Year: 2024

Tech Ed Resources–Mentoring and Coaching

I get a lot of questions from readers about what tech ed resources I use in my classroom so I’ll take a few days this summer to review them with you. Some are edited and/or written by members of the Ask a Tech Teacher crew. Others, by tech teachers who work with the same publisher I do. All of them, I’ve found well-suited to the task of scaling and differentiating tech skills for age groups, scaffolding learning year-to-year, taking into account the perspectives and norms of all stakeholders, with appropriate metrics to know learning is organic and granular.

Today: Mentoring and Coaching

Tech coaching/mentoring is available from experts who work with you via email or virtual meetings to prepare lesson plans, teach to standards, integrate tech into core classroom time. If you’re new to tech education and wonder how to teach kindergartners to use the mouse, first graders to keyboard, third graders to sagely search the internet, pick the brains of our seasoned team of technology teachers.

Note: If your District has purchased a license, you get some coaching for free. Check on that before signing up.

How do you start kindergartners who don’t know what ‘enter’, ‘spacebar’, ‘click’ or any of those other techie words mean?
What do you do with third graders who join your class and haven’t had formal technology classes before?
You’ve been thrown into the technology teacher position and you’ve never done it before. How do you start? What do you introduce when?
You’ve been teaching for twenty years, but now your Principal wants technology integrated into your classroom. Where do you start?
How do you differentiate instruction between student geeks and students who wonder what the right mouse button is for?
How do you create a Technology Use Plan for your school?
How do you create a Curriculum Map?
As an edtech professional, what’s your career path?

For more information on coaching, mentoring, PD, online classes, and consulting, click here.

For a start-up discount on Coaching-Mentoring, use this code: FK5SZM2A Sept. 1-10th.

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22 Back To School Websites

4 Comments

Here are a few of the popular resources teachers are using to

BTS resources from Microsoft
BTS resources from Teachers Pay Teachers
Back to School Survival Kits
BTS Toolkit from Education.com
Make a class photo in Pixton EDU

[caption id="attachment_69645" align="aligncenter" width="588"]

–image credit Deposit Photos (https://depositphotos.com/)[/caption]

We write about back to school often on Ask a Tech Teacher. Here are some of the past articles I think you’ll like:

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Subscriber Special: Back to School Survival Kits

Every month, subscribers to our newsletter get a free/discounted resource to help their tech teaching.

September 1-8, 2024, we’re offering a 20% discount on any Survival Kit. Pick one from this link:

https://www.structuredlearning.net/product-category/all-in-one-resource-collections/

Use this code:

3XAR9WZU

Click through for additional hidden discounts!

Questions? Email us at [email protected] (more…)

How College Admission Consulting Services Improve Your Chances Of Acceptance

Navigating the complex college admissions process can be challenging for students and their families, especially for first-timers. With increasing competition, particularly for spots at prestigious institutions, the stakes are higher than ever.

For this reason, college admissions consulting services have emerged as essential resources, providing expert guidance to help students maximize their chances of acceptance. Continue reading to learn more about how these services can significantly improve your college application journey.

Understanding College Consulting

College consulting refers to professional guidance provided by experts, often known as college admissions consultants, to help students process their applications effectively and improve their chances of being accepted. These consultants offer college search assistance, test preparation, essay editing, application submission, and interview preparations. College consulting services are particularly valuable in helping students strategically position themselves to increase their chances of acceptance at their desired colleges.

Typically offered by specialized firms or individual consultants, admissions consultants aim to provide students with a comprehensive plan that aligns with their academic goals, extracurricular activities, interests, and personal strengths. By leveraging insider knowledge and experience, they help students stand out and convince the selection board that they deserve a spot.

The Benefits of College Consulting Services

College consulting services provide a range of benefits that can greatly enhance your college applications. Here are some of them: (more…)

Tips for Teachers to Balance Work and Life During the Busy Parent-Teacher Conference Season

The parent-teacher conference season often demands your full attention since you will have to create and update records as well as give specific feedback to every parent about their child. The workload during this season is often bulky, and one may not have adequate time to focus on personal commitments. It’s one of the reasons why some teachers advancing their studies choose to use dissertation writing services. These services help them free up time for personal engagements while ensuring they graduate.

During the busy parent-teacher conference season in the school calendar, teachers usually have to multitask. Thus, there is a need to create an exclusive schedule that covers your personal and work commitments specifically for this period. Here are some ways to balance your work and life during this busy period. (more…)

Be Featured on Ask a Tech Teacher

I get thousands of visitors a day–over six million since I started. The most common reason why you-all drop by is for resources. I have lots of them–lesson plans, tips and tricks–but one area I have not enough depth is the experiences of fellow teachers:

your personal teaching experiences
your informed take on tech ed topics
Education pedagogy

If you’re interested in guest posting on this blog or start your own column, leave a comment below and I’ll be in touch. It’s a challenging time but one we-all can get through if we talk to each other.

