Here are the most-read posts for the month of April:

1. Tech Tip #90 Doc Saved Over? Try This
2. 18 Things Teachers Do Before 8am
3. Earth Day Class Activities
4. How to Create a Paperless Classroom
5. 11 Online Resources About Physics
6. Online Reading for National Library Week
7. Human Body Websites for 2nd-5th Grade
8. #32: How to Use Art to Teach Grammar
9. Tech Tips #170: Cover your webcam!
10. How to Stop Hating Your Computer

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With the school year ending, here are some useful tips from the Ask a Tech Teacher crew for students preparing for college or career:

School and Job Tips for Young Adults

The marketplace for good jobs has always been highly competitive. In the current economic climate, a solid education can serve as the launching pad for a rewarding career. But how can young adults get the training, schooling, and experience to get a job they enjoy? The good news is that there are plenty of effective tactics for diligent students and young professionals who want to make the most out of their education and training.

Besides creating a top-notch resume, modern college-bound people take the time to search for scholarship awards that can offset some or all their school expenses. They also take advantage of summer internships, both paid and unpaid, to acquire up to date workplace skills. While getting ready to take standardized tests in high school or after, prep courses can assist motivated candidates in achieving better scores.

Other no cost learning resources include institution sponsored tutoring programs, online seminars, and self-help guidebooks. For those who find it a challenge to get homework done on time, fixed study hours are a practical solution. Finally, remember to seek guidance when choosing a major field of study. Here are more details about how to navigate a collegiate career and land that first job after graduation.

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William Shakespeare is internationally regarded as one of the greatest playwrights and poets in history, and his works have had a profound impact on our cultural heritage. Learning Shakespeare is a valuable and rewarding experience that can enrich our understanding of literature, language, and culture.

Here’s a quick overview of how to get teens interested in Shakespeare:

A Short Guide to Getting Teens Interested in Shakespeare

If you’re a high school teacher, you can probably hear the groans now as they wave through the classroom. You’ve reached the inevitable Shakespeare unit of an English course, and some students just are not clicking with it.

But they call him the “immortal bard” for a reason. The themes, character dynamics and conflicts in Shakespearean plays echo into the modern day. Some of his principal preoccupations – the enduring nature of love, the pitfalls of tyranny, etc. – are as relevant in 2023 as they were in 1600. And students have a lot to learn from keen insights, critical gaze and deep understanding of human nature present in Shakespearean literature.

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Believe it or not, most computer problems are simple. I can say that because I’ve run a computer lab for almost ten years. I’ve seen just about every problem there is and have learned this: If you believe your life with computers is a constant state of civil unrest, you’d be right.

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Here’s a great lesson that uses every child’s innate love of color to learn grammar. All you need is MS Word or Google Docs), a quick introduction to the toolbars and tools, and about 25 minutes to complete. If you’re the tech lab teacher, this gives you a chance to reinforce the grammar lesson the classroom is teaching and teach tech skills students need (click to enlarge):

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In my school, 2nd grade and 5th grade have units on the human body. To satisfy their different maturities, I’ve developed two lists of websites to complement this inquiry. I put them on the class internet start page so when students have free time, they can visit (check here for updates):

2nd-3rd Grade

1. Blood Flow
2. Body Systems
3. Build a Skeleton
4. Can you place these parts in the correct place?
5. Choose the systems you want to see.
6. Find My Body Parts
7. How the Body Works
8. Human Body Games
9. Human Body websites
10. Human Body—by a 2^nd grade class—video
11. Human Body—videos on how body parts work
12. Inside the Human Body: Grades 1-3
13. Kids’ Health-My Body
14. Matching Senses
15. Muscles Game
16. Nutrition Music and Games from Dole (more…)

National Library Week is April 23-29, 2023. It allows us to promote our local libraries and their workers. Find more about here at the American Library Association.

