Author: Jacqui

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, an Amazon Vine Voice, 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.

Easter Classroom Resources

Many Christians celebrate Jesus Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday. To non-Christians (or non-traditional Christians), that event signifies a rebirth of spring that is filled with joy and gifts — and chocolate! Overall, it is America’s most-popular holiday with Christmas a close second. Here’s a good mixture of games, lesson plans, stories, and songs that can be blended into many academic subjects (for updates on Easter-themed websites, click here):

18+ Interactive Easter websites

Preschool-2

This website includes a colorful collection of Easter (and Spring) games and information that is visual and enticing to youngers. Games are Easter Math, Easter Egg Hunt, Easter Egg Dress-up, Easter Word hunt, complete-the-sentence, and more. Also, viewers will find websites about the history of Easter around the world.

ABCYa Easter Egg Hunt

Preschool-Kindergarten

Like all of ABCYa’s games and activities, Easter Egg Hunt is a colorful and intuitive educational game for young children.  It is easy-to-understand, playful, with favorite Easter symbols and energetic music that will engage children. The five Easter-themed games are easy-to-understand (no directions required) with a countdown clock to motivate activity. Nicely, it also aligns gameplay with the national standards met.

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Subscriber Special: Discounted Curricula School License

Every month, subscribers to our newsletter get a free/discounted resource to help their tech teaching. Not a subscriber? Click the button below.

20% discount on school curricula

Code: KZJ8MBNV

4-2-23 through 4-7-23

What’s a School License?

A School License is a multi-user PDF of any curriculum student workbook. It can be used on every digital device in your school–iPads, laptops, netbooks, smartphones, Chromebooks. All of them, no matter whether they’re in a classroom, the library, the tech labs. As many as the school wants.

Who needs this

It is well-suited to schools with an LMS like Google Classroom, a 1:1 program, who wish to place the curricula on a server, or are teaching remotely and need to provide access to PDFs at home and school, where there may or may not be WiFi or Internet.

Benefits of a School License for Teachers:

  • Access to full text PDF from every recognized desktop, 24 hours a day
  • Student workbooks are available in the computer lab, the library, the classroom, the laptop carts, the student’s home, and the District server for the same low fee
  • Because they’re PDFs, they require no internet, no WiFi (once downloaded)
  • License includes a digital copy of the teacher manual for each grade level selected 

Benefits of School License for Students:

  • Easy access to monthly lessons, how-tos, rubrics, project samples, practice quizzes, grade-level expectations, homework, check lists (like Ready to Move On)
  • Convenient place to take notes
  • Because they’re PDFs, they require no internet, no WiFi (once downloaded)
  • Encourages students to be independent and self-directed, work at their own pace. This is great both for students who need more time on a topic and for those who ‘get it’ fast and want to move on
  • Quick way to spiral up to the next grade level for quick learners or back to earlier resources for student needing to fill holes in their learning

How to get started

  • Select whether you want one grade or all, whether you are interested in the technology or keyboarding curriculum.
  • If necessary, in “Special Instructions”, tell us which grade you want 
  • apply the coupon code when you check out (KZJ8MBNV)
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https://forms.aweber.com/form/07/1910174607.htm

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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, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

March 31st is World Backup Day

World Backup Day–March 31st Every Year

March 31st is called World Backup Day. At least once a year, I remind you to backup your data files to an external drive (like a flash drive). This is one that isn’t connected to your local computer so can’t be compromised if you get a virus. Cloud drives are good, but once a year, do the entire collection of data files to what is called an ‘air gap’ drive–one separated from any internet connection.

How to do this 

You can back up data to an external device or a cloud-based backup service, or both. You might make more than one backup to external storage devices and keep the two copies in different places.

PC/Windows” Use Windows Backup:

  • Click the start button.
  • Go to Control Panel
  • Select ‘Backup and Restore’
  • Select ‘Backup Now’

From there, select a drive with sufficient space and start. Be forewarned: If you have a lot of data, it takes a while. You can work on your computer while it’s backing up; it’ll just be slower.

Mac: Use the Time Machine tool.

Chromebook: No need. Everything is saved to the cloud. Now if you want to backup your cloud, use a service like Backupify.

