Author: Jacqui

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: Why Learn Keyboarding?

Category: Keyboarding

Here’s a poster with the top nine reasons why students want to learn keyboarding:

Sign up for a new tip each week or buy the entire 169 Real-world Ways to Put Tech into Your Classroom.

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Education has changed. No one knows yet if it’s for better or worse but we all understand that nothing’s as it once was. That means many traditional teaching tools are no longer the best choice for the new norms. Over the past few months (well, since March), I’ve spent a lot of time reinventing my teaching protocols, doing a rigorous evaluation of whether my standard practices are best suited for the new best practices for teaching at home and school (click here for lots of info on COVID-19 and education). Because often, I’m not physically with students to help with tech problems or down the hall from the school’s tech guru if I have problems, I now heavily select for digital tools that are quick to setup, intuitive to use, and straightforward to understand as well as engaging, flexible, and scalable with dynamic traits that can be re-engineered for a diversity of situations.

I’ve found one you’ll want to know about. It’s called JotForm Tables.

You may be familiar with JotForms. It is a popular forms builder that uses customizable templates and a drag-and-drop interface to collect and curate data. It works on all platforms and can be shared via a link or embed. For more, read my review here. Over the past several years, JotForms has released a variety of features that have helped educators be more effective. These include Smart PDF Forms, a PDF Editor, JotForm Cards, and JotForm Reports (click for my reviews).

The free JotForm Tables addresses the ongoing need teachers and schools have for easy-to-understand, easy-to-customize data to help with decision-making. In place of the conventional intimidating table you get from standard spreadsheet programs, JotForm Tables offers an attractive layout, loads of customization options, inclusion of all kinds of data (like files, calendars, check boxes, yes-no answers, and ratings)–all of it quickly modified to your needs and sharable via an Excel file, a CSV, a PDF, or a link.

Here’s what one of my class tables looks like:

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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. Carving Pumpkins
4. Carve-a-Pumpkin from Parents magazine – Resolute Digital, LLC (app)
5. Enchanted Learning
6. Halloween games, puzzles–clean, easy to understand website and few ads!
7. Halloween ghost stories
8. Halloween counting & words games – IKIDSPAD LLC (app)
9. Halloween Kahoot Games (video for teachers)
10. Halloween Science
11. Halloween WordSearch – FinBlade (app)
12. Halloween Voice Transformer (app)
13. Landon’s Pumpkins – LAZ Reader [Level P–second grade] – Language Technologies, Inc. (app)
14. Make A Zombie – Skunk Brothers GmbH (app)
15. Math vs. Zombies (app)
16. Meddybemps Spooky
17. Readwords reading collection for Halloween
18. Readworks Halloween Reading Resources
19. Signing Halloween–a video
20. Skelton Park
21. The Kidz Page
22. 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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I don’t often get personal on this blog. It’s not about me–it’s about educators and their profession–but times are different this year. When you’re geeky, you don’t always think like the people around you or answer questions in the usual way. A writing class I took asked us newbies to tell the class a little bit about ourselves. Here’s how I answered that:

I am a multi-cellular, hairless, short-snouted, large-brained bipedal omnivore, evolved over millions of years within the classification of Primates, in response to dramatic environment changes on the planet Earth to become Homo sapiens sapiens.

I occupy the geologic address

34E43.29 N and 117E10.82 W

…the political address

xxxx xxxx Dr., Laguna Hills CA.

…the email address

[email protected]

…and the internet address (my IP location)

xx.x.xx.xx

I am one of over 8 billion big brained creatures living on Earth, each with unique talents and traits allowing us to best fit our local environment. I am a social animal, living in a large community–too large to know my neighbors by the methods other Primates use of ‘grooming’. Instead, we ‘gossip’ and ‘storytell’. I am surrounded by peers who feel superior to other mammals based on subjective factors such as physical characteristics or brain size. This primitive attitude has allowed my kind to take over the world but not run it well.  Without significant changes, we will not remain the dominant species for even as long as dinosaurs, sharks, jelly fish, alligators, Great Apes, or horsetail ferns.

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As High School seniors prepare to graduate, many will choose something about computers for their job or continued studies. There’s no greater excitement than being part of the team that puts a face on the internet with web design. Here’s a great overview of that field from a school that prepares students for this future job:

How do I become a web designer?

Many of our older students are now considering what careers they wish to pursue. Some will decide to work locally while some will either choose to study locally or abroad. With information technology playing an integral role in all our lives and with even the smallest of businesses having a website, we have seen an increasing trend in the number of students who wish to become web designers. Of course, this has become a complex field with lots of competition, even when qualified.

As a international school in Bangkok, we always encourage pupils to follow their dream careers and seek employment in something that they enjoy. As part of our role as educators, we must prepare students for what to expect in the world of work. In particular, our HS students often need guidance about how to begin their journey, and our careers team are always available to make suggestions and offer help as required. In this article, we will look at what is necessary to become a web designer upon leaving school.

What is the role of a web designer?

Web designers conduct work on various types of website, either for themselves, the company that they work for or for their own clients. It can cover a broad range of topics from relatively simple blogger sites to complicated e-commerce websites with multiple landing pages and sometimes hundreds of thousands of products. However, the role also involves other aspects, aside from the technical points, and this can often go overlooked.