Because I  know most of you online only, I thought I’d share my favorite online libraries with you (click here for updates to the list):

For Children

1. Aesop for Children–collection of fables
2. Actively Learn–add PDFs of your choice to a library that can be annotated, read, and shared.
3. Audio Books–apps for books purchased through Audio Books (and free ones)
4. Bookopolis–focused on student reading
5. Books that Grow–read a story at many different reading levels
6. Class Literature
7. Epic–a reading library for kids, 15,000 books; most digital devices
8. RAZ Kids–wide variety of reading levels, age groups, with teacher dashboards
9. Reading Rainbow–library of books; free to try
10. Tumblebooks (fee)–focused on student reading

For All Ages

1. Free Books–download any of our 23,469 classic books, and read
2. Actively Learn–add PDFs of your choice to a library that can be annotated, read, and shared.
3. Bookopolis–focused on student reading
4. Books that Grow–read a story at many different reading levels
5. Class Literature
6. Epic–a reading library for kids, 15,000 books; most digital devices
7. Free Books–download any of our 23,469 classic books, and read
8. Great Books Online by Bartleby
9. Gutenberg Project
10. IBooks–amazing way to download and read books.
11. International Library
12. Internet Archive— Internet Archive offers over 12,000,000 freely downloadable books and texts. There is also a collection of 550,000 modern eBooks that may be borrowed by anyone with a free archive.org account.
13. Kindle–read ebooks, newspapers, magazines, textbooks and PDFs on an easy-to-use interface.
14. Librivox–free public domain audio books
15. Loyal Books
16. Many Books–Over 33,000 ebooks that can be browsed by language, author, title. 
17. Online Books Page
18. Open Library
19. OWL Eyes–for the classics
20. RAZ Kids–wide variety of reading levels, age groups, with teacher dashboards
21. Reading Rainbow–library of books; free to try
22. Tumblebooks (fee)–focused on student reading
23. Unite for books (free) — gorgeous, easy-to-navigate site.

A lot of teacher-authors read my WordDreams blog. In this monthly column, I share the most popular post from the past month on my writer’s blog, WordDreams. 

Here is one of the popular posts:

AI-generated art is a game-changer for writers who do their own marketing and newsletters. I was reminded of that when I received a newsletter from good blogger friend Luciana Cavallaro, author of amazing historical fiction centered in ancient Rome. She sent a newsletter and wanted to include an image of a coach being hit in the face by a volleyball (don’t ask–it’s complicated). As close as she could get was this image:

I accepted her challenge to find a better image and turned to DALL-E, one of the new platforms where AI generates art. Here’s what I got in about a minute:

This is new legal territory, but current thinking is that these images are free to use, owned by no one, similar to the legal permissions allowed by public domain images. Here’s an infogram explaining that, taken from DALL-E’s terms of service:

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Here are popular online resources for physics classes (click for updates):

1. CK12 Physics simulations
2. Concord Consortium–chemistry, earth science, engineering, life science, physics
3. Crash Course: Physics (videos)
4. Monster Physics
5. PhET Simulations for chemistry and physics
6. Physics Catalyst
7. Physics Classroom
8. Physics Forums
9. Physics instructional videos
10. Roller coaster simulator
11. Simple Physics

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This article from the Ask a Tech Teacher crew is for new teachers searching for what will be required of them as teachers, how to determine their style, the importance of a mentor, and more secrets to guide them in their new profession:

How to Choose Your Teaching Style and Level

It takes a certain kind of person to be a teacher. It’s one of the most noble professions you can choose, especially when you think about the powerful impact you can have on your students’ lives. However, before you get to that point, you need to decide which grade you want to teach and what kind of teacher you really want to be. Some people choose to work exclusively with younger children while others prefer to teach middle school students or in high schools. In this post, you’ll discover the different types of teaching approaches and decide which one matches most with your personal teaching style.

Teaching Requirements

Before getting into the types of teaching styles, you first need to earn your degree. Most teachers hold a master’s in education, so you’ll need at least four to five years to earn your degree. If paying for your education is an issue, you even consider asking your parents to cosign a loan. But what if they refuse because of their own financial problems? Since most young adults can have issues qualifying for loans on their own, it’s important to weigh the pros and cons of each type of financial options before choosing one. That said, there are different options to consider, so make sure you take time to research what they are and how repaying them can affect you.

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