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Teacher-Authors: What’s Happening on my Writer’s Blog

A lot of teacher-authors also read my WordDreams blog (for writers). In this column, I share the most popular post from the past month.

AI in Writing

I use AI judiciously and never without adult supervision. It is efficient if well directed, provides good summaries of articles on a factual level, and is fast if I’m not looking for clever, creative, complex, or any sort of conscience. Accepting those limitations, I find it good for summaries of articles on my education blog and lists for just about anything. AI loves lists.

What AI can’t do is at the absolute core of fiction writing:

provide personal experience
act with any sort of moral compass
make judgments
bare its soul
bleed on a page
put the lion in a character’s heart
sacrifice, say, the easy wrong for the hard right
choose the right attitude in a given set of circumstances
find a North star
put charisma in a story or character–or setting

As a result, I use it where it suits, avoid it where it fails. How about you?

Here’s the sign-up link if the image above doesn’t work:

https://forms.aweber.com/form/07/1910174607.htm

“The content presented in this blog are the result of creative imagination and not intended for use, reproduction, or incorporation into any artificial intelligence training or machine learning systems without prior written consent from the author.”

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, 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.

What a Typical Tech Lesson Looks Like

2 Comments

In the past, I’ve gotten emails like this from teachers:

I am a tech teacher, going on my fifth year in the lab. Each year I plan to be more organized than the last, and most often I revert back to the “way things were.” I’m determined to run the lab just like I think it should be! … Could you please elaborate on how you run your class? I love the idea of having kids work independently, accomplishing to do lists, and working on different projects. You mention this in Volume I, but I want to hear more!

Currently, I see close to 700 students, grades 1-6. I want to break out of the routine (the “you listen, I speak, you do” routine), and your system seems like it would work well. Just hoping you can share some details.

I decided to jot down my typical (as if any planned lesson ever comes out the way it’s written–you know how that goes!) daily lesson. You can tweak it, depending upon the grade you teach. Here goes:

Typical 45-minute Lesson

Each lesson requires about 45 minutes of time, either in one sitting or spread throughout the week. Both are fine and will inform whether you unpack this lesson:

In the grade-level classroom
In the school’s tech lab

As you face a room full of eager faces this coming year, remember that you are a guide, not an autocrat. Use the Socratic Method—don’t take over the student’s mouse and click for them or type in a web address when they need to learn that skill. Even if it takes longer, guide them to the answer so they aren’t afraid of how they got there. If you’ve been doing this with students since kindergarten, you know it works. In fact, by the end of kindergarten, you saw remarkable results.

When talking with students, always use the correct domain-specific vocabulary. Emphasize it and expect students to understand it. (more…)

Tech Ed Resources–Lesson Plans

I get a lot of questions from readers about what tech ed resources I use in my classroom so I’m taking a few days this summer to review them with you. Some are from members of the Ask a Tech Teacher crew. Others, from tech teachers who work with the same publisher I do. All of them, I’ve found well-suited to the task of scaling and differentiating tech skills for age groups, scaffolding learning year-to-year, taking into account the perspectives and norms of all stakeholders, with appropriate metrics to know learning is organic and granular.

Today: Lesson Plans

There are lots of bundles of lesson plans available–by theme, by software, by topic, by standard. Let me review a few:

STEM Lesson Plans
Coding Lesson Plans
By Grade Level
30 K-5 Common Core-aligned lessons
110 lesson plans–integrate tech into different grades, subjects, by difficulty level, and call out higher-order thinking skills.
singles–for as low as $.99 each. Genius Hour, Google Apps, Khan Academy, Robotics, STEM, Coding, and more.
Holiday projects–16 lesson plans themed to holidays and keep students in the spirit while learning new tools.

Who needs this

These are for the teacher who knows what they want to teach, but need ideas on how to integrate tech. They are well-suited to classroom teachers as well as tech specialists.

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Here’s How to Get Started with Ask a Tech Teacher

Hello! Ask a Tech Teacher is a group of tech ed professionals who work together to offer you tech tips, advice, pedagogic discussion, lesson plans, and anything else we can think of to help you integrate tech into your classroom. Our primary focus is to provide technology-in-education-related information for educators–teachers, administrators, homeschoolers, and parents.

Here’s how to get started on our blog (or click this link):

Read our varied columns

They include:

Tech tips
Dear Otto–questions from educators on tech questions
Pedagogy that impacts tech in ed
Reviews of books, apps, web tools, websites, tech ed products used in your classroom
Subscriber Specials–monthly discounts (or FREE) on tech ed products
Humorous life of a tech teacher