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How to Change the Dynamics of Peer-to-peer Learning

Here’s what most educators and parents innately know as a truism of education:

“If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” –Albert Einstein

Peer-to-peer learning–acquiring knowledge from a peer group–has become a popular strategy as teachers move from a “teacher-lecturer” education model to “teacher-guide”.  Often, it is a less stressful way to develop lifelong learners. As a pedagogical strategy, it can be effective in reinforcing critical thinking, cooperation, creativity, and problem solving–traits that are difficult to teach but essential for students who want to become productive, happy adults.

What is Peer-to-peer Learning

Peer-to-peer learning is where individuals learn from and with each other rather than relying on a traditional teacher or instructor. It involves collaboration, knowledge sharing, and mutual support among peers—typically people at a similar level of expertise or experience—working together to achieve a common learning goal. Participants exchange ideas, explain concepts, ask questions, and provide feedback. The process fosters critical thinking, communication skills, and a deeper understanding of the subject matter, as teaching others reinforces one’s own knowledge. Examples include study groups, coding boot camps where participants critique each other’s work, or online communities where users share expertise. It’s built on the idea that collective learning can be just as effective, if not more so, than top-down instruction, leveraging diverse perspectives and real-world problem-solving. (more…)

9 St. Patrick’s Day Resources For Your Class

St. Patrick’s Day is a cultural and religious holiday celebrated in America on March 17th to honor St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, credited with bringing Christianity to the country. The day is marked by parades, wearing green clothing and accessories, traditional Irish music and dance, feasting, and the symbolic consumption of foods and beverages like corned beef, cabbage, and Irish stout. It has become a global celebration of Irish culture and heritage.

If you’re getting ready for St. Patrick’s Day, try these fun websites with activities for different grade levels (click for updates on this list):

  1. Puzzle–St. Pat’s Puzzle
  2. Puzzle–St. Pat’s drag-and-drop puzzle
  3. Puzzle–St. Pat’s slide puzzle
  4. Puzzles and games
  5. St. Patrick’s Day history–video
  6. St. Pat’s Day songs–video
  7. Tic tac toe
  8. Wordsearch

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Celebrate Pi Day and Maths Day

Two math celebrations are coming up: Pi Day and World Maths Day

Pi Day

Pi Day is an annual celebration commemorating the mathematical constant π (pi). It is observed March 14 since 3, 1, and 4 are the three most significant digits of π in the decimal form.

Daniel Tammet, a high-functioning autistic savant, held the European record for reciting pi from memory to 22,514 digits in five hours and nine minutes until 2015 when Rick de Jong of the Netherlands recited pi to 22,612 digits in five hours and 34 minutes. His record was then broken by Rajveer Meena of India, who recited 70,000 digits in 2015 blindfolded. It took over nine hours. That remains the world record to date.

. Here’s how you can memorize the first 100 digits of Pi:


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LOTS of Resources for Kids’ Online Research

Here are quick, safe spots to send students for research (click here for updates to the list):

  1. CoolKidFacts–kid-friendly videos, pictures, info, and quizzes–all 100% suitable for children
  2. Dimensions–academic research geared for college-level
  3. Fact Monster–help with homework and facts
  4. Google Earth Timelapse–what changes to the planet over time
  5. Google Trends–what’s trending in searches
  6. History Channel–great speeches
  7. How Stuff Works–the gold standard in explaining stuff to kids
  8. Info Please–events cataloged year-by-year
  9. National Geographic for Kids
  10. Ngram Viewer–analyzes all words in all books on Google Books
  11. TagGalaxy–search using a cloud
  12. Wild Wordsmyth–picture dictionary for kids
  13. World Book–requires membership

Citing Resources

  1. BibMe
  2. Citation Machine
  3. EasyBib

Kids Search Engines

  1. Kiddle–visual search engine for kids
  2. Kidtopia

How to Research

  1. A Google A Day
  2. How to Search on Google
  3. Power Searching (with Google)
  4. Teaching students to search/research
  5. Internet Search and Research–a lesson plan for K-8

Lesson Plans

  1. Image Copyright Do’s and Don’ts
  2. Internet Search and Research

Resources/Research

  1. BrainPOP–Bring learning to your fingertips™ with the BrainPOP® Featured Movie app
  2. Kids Picture Dictionary
  3. Primary Source Documents
  4. SparkVue–collect and display live data from iPhone etc to the iPad
  5. Talk to Books–research your topic based on books
  6. TED app–TED’s official app presents talks from some of the world’s most fascinating people

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