Author: Jacqui

Create a holiday card for Thanksgiving or Christmas in KidPix or another drawing program and reinforce early writing skills while teaching mouse skills, toolbars and tool use: (more…)

Need a few websites and apps to fill in sponge time? Here are Thanksgiving websites that will keep students busy and still teach them (click for updated links):

1. Berenstein Bears Give Thanks (app)
2. Canadian Thanksgiving
3. Online/Offline Thanksgiving activities
4. Plimoth Plantation–a field trip of a Pilgrim’s life. Included on this real-life site is a video of the Pilgrim’s crossing to the New World.
5. Thanksgiving edu-websites–CybraryMan
6. Thanksgiving Games
7. Thanksgiving games and puzzles
8. Thanksgiving games–Quia
9. Thanksgiving Lesson Plans
10. Turkey Templates — activities in Google Slides

If you’re looking for projects, you’ll find two on Ask a Tech Teacher:

1. A Holiday Card
2. A Holiday Flier

For more, click here:

• Thanksgiving ASCII Art
• Comics
• Countdown Clock for the Holiday
• Team Challenge
• Thanksgiving Poll

Here’s a gallery of some of the Thanksgiving/Holiday projects:

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As many of you know, I have two wonderful children–one a CDR in the Navy and one a SFC In the Army. I also have a long family history of relatives who fought for America. So today, I salute them and all others who have put their lives and dreams aside to support America’s values and principles. I can’t say it better than these videos:

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National STEM Day is November 8, 2024, the unofficial holiday that celebrates science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education throughout the United States. Many add ‘art’ to the celebration for the acronym, STEAM. Here are some great ideas that remind your students of the excitement that is these core subjects:

Ten Ways to Celebrate National STEM Day with NASA

National STEM Day focuses on helping students advance in STEM fields, a priority of NASA as we continue to push the boundaries of exploration and soar into the future. In celebration of National STEM Day, we challenge you to engage and inspire the Artemis generation as we go forward to the Moon by 2024 and continue to innovate in the areas of Earth science and aeronautics. To help you join in on the festivities, here are 10 ways you can celebrate National STEM Day with us.

49 STEM Activities for Students 

On November 8^th, we will celebrate National STEM Day to get kids excited about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). Together the STEM subjects represent some of the fastest-growing and most in-demand fields in the United States.

While STEM topics seem a natural fit in high schools and post-secondary curriculum, education experts are promoting a focus on STEM subjects for younger and younger children. 

12 Projects for your STEAM program

Twelve favorite STEAM projects where artistic thinking becomes the engine for unpacking solutions. 

Activities from Engineering for Kids

National STEM/STEAM Day is dedicated to all things science, technology, engineering, art, and math. STEM (and STEAM) represents some of the fastest-growing and in-demand fields in the world today and Engineering For Kids is passionate about inspiring the next generation of engineers, artists, and innovators.

Bring Weather into Your Lesson Plan with Earth Networks and WeatherSTEM

One of the hottest topics in schools and an area of greatest need is STEM resources.  Earth Networks has developed creative and compelling STEM curricula on a variety of weather topics. Any school with a weather unit or an onsite weather station will appreciate this site. I asked them to drop in and explain their education programs to the AATT community:

4 Lesson plans

This STEM bundle includes four lesson plans: Engineering and Design, The Human Body, Keyboarding and the Scientific Method, and Robotics. All incorporate technology into authentic class activities such as bridge building, note-taking, and math. Each lesson plan includes an Essential Question and Big Idea, average time required to complete, suggested appropriate grade level, suggested teacher preparation, step-by-step directions (see preview for an example), assessment strategies, pedagogic background, samples, and images (where relevant). 

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Here are the most-read posts for the past month:

1. ASVAB or a Service Academy? You Decide.
2. Warm-ups–Watch the video
3. Compare-contrast Digital Tools
4. 70+ Online Resources to Gamified Education
5. Digital Citizenship Week: What to Teach When–a video
6. Digital Citizenship Resources–Lots of Them
7. 12 Projects to Teach Digital Citizenship–by Grade
8. Teach Speaking and Listening Skills with Student Presentations–the video
9. National Bullying Prevention Month
10. 13 Ways to Use Canva in Your Classroom

Here’s a preview of what’s coming up: (more…)

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

November 2-7th:

Coaching or Mentoring

BOGO — Buy one month; get the second free

Do any of these sound like you?

