Author: Jacqui

One thing we can all agree on is that there are tons of free tech tools available that enrich learning.  I can’t keep up with them. I belong to several Tech Teacher forums, FB groups, G+ Communities, and every day I find more great tools I can’t wait to use in my classroom.  Like many of you, this summer I attended several professional development conferences (ISTE, Teachers Pay Teachers, WordPress, Summer PD)–that bumped my total up to about a gazillion.

With school just around the corner, I needed to figure out which tools should be immediately integrated into my teaching. This was difficult, but I sorted, shook, noodled, experimented, sifted, and whittled my list down based on tools that differentiate for student needs, simplify the teacher’s job, and entice students to use technology in learning. Here are my top five:

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The first day of class can be daunting. Students are curious about the new faces around them, intimidated–even frightened by the prospect of so many people they know nothing about. As a teacher, you might feel the same way. You knew everything about last year’s students, got excited when their baseball team won the playoffs, cried with them when a favorite pet passed away, cheered when they got an A  in math. Those details–that intimate knowledge–helped you understand what motivated them so you could differentiate  instruction to reach each of them where they were.

Now, you’re starting over. It would be easy to go around the room and have everyone introduce themselves, but you want the first-day ice-breaker to be more–enriching but fun, to set the tone for the rest of the year. You want students to quickly get comfortable with each other, bond as a group, without turning the classroom into a party room. And, you want an activity they haven’t done so many times in the past it’s boring.

One truth never changes: Students love using ‘I’. There’s no better ice breaker than one where students share about themselves. There’s no better way to discover new friends than have a classmate understand perfectly what you’re saying about a tough soccer game because s/he too plays soccer.

Another truth: Kids love technology. This year, try a get-to-know-you that uses one of the many free online tech tools. How about these ideas:

• Have students upload a favorite picture of themselves into Thinglink, then add hotlinks (the yellow and red ‘dots’ on the image below) that take visitors to websites, videos, more pictures, or text that share details about the student.

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As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: I tend to do the same actions over and over on my MS Office software. How do I create a customized tool bar with my favorite tools?

A: This one is going to improve the quality of your life immediately. It’s so simple, you’ll wish you’d known it months ago.

First, you need Office 2007 or later because earlier versions don’t include the Quick Access toolbar. It looks like this:

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I’ve talked a lot of about class internet start pages–where you collect links in one place for student access.  Here’s an article, but for many that’s not enough. They want visual–so I created a movie. Let me know if this answers all your questions:

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Here’s another great article from Catherine Ross on homeschooling and keyboard skills. Catherine Ross is a full-time stay-at-home-mum who believes learning should be enjoyable for young minds. An erstwhile elementary school teacher, Catherine loves coming up with creative ways through which kids can grasp the seemingly difficult concepts of learning easily. She believes that a ‘fun factor’ can go a long way in enhancing kids’ understanding and blogs at http://kidslearninggames.weebly.com/

It is nothing short of a struggle to make my 8-year-old daughter sit down at her desk and write a couple of lines at a stretch, without getting up a dozen times in between.But ask her to type out the lines on the computer and she’s happily done with it in less than half the time!

There’s something about ‘working’ on a computer which appeals to all kids; they just don’t seem to comprehend the fact that studies can be related to a computer as well. And this is something I realized early on when I took up homeschooling full-time. If I could use this to my advantage and incorporate some constructive online ‘computer-time’ into my kids’ curriculum, it would probably do them good in the long run and they would enjoy it too.

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This is a reprint of an article I posted last Spring. By starting these tasks in Fall, you’ll be ready when the yearly assessments arrive in April-May:

As part of my online tech teacher persona, I get lots of questions from readers about how to make technology work in an educational environment. This one from Terry is probably on the minds of thousands of teachers:

Any help for identifying and re-enforcing tech skills needed to take the online PARCC tests (coming in 2014-15)? Even a list of computer terms would help; copy, cut, paste, highlight, select; use of keys like tab, delete, insert; alt, ctrl and shift. There does not seem to be any guidelines as to prepping students on the “how to’s” of taking an online test and reading and understanding the directions. It would be great to take advantage of the time we have before the PARCC’s become a reality. Thanks!

Between March 24 and June 6 (2014), more than 4 million students in 36 states and the District of Columbia took near-final versions of the PARCC and Smarter Balanced efforts to test Common Core State Standards learning in the areas of mathematics and English/language arts. Tests were administered via digital devices (though there are options for paper-and-pencil). The tests weren’t intended to produce detailed scores of student performance (that starts next year), but field-testing was crucial to finding out what worked and didn’t in this comprehensive assessment tool, including the human factors like techphobia and sweaty palms (from both students and teachers).

After I got Terry’s email, I polled my PLN to find specific tech areas students needed help with in preparing for the Assessments. I got answers like these:

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Economics is an authentic topic that can be intimidating if not presented correctly. Here are 4 websites that do a good job of addressing this topic in 3rd grade terms.

1. Coffeeshop Game–students learn the economic ins and outs of running a coffee shop
2. Moneyville–Students learn how to thrive in a community as they make and spend money.

You can scale this up or down, depending upon the scaffolding your student group has for understanding this topic.

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Do you have chrome books in your school? They’re those lightweight thin laptops that cost almost nothing and are taking the ed world by storm. When asked, teachers don’t say, ‘I got a set of computers for my classroom’. It’s always, ‘I got Chromebooks’ much as they’d say ‘iPads’ to mean a digital device that’s more exciting, useful, and cutting edge than the boring old desktops.

Before I talk about what’s to like and not like about a Chromebook, let’s look at what it is. In the education world, there used to be a battle between two types of desktop computers: Macs vs. PCs. They both did the same things, but in hugely different ways. And from that difference grew an avid love/hate among their devotees (especially Mac users).

Today, ‘desktop computers’ are only one of the digital devices in the education toolkit. Consider iPads with their focus on the visual, ease of use, engagement of users. Then Chromebooks arrived–able to do ‘most’ of what ‘most’ students need–but it must be through the Cloud.

That gives educators three options (desktops, iPads, Chromebooks) as they select tools to deliver education. The challenge is to understand the differences between these options and select based on personal criteria. That includes classroom needs, infrastructure, and–yes–money. What gives the most service for the least investment?

In this last, I think the debate is settled: Chromebooks win every measure of value for dollar.

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The Number One reason–according to students–why their computer doesn’t work is… It’s broken. Can I move to a different computer??? Doesn’t matter why they’re wrong. My teacher job is to provide strategies so they can independently solve problems like these.

As a tech teacher, I know that half the problems that stop students short in their tech lessons are the same few. Once they’ve learned the following twenty-five trouble shooting solutions, they’ll be able to solve more than half of their ongoing problems.

In the three years since I first posted this, I haven’t changed my mind about these problems. These transcend platforms, curricula, and Standards. When your youngest students can’t double click that tiny little icon to open the program (because their fine motor skills aren’t up to it), teach them the ‘enter’ solution. When somehow (who knows how) the task bar disappears, show them how to bring it up with the ‘flying windows’ key. When their monitor doesn’t work, go through all possible solutions together (monitor power on, computer power on, plugged into duplex, etc.)

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Last week, I shared ideas on how to set up your tech classroom. Today, I want to share a video:

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