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.

Subscriber Special: 10% Discount with Newsletter Sign-up

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

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Tech Teacher Appreciation Week

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Tech Teacher Appreciation Week

If you wonder what’s so hard about being a teacher, look at this list of challenges they faced the last few years: (more…)

What You Might Have Missed in April–What’s up in May

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

  1. National Library Week–Resources, Links, Ideas
  2. 17 K-8 Digital Citizenship Topics
  3. April is Financial Literacy Month
  4. 15 Best Technology Careers for the Future in 2025
  5. Basics in Every Lesson Plan
  6. Join me to launch my Indie Book
  7. Easter Classroom Resources
  8. Great App to Teach Spelling
  9. Summer STEM at USNA
  10. Earth Day Class Activities

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

Earth Day Class Activities

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Every year, the United Nations recognizes April 22nd as International Mother Earth Day. It is a day we can all participate in making our air clean, water fresh and land unlittered rather than accepting the trash-filled oceans, the smoggy skies, and the debris-laden land that is becoming the norm.

Despite the questionable health of our world, we have made progress. Back in 1970, when Earth Day was first celebrated, trucks spewed black smoke as they drove down the highways, toxic waste was dumped into oceans with no repercussions, and the general opinion was that the Earth took care of itself. That changed when U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day’s founder, witnessed the ravages of the 1969 massive oil spill in Santa Barbara California and decided it was time to do something. He started with a “national teach-in on the environment” with a simple goal: Encourage people to recognize the importance of protecting the Earth:

“It was on that day [Earth Day] that Americans made it clear they understood and were deeply concerned over the deterioration of our environment and the mindless dissipation of our resources.”

Before I go any further, listen to Earth’s song, recorded by NASA in space. It is stunning: (more…)

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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What You Might Have Missed in March–What’s up in April

Here are the most-read posts for last month:

  1. How to Leverage AI Tutors for Effective Learning Tips for Parents, Educators, and Students
  2. Subscriber Special: 50% Off Sidebar Sponsors
  3. Didn’t Get in College? Interested in the Military? Try NAPS
  4. 11 Ways X/Twitter Improves Education
  5. LOTS of Resources for Kids’ Online Research
  6. Celebrate Pi Day and Maths Day
  7. 9 St. Patrick’s Day Resources For Your Class
  8. Minecraft Builds Coding Skills
  9. Invention Convention 2025 is coming
  10. Websites that add sparkle (and learning) to Spring

Here’s what’s coming up next month: (more…)

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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“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, 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

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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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Websites that add sparkle (and learning) to Spring

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A few spring websites, lesson plans, printables, activities:

  1. 7 Science Experiments that Teach About Spring
  2. Books from Scholastic about Spring
  3. Spring Puzzle
  4. Spring Garden–click to find flowers
  5. Spring Games
  6. Spring Vocabulary (video)
  7. Spring Word Scramble
  8. Spring Word Search
  9. What Happens in Spring (video)
  10. What Happens in Spring–PS (video)

Life Cycles

  1. Life cycle of a snake
  2. Life Cycle Lesson Plans
  3. Life Cycle resources
  4. Life Cycles
  5. Life Cycle Symbaloo
  6. Plant life cycle

Click for ideas from TeacherVision:

Printables

  1. The Very Hungry Caterpillar Activities Booklet
  2. Butterfly Life Cycle Worksheet
  3. Baseball Fun
  4. May Day
  5. Butterfly Facts and Questions
  6. Butterfly Life Cycle Quiz
  7. More Spring Printables

Lesson Plans

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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…)