• Your kindergartners don’t know what ‘enter’, ‘spacebar’, ‘click’ or many other techie words mean but you need to teach them to keyboard, internet, and become digital citizens. How do you start?
• You have new students in your class who haven’t had technology training. The rest of the class has. How do you catch them up?
• Your principal wants you to teach the technology class but you’ve never done it before. What do you do on the first day?
• You’ve been teaching for twenty years but now your Principal wants technology integrated into your class. Where do you start?
• You have a wide mix of tech skills among students in your class. How do you differentiate between student geeks and students who wonder what the right mouse button is for?
• You’ve been tasked with organizing a Technology Use Plan for your school. Where do you start?
• You and colleagues are expected to create a Curriculum Map. How does technology fit into that?
• You love being an edtech professional but what’s your career path?

More and more teachers–both new and experienced–are looking for coaching or mentoring to fill gaps in their learning, keep up to date on the latest teaching strategies, and solve problems they didn’t expect. Many turn to the personalized approach we offer in a collaboration between Ask a Tech Teacher, Jacqui Murray, and Structured Learning. Coaching is completed via Google Hangout with email available for quick questions. After only a short time, teachers find they are better prepared with tech-infused lesson plans, able to teach to standards more fluently, can integrate tech into core classroom time, easily differentiate for student needs with tech, and more.

“Twice a month, pick my brain. I’ll share what I’ve learned and what works from 25 years of teaching.” –Jacqui Murray

Normally, we charge a $300 per month with a two month minimum (for a total of $600). This month, November 2-7th, get both months of coaching or mentoring for only $150.

Click PayPal Me here. Add $300.00 to the line and your order. Reference this special (#1127B)

Because it’s PayPal, you can enter as a guest with any credit card–no PayPal account required.

We wrote the books. We’ll help you deliver on keyboarding, integrating tech into your curriculum, digital citizenship, Common Core, and more. Questions? Ask Jacqui Murray at askatechteacher at gmail dot com.

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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: 

Category: Parents

Here’s a poster with five tips that will help students as they use the internet for research:

Review these with students when they’re ready for each tip. By the end of fifth grade, they should be well-versed in all five of these.

Sign up 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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Three holidays are fast-approaching–Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. If you’re a teacher, that means lots of tie-ins to make school festive and relevant to students.

Here are ideas for Halloween projects, lesson plans, websites, and apps (check here for updated links):

Websites and Apps

1. 30-day Halloween fitness challenge
2. Build a Jack-o-lantern (in Google Slides)
3. Carve-a-Pumpkin from Parents magazine – Resolute Digital, LLC (app)
4. Enchanted Learning
5. Halloween games, puzzles–clean, easy to understand website and few ads!
6. Halloween Kahoot Games (video for teachers)
7. Halloween Science
8. Halloween Voice Transformer (app)
9. Make A Zombie – Skunk Brothers GmbH (app)
10. Meddybemps Spooky
11. Pumpkin Patch Games
12. WordSearch Halloween – AFKSoft (app)

Projects

1. ASCII Art–Computer Art for Everyone (a pumpkin–see inset)
2. Lesson Plan: Halloween letter for grades 2-5
3. Make a Holiday Card
4. A Holiday Card
5. A Holiday flier

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October is National Bullying Prevention Month. Bullying is no longer relegated to the playground or the neighborhood. It now regularly happens in the cyberworld. Kids don’t expect that and often don’t know how to handle it.

In October 2006, thirteen-year-old Megan Meier hung herself in her bedroom closet after suffering months of cyberbullying. She believed her tormentors’ horrid insults, never thought she could find a way to stop them, and killed herself. She’s not the only one. In fact, according to StopBullying.gov, 52 percent of young people report being cyberbullied and over half of them don’t report it to their parents.

Everyone knows what bullying is — someone being taunted physically or mentally by others — and there are endless resources devoted to educating both students and teachers on how to combat bullying. But what about cyberbullying? Wikipedia defines “cyberbullying” as:

the use of information technology to repeatedly harm or harass other people in a deliberate manner

Cyberbullying occurs on not just social media like Twitter, Facebook, and topical forums, but multiplayer games and school discussion boards. Examples include mean texts or emails, insulting snapchats, rumors posted on social networking sites, and embarrassing photos or videos.

How serious is it? (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: Google Street View

Category: Problem-solving

Q: I can’t find enough detail about a geographic area we’re studying. Any suggestions?

A: That’s much easier than it used to be, thanks to Google Earth’s Street View. Students can walk down the street they just read about or see their home on the internet.

Here’s how to use it:

• First, you must have Google Earth. It’s a free download and I’ve never had problems with the install. Take a minute to do that. I’ll wait. You can also use the online app–no need for a download.
• Done? Good. Now type the address into search; push enter.
• Zoom into an area until a pegman icon appears below the navigation controls on the right. Click and drag the icon to the area of interest, and then drop it onto the blue highlighted paths. That takes you to all the streets.
• Travel by double clicking on the street.
• To get out of it, click the button on the upper right.

Google Street View even covers hiking trails.

Google Earth works with PCs, Macs, iPads, and Chromebooks (with the app).

Sign up 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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