Author: Jacqui

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

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 coloring book
6. Thanksgiving edu-websites–CybraryMan
7. Thanksgiving Games
8. Thanksgiving games and puzzles
9. Thanksgiving games–Quia
10. Thanksgiving information–history, more
11. Thanksgiving Jigsaw
12. Thanksgiving Lesson Plans
13. Thanksgiving Wordsearch
14. Turkey Templates — activities in Google Slides

If you’re an iPad school, try one of these:

1. Berenstein Bears Give Thanks
2. Primary Games–games, coloring books, more
3. Thanksgiving coloring book

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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Here is a great list of coloring book websites for kids and adults to share for the holidays. Many are color-by-number, some even auto-fill the right color with a long-click. Beware though: Many have in-app purchases and advertising so preview them before sharing:

1. ABC Color–color letters with fill or paint brush
2. ABCYa Paint
3. Art Coloring
4. Canva Templates to color
5. Coloring book pages–downloadable
6. Coloring Book–color by number
7. Color Planet–app
8. Colorscapes
9. Free coloring pages
10. Happy Color
11. KidPix–visit coloring book backgrounds
12. No-pix–color by number
13. Paint by Number–app
14. Paint Sparkles Draw–free; lots of coloring pages, but maybe too many ads
15. Pixel Art
16. Tap Color Pro

Click here for a great summary of several of these sites.

–image credit Deposit Photos

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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: I deleted a file by accident.

Category: Problem-solving

1. Here’s what you do:

• find the recycle bin (in PCs, it’s on your desktop; in Google Drive, it’s called ‘Trash’)
• open (in PCs, right click; in Google Drive: simply click to open)
• find your file; select ‘restore’

‘Restoring’ sends it back where it was before you deleted it.

If you deleted it from a flash drive, it’s gone. There are programs for undeleting from external drives, but they cost money and are more complicated than this ebook allows.

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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Promoted by National Geographic, here’s what you should know about Geography Awareness Week which occurs November 14-18, 2022:

Too many young Americans are unable to make effective decisions, understand geo-spatial issues, or even recognize their impacts as global citizens. National Geographic created Geography Awareness Week to raise awareness to this dangerous deficiency in American education and excite people about geography as both a discipline and as a part of everyday life.

Each year more than 100,000 Americans actively participate in Geography Awareness Week. Established by presidential proclamation more than 25 years ago, this annual public awareness program encourages citizens young and old to think and learn about the significance of place and how we affect and are affected by it. Each third week of November, students, families and community members focus on the importance of geography by hosting events; using lessons, games, and challenges in the classroom; and often meeting with policymakers and business leaders. Geography Awareness Week is supported by access to materials and resources for teachers, parents, community activists, and all geographically minded global citizens.

Here are excellent web resources to promote your geography lessons (click headings for more links):

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As many of you know, I have two wonderful children–one a LT CDR in the Navy and one a SSG (Staff Sergeant) in the Army. One day, they will both be veterans. 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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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: What is Digital Literacy?

Category: Pedagogy

‘Digital literacy’ is one of those buzz words floated by experts as being granular to 21^st-century students. It’s everywhere, on everyone’s tongue, but figuring out what it means can be daunting. ‘Literacy’ is simple: the ability to read and write–so ‘digital literacy’ should be achieving those goals digitally.

Sounds simple. The difficult is in the implementation. Here are the sixteen transformative tools, activities, and/or knowledge bases digitally-literate students should be comfortable using:

1. annotation tool
2. backchannel device
3. class internet start page
4. class website or blog
5. cloud computing
6. digital citizenship
7. digital class calendar
8. digital databases
9. digital devices–such as laptops, iPads, Chromebooks, or desktops, for daily use
10. online information
11. sharing digitally to build knowledge
12. social media
13. student digital portfolios–to curate and collect work
14. email–or another method of communicating quickly outside classtime (such as messaging or Twitter)
15. virtual collaboration
16. vocabulary tool–to quickly decode words students don’t understand

For more detail on the tools, activities, and knowledge bases above—as well as the general topic of digital literacy—visit “Digital Literacy—What is it?” on Ask a Tech Teacher.

More on Digital Literacy:

• How to Assess Digital Literacy
• Digital Literacy in Busy Classrooms
• Digital Literacy–Too Important to Skip

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.

Copyright ©2022 worddreams.wordpress.com – All rights reserved.

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After you’ve checked out our favorite STEAM resources, here are some of those that teachers use to teach STEM and STEAM:

Science

Technology

Engineering

Art

Math

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National STEM Day is November 8, 2022, 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:

5 Ways to Celebrate National STEM/STEAM Day

National STEM/STEAM Day is an opportunity to focus on helping kids advance in the fields of science, technology, engineering, art, and math. Creating understanding around STEM and STEAM is a big topic of conversation today. Statistics show few American students pursue expertise in STEM fields—and we have an inadequate pipeline of teachers skilled in those subjects. On the flipside of that the need for STEM oriented job skills are skyrocketing.

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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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 teacher education blog, Ask a Tech Teacher. Today, it’s my Book Launch for my latest historical fiction, Natural Selection. History teachers: If you teach about our ancestors’ roots, this is for you!

I will visit blogs through May 2023 to chat about my newest prehistoric fiction, Natural Selection, and writing in general. Here are articles you can read:

1. A [Prehistoric] Day with Lucy 
2. Could an almost-blind person get around feral Africa?
3. Did wanderlust drive man throughout the planet? Science thinks so. (Liesbet)
4. Early Man Can Talk. Change my Mind.
5. Early Man Could Run Down His Prey. Change my Mind.
6. Why Early Man didn’t Use Proper Nouns.
7. How Did Early Man Count?
8. How did Early Man Find His Way Around
9. How Did Early Man Tell Time?
10. How Smart was Lucy 2 mya
11. Prehistoric fiction is boring. Change my mind.
12. Why did Early Man Squat, not Sit?
13. Was Early Man Spiritual
14. What Did Early Man Eat?
15. What I learned from Lucy
16. 10 Characteristics of Great Writing 
17. 10 Things you probably don’t know about me (Marcia Meara)
18. 13 Writing Tips and 10 Criticisms I’ve Gotten from Twitter
19. 60+ Characteristics That Make Your Character Memorable
20. 5 Excuses Why Writers Don’t Write and 9 Ways to Overcome Them
21. Why Follow Genre Rules (OC Writing)

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

November 4-8th

Buy the K-8 curriculum; get the 55-page Hour of Code bundle for free

Perfect if you’re doing Hour of Code in December. Email us at askatechteacher at gmail dot com with your receipt. We’ll verify and then send you the bundle.

What’s in the Hour of Code bundle?

30 K-8 coding activities, organized by grade

138 images

aligned with ISTE and Common Core

lots of options to differentiate for student needs

Questions? Ask Jacqui Murray at askatechteacher at gmail dot com.

http://eepurl.com/chNlYb

Copyright ©2022 askatechteacher.com – All rights reserved.

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, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, 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.