ve never had to go there, but it feels good knowing it’s available.

Note: That doesn’t work on my cloud spreadsheet files, say in Google Sheets, because they’re usually too big. In this case, I download to my local drive and save to a dedicated folder.

Sign up below for a new tip each week or buy the entire 169 Real-world Ways to Put Tech into Your Classroom.

What’s your favorite tech tip in your classroom? Share it in the comments below.

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I have written in the past about parent questions concerning technology in education, but always from the perspective of a teacher at the classroom. Now, I  teach grad school classes online to practicing teachers and want to see if those questions are the same.

So I asked my grad school students: What questions do parents ask you about technology and education? Here are the top issues:

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Here are popular online resources to teach about 3D Printing (click here for updates on links):

1. 3D Bear
2. Cricut Machine–to cut materials

Create 3D Printing Designs

1. 3D Doodler Pen
2. MakerBot PrintShop
3. Onshape
4. SculptGL
5. Sketchup
6. Tinkercad–create your own 3D print designs

Download 3D Printing designs

1. GrabCad
2. Smithsonian X3D–download 3D print designs of Smithosonian artifacts
3. Thingiverse–download lots of 3D designs, like an iPhone case
4. Youmagine–find 3D print designs

–image credit Deposit Photos

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Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.