A web designer will need to meet clients to establish what they require for their site. It will include gaining an insight into their business, their objectives and their client base. From here, it is the designer’s job to formulate a plan, showing the structure of the website, including choosing text, background and colour schemes. In some cases, the web designer may be asked for their advice regarding branding and the inclusion of multimedia.

After the site has been completed, the web designer will conduct thorough testing and once complete, upload the site to a server, from where it will be available to the public. Some clients may ask the web designer to work with them on an ongoing basis, managing the site, and uploading fresh content.

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If you’re a senior in HS looking to continue your tech education, we have a list of the ten best colleges that will help you perfect your skills:

10 Best Colleges in the USA to Study Computer Science

Computer Science is a desirable degree for many students as it has great prospects and is linked to innovation in technology. It is important to choose the right school for acquiring a degree. US colleges offer great education and some of them are the top choices, especially for Computer Science.

If you want to study in one of the top universities, choose one of the following colleges that are universally appraised.

1 MIT

No such list can be full without the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It has been leading almost any top list for many years and continues offering great education.

The Computer Science department is the largest at this college and provides excellent research and study opportunities. The representatives of MIT have made an outstanding contribution to the innovations in the fields of artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and robotics. The only downside is that studying here can be quite challenging as the curriculum is dense, so many students choose to use case study writing service to get help.

But it is what comes with one of the best programs in the country and the world.

2 Stanford University

Stanford is located near the famous Silicon Valley, which is known to be the capital of all technology and computer science in the world. It offers an outstanding program for students to apply.

The Computer department was founded in 1965 and has a prominent history. One of the main attractions for students is that a lot of top world technological corporations are located right near Stanford.

It is also known for helping students with their start-ups and offering a great Business program. Many young entrepreneurs started their companies as a university project.

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October 19-23, 2020 is Digital Citizenship Week. Here are resources from Ask a Tech Teacher and Structured Learning that will help you learn how to teach digital citizenship to your students. Below, you’ll find everything from a full year-long curriculum to professional development for teachers:

Resources:

Digital Citizenship: What to Teach When (a video)

Curricula:

K-8 Digital Citizenship Curriculum

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Surprisingly, 15-20% of the population has a language-based learning disability and over 65% of those are deficits in reading. Often, these go undiagnosed as students, parents, and teachers simply think the child is not a good reader, is lazy, or is disinterested. Thankfully, the International Dyslexia Association sponsors an annual Dyslexia Awareness Month in October aimed to expand comprehension of this little-understood language-based learning condition.

What is Dyslexia?

Dyslexia is a condition that affects people of all ages, male and female equally, and causes them to mix up letters and words they read making what for most is a joy-filled act challenging and frustrating.

“Dyslexia refers to a cluster of symptoms, that result in people having difficulties with specific language skills, particularly reading. Students with dyslexia often experience difficulties with both oral and written language skills. … It is referred to as a learning disability because dyslexia can make it very difficult for a student to succeed… ” — the International Dyslexia Foundation

There is no cure for dyslexia. Individuals with this condition must instead develop coping strategies that help them work around their condition. In education, it is not uncommon to accommodate dyslexic students with special devices, additional time, varied format approaches (such as audio or video), and others. Most prominent educational testing centers (like SAT, ACT, PARC, and SBACC) make these available for most of the tests they offer.

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As High School seniors prepare to graduate, many will choose something about computers for their job or continued studies. Here’s a great overview from an Ask a Tech Teacher contributor of what one of those fields–working with the powerful algorithms that drive search and research–is about:

What are search engine algorithms?

For many students who are approaching school leaving age, they will already have decided the career path which they wish to take. Not surprisingly, given the role it plays in our everyday lives, many choose to pursue a career in IT. Of course, this is an incredibly broad topic. Still, in this article, we will focus predominantly on aspects relating to websites, moreover, how they can help to achieve business goals and other objectives.

As an international school in Hong Kong, we do all we can to prepare our students for going out into the workplace. Our various IT classes cover a wide range of topics with web development, e-commerce and SEO all being covered to some degree. Indeed, it is three areas, which are all interlinked, where most students wish to work, understanding the professional opportunities that are likely to present themselves. However, for a website to fulfil its potential, it must satisfy the needs of search engine algorithms.

What is an algorithm?

Algorithms are not a new phenomenon and have been used as a part of mathematics for thousands of years. They are often mistaken for being a formula but are in actual fact a series of different formulas or ingredients. They are often likened to preparing a meal for a large group. However, the meals may essentially be the same; different people like it to be cooked differently. Some people might want their meat cooked rare while others like it well done, some like salt, some like pepper, and so on. The algorithm means that a different formula is required for each person.

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I am out of pocket the rest of this week and next. I’m visiting my wonderful sister in rural Marion Indiana.

I can’t wait to live a measured, natural life for at least a week where we can veg, check on her bee hives, and eat indoors at a restaurant! I probably won’t do much commenting until next weekend but then, I’ll get everything caught up.

Have a wonderful week!