Author: Jacqui

Every year, the world celebrates Earth Day on April 22nd, a day the United Nations recognizes as International Mother Earth Day. It is a day to remind ourselves of the importance of clean air, fresh water, and unlittered land. It’s when we can all participate in making that happen rather than accepting the trash-filled oceans, the smoggy skies, and the debris-laden land that is becoming the norm in our lives.

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 for someone to do something. When he looked around for that “someone”, it turned out to be himself. 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.”

Here are online resources (click for updates) to help you share the importance of Earth Day with your students:

1. Breathing earth– the environment
2. Breathing Earth YouTube Video–of CO2 use, population changes, and more
3. Conservation Game
4. Earth Day—NASA Ocean Currents
5. Ecotourism Simulation–for grades 4 and above
6. The Four Seasons – An Earth Day Interactive Children’s Storybook (app)
7. Green Kitchen (app)
8. iRecycle (app)
9. My Garbology
10. Starfall — Every Day is Earth Day
11. Storyboard That! Earth Day lesson plans

How effective is Earth Day

In the 49 years since the inception of Earth Day, there have been more than 48 major environmental “wins”. Here are some of those:

• The U.S. Clean Air Act was passed, a comprehensive federal law that regulates air emissions.
• The U.S. Clean Water Act was passed to regulate the discharge of pollutants into U.S. waters.
• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was passed.
• The U.S. Endangered Species Act was passed to protect animal species that are disappearing.
• The Acid Rain (what happens when normal rain becomes loaded with offensive chemicals and scalds the skin) Program obtained emission reductions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.
• The importance of the ozone layer to the health of the Earth is better understood.
• The consequences of too much plastic in the Earth’s oceans is coming home to roost.

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My wonderful sister is coming to visit from Indiana. Our plans: walk, read, cook, talk, Peloton tread, pet the dog–sounds fun, doesn’t it? I can’t wait.

See y’all in a week!

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. The date depends on the ecclesiastical approximation of the March equinox. This year, it’s April 9, 2023.

Here’s a good mixture of games, lesson plans, stories, and songs that can be blended into many academic subjects (for updates on this Easter-themed list of 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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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: Try this if you saved over a doc

Category: Problem-solving

Q: A student saved a blank document over their files. How? Instead of ‘open’, they use the menu command ‘save-as’ and lose all their work. Is there any way to retrieve the file?

A: Absolutely. In PCs, right click on the file in Windows Explorer and select ‘Restore previous version’. Select the latest version that’s not today. Admittedly, this doesn’t always work, but it’s worth a try.

In Google Apps, simply visit the Revision History and select a version prior to the save-over.

In Macs, there may be an older copy in the Time Machine—it’s worth checking.

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

1. 11 Online Resources About Puzzles
2. Software vs. Online Tools
3. 19 Tech Problems Every Student Can Fix
4. 25 Sites to Add Rigor and Authenticity to Word Study
5. How to Compare and Contrast Authentically
6. 6 Ways to Make Classroom Typing Fun
7. AI and ChatGPT in Education
8. Use the SAMR Model to Energize Class Tech
9. Beginning Graphs in MS Excel
10. Invention Convention 2023 is coming

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

Holiday Projects

4-2-23 through 4-7-23

Price slashed from $7.99 to $3.99

To get this huge savings, you must be a subscriber. If you aren’t

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March 31st is called World Backup Day. At least once a year, 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. It’s good to always backup data to cloud drives or a different drive on your computer but once a year, do the entire collection of data files to what is called an ‘air gap’ drive–one that is separated from any internet connection.

How to do this 

There are various ways to back up your data. You can back up your data to an external device or a cloud-based backup service, or to both. You might even make more than one backup to external storage devices and keep the two copies in different places (providing protection and access to your data even if one of the backup devices is destroyed or inaccessible. Preserving your valuable documents and images for future access and use requires planning, as well as the use of automatic backup services.

To back up 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.

#WorldBackupDay

Invention Convention Worldwide is a global K-12 invention education curricular program mapped to national and state educational standards that teaches students problem-identification, problem-solving, entrepreneurship and creativity skills and builds confidence in invention, innovation and entrepreneurship for life. Signups for the annual Raytheon Technologies Invention Convention US Nationals (2023) start March 31st.

Here are websites to help you and your students learn about the excitement of inventions:

1. A Guide to Inventions
2. Famous Inventors
3. How Inventions Change History (video)
4. How the popsicle was invented (a TEDEd video)
5. Invented by accident I
6. Invented by accident II
7. Inventions from the Military –crazy ones

Check back here for updates on this list.

More about inventions

• Teach About Inventions with PowerPoint
• 5 Ideas for Teaching Students the Most Important Skill They’ll Need
• 5 Fun Science Experiments Kids Do at Home

Here are popular online resources about Chemistry:

1. Beaker–a digital beaker app
2. Chemistry collection from Carnegie
3. ChemCapers
4. Chemistry instructional videos
5. ChemmyBear–resources for Chemistry and AP Chemistry classes
6. CK12 Chemistry simulations
7. Collisions Chemistry
8. Concord Consortium–chemistry, earth science, engineering, life science, physics
9. Crash Course: Chemistry (videos)
10. EMD PTE — periodic table
11. Interactive Periodic Table
12. Molecules–Molecules is an application for viewing three-dimensional renderings of molecules and manipulating them using your fingers.
13. Periodic Table of Elements–interactive
14. Periodic Table videos 
15. PhET Simulations for chemistry and physics
16. Reactions–short videos on chemistry topics
17. Slow Motion Chemistry — videos on chemistry

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Excel makes graphs simple and easy for beginners. Even my parent helpers are amazed at how much students can do with a simple F11 shortkey and a right click. This lesson plan works just as well with Google Sheets though you may have to adapt a few of the instructions.

If the lesson plans are blurry, click on them for a full size alternative. (more…)