Author: Jacqui

Teacher Appreciation Week: The First Full Week of May

There’s always been something mystically cerebral about people in technical professions like engineering, science, and mathematics. They talk animatedly about plate tectonics, debate the structure of atoms, even smile at the mention of calculus. The teaching profession has our own version of these nerdy individuals, called technology teachers. In your district, you may refer to them as IT specialists, Coordinators for Instructional Technology, Technology Facilitators, Curriculum Specialists, or something else that infers big brains, quick minds, and the ability to talk to digital devices. School lore probably says they can drop a pin through a straw without touching the sides.

When I started teaching K-8 technology, people like me were stuffed into a corner of the building where all other teachers could avoid us unless they had a computer emergency, pretending that what we did was for “some other educator in an alternate dimension”. Simply talking to us often made a colleague feel like a rock, only dumber. When my fellow teachers did seek me out — always to ask for help and rarely to request training — they’d come to my room, laptop in hand, and follow the noise of my fingers flying across the keyboard. It always amazed them I could make eye contact and say “Hi!” without stopping or slowing my typing.

That reticence to ask for help or request training changed about a decade ago when technology swept across the academic landscape like a firestorm:

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In the grad school classes I teach and my coaching sessions, the biggest problem facing teachers is not the 3R’s or equity or differentiation. It’s technology. In an education environment that is taught remotely as much as in person, this has become a big deal. I’d like your feedback on issues you face.  It’s an easy poll, shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. You’ll see results right away but I’ll post them also in a few months, let you know what I found out:

[polldaddy poll=10806155]

If you’d like to see the earlier poll (from over ten years ago), here it is. It’s interesting to see what has changed!

[polldaddy poll=1754921]

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, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are buzzwords that every educator wants to know more about. They are two distinct functions. Kathy Schrock, columnist for Discovery Education explains:

Augmented reality layers computer-generated enhancements on top of an existing reality to make it more meaningful through the ability to interact with it.

Virtual reality is a computer-generated simulation of real life… It immerses users by making them feel they are experiencing the simulated reality firsthand.

The differences are actually pretty simple. Virtual means experiencing a world that doesn’t exist. Augmented means adding something virtual to the physical world.

1. 900 VR Expeditions — requires the Expeditions app
2. Class VR
3. CoSpaces
4. InMind VR–a sicientific VR game
5. Jurassic VR–Aptosaurus VR experience to experience a dinosaur up close
6. NearPod VR
7. Tour Creator–make a VR tour in Google
8. Timelooper. This one will take you back to important moments in history from all around the world.
9. Titans of Space app will take your students to the moon.
10. Trench Experience VR will take you into the trenches in WWI.
11. UnimersiveVR–learn with VR
12. VR tours of museums

Ways to use VR

• VR field trips
• for students with Special Needs — The Jackson School in Victoria, Australia has been using the Oculus Rift to help students with special needs and the Silesian University of Technology in Silesia Poland is doing therapeutic exercises with autistic students using virtual reality technology.
• experience careers first hand
• time travel to historic events
• explore the human body
• feed curiosity

Watch this student exploring xxx with VR:

More on VR

Virtual Reality in the Classroom: It’s Easy to Get Started

The Impact of VR on Student Education

The Impact of VR on Student Education

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, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

April 22nd is Earth Day, a day when (historically) more than 1 billion people in 192 countries put the Earth’s health ahead of convenience, habits, and cultural norms. It’s a day when teachers of all kinds encourage an understanding of how mankind’s actions affect the planet we call home. This is a time to learn how the ingrained habits of a throw-away society imperil our future. On Earth Day, we as cohabitants of this great planet evaluate how changes in our actions can improve the environment.

There are a wide variety of websites to help you in this endeavor, from analyzing what you’re doing that threatens the Earth to finding alternatives. Here are some of my favorites:

Earth Day Webquest

Online; Grades 5-12

In this Earth Day webquest, student teams vie for $1 million in funding from the fictional nonprofit, Help Our World (HOW) Foundation. Each team builds a case to address the particular environmental concern they consider to be the most critical by researching, building a convincing argument, and then presenting it to their audience. Presentations are voted on my fellow students to determine who will be awarded the grant.

The webquest includes everything you need for this activity including a list of materials required, student assignments, step-by-step and day-to-day instructions, worksheets, lots of Earth Day resources, reflections, and national standards addressed.  This is a deep dive into a particular environmental concern encouraging students to investigate, support their opinions with evidence, and then share their passion with classmates.

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Struggling with helping students learn math when you can’t be at their side? Try these videos (check here for updates to links):

1. Bright Storm math videos
2. Khan Academy–online progressive math program; free
3. Math Class with Terry V
4. Math DrBob 
5. Math Videos
6. Math videos–clean, nice
7. MathTV–videos; create playlists of topics; Spanish option
8. Numberphile
9. Origo One — one-minute math videos
10. Patrick JMT–math videos for lots of grade levels
11. WOWMath
12. YayMath — videos on math

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Financial Literacy Month is recognized annually in Canada in November,^[1] and National Financial Literacy Month was recognized in the United States in April 2004,^[2] in an effort to highlight the importance of financial literacy and teach citizens how to establish and maintain healthy financial habits.

When kids read that America’s $28 trillion+ debt is accepted by many experts as ‘business as usual’, I wonder how that news will affect their future personal finance decisions. Do they understand the consequences of unbalanced budgets? The quandary of infinite wants vs. finite dollars? Or do they think money grows on some fiscal tree that always blooms? The good news is: Half of the nation’s schools require a financial literacy course. The bad new is: Only half require a financial literacy course.

If your school doesn’t teach a course about personal economics, there are many online sites that address the topic as mini-lessons. Some are narrative; others games. Here are fifteen I like. See if one suits you (check here for updates on links):

1. Banzai–financial literacy (free) online program
2. Bartleby Economics Q&A
3. BizKids–games to teach business and finance
4. Budget Challenge–for HS and college
5. Cash Crunch–games for youngers and olders (HS and college)
6. Financial Football–as fun as it sounds
7. Financial Literacy Quizzes–in a variety of financial topics for high schoolers
8. Gen I Revolution
9. H&R Block Budget Challenge game
10. Life on Minimum Wage (a game–through TpT but free)
11. Living Wage–what’s it cost to survive–by state, cities, counties
12. Own vs Rent Calculator–plug in the numbers; see the results
13. Personal Finance for MS
14. Personal Finance Lab–stock market game
15. Practical Money Skills
16. Spent

Curriculum

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As a passionate Economics major in college (which grew into an MBA), I find Econ at the root of much of the world around us. It starts with counting coins in first and second grade and grows up to a peek into NASDAQ and other adult subjects in middle school.

In the US, tax day is April 15th. Here are some good websites to discuss what is probably a popular topic in families:

Taxes

1. BrainPOP | Taxes
2. A history of US taxes
3. Taxes–from Crash Course Economics
4. Where does your money go? — lesson plan from PBS
5. TurboTax Tax Calculator

After April 15th, there are great ways to teach about economics, financial literacy, and prepare students for managing their lives fiscally once they’re launched into the world:

1. Bankaroo–a virtual bank for kids
2. ECommerce Links for Kids–a collection of ecommerce links for kids
3. Motion Math–make your own pizza and make money
4. Rate-zip–how to teach financial topics to K-12
5. Teaching kids economics and finance–lots of varied resources
6. Time is Money–this Chrome add-on converts prices on a webpage to hours worked

More on teaching economics and finance

15 Websites to Teach Financial Literacy

April is Financial Literacy Month

Lots of websites for economics and finance

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As is my habit, I spend a lot of time exploring new ways to teach old subjects. Lately, I’ve concentrated on social studies. I chatted with my PLN, browsed forums where I knew efriends hung out, and taught a slew of online grad school classes to teachers who always are willing the discuss their newest favorite social studies tech tool. I picked everyone’s brains and came up with a list of five webtools you definitely must look at:

Classcraft

Some call Classcraft a classroom management tool but really, it’s more about injecting excitement in your teaching and touching on the important social-emotional learning that sometimes gets forgotten. Here’s a great quote I heard in a sponsored video:

“It might sound crazy to you and me but the kids love it.” — Sarah Murphy

The more I dug into Classcraft, the more I understood why Sarah Murphy said what she did. It’s pretty simple. Kids have a passion for learning and playing games. You incorporate that into your passion for teaching by gamifying your middle- or high school classroom. When students and teachers work together, toward the same goals, everyone wins.

The free (fee for Premium) Classcraft doesn’t teach standards or curricula for academic subjects. Instead, it focuses on core SEL (social-emotional learning) skills fundamental to the fullness of the education journey. That means it’s easy to apply to your social studies class. It uses tools already popular in your school — Google Classroom or MS Office 365, a browser, and an app (iOS or Android). You set up different tasks and customize rules to fit class needs.  Students work individually or in teams, becoming accountable for their behavior to themselves and their teams. When they achieve goals and/or abide by rules, they earn stuff they want (that you’ve organized beforehand). You can blend Classcraft activities into your existing lesson plans or use those available on the website. Robust analytics (included in the Premium package) allow you to track student behavior over time and compare it with the class average.

Also available: a timer, a class volume meter, and parent features — great basic tools for every class.

ClassroomScreen

ClassroomScreen is probably one of the most robust, versatile, and useful classroom tools to cross education’s “free” landscape in a long time. It will make your social studies lessons run smoother, make them more responsive to needs, and keep students focused on the lesson. When you click on ClassroomScreen.com, it opens a blank screen that is a digital board ready to be displayed on your class smart screen. You personalize it with the most popular tools desired in classroom, all lined up at the bottom of the screen. These include preferred language (you pick from about a hundred languages), customized background, sound level, QR code (for the classroom screen; students scan it in and it displays on any mobile device — isn’t that cool?), a whiteboard, a text tool, a start-stop traffic light, a timer, a clock, a random name picker (for teams), an exit poll, Work Symbols (four options for collaborative student work — work together, ask a neighbor, whisper, and silence), and more.  There’s no download, no login, no registration. Simply click the link and get started.

Commonsense Media calls it:

“…the Swiss Army Knife of the classroom…”

I agree. Here’s a video that decodes this already-simple class tool.

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I’ll never forget the day years ago when I stood in a donut shop, half asleep, bed head, with a monster sugar deficit. As I got to the front of the line, the man before me said, “I’ll pay for hers, too.” I didn’t know him. We hadn’t commiserated over how Krispy Kreme was always crowded. I’d just slogged onward, waiting my turn, eager to taste my apple fritter. His simple act of paying for my donut made me feel special, brought a smile to my face all day, and lightened the load of whatever happened after that.

That was one of my first Random Acts of Kindness, the feel-good event started in 1995. Now, February 17th in America is called the Random Acts of Kindness Day (September 1st in New Zealand) and is when everyone encourages acts of kindness without any expectation of consideration in return.

“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” — Mark Twain

What is Random Acts of Kindness Day?

February 17th — Random Acts of Kindness (RAK) Day — is twenty-four hours when anyone who chooses to participate agrees to perform unexpected acts of kindness to pay it forward for that time they need a little bit of unexpected care.  We flaunt our altruistic side by doing something nice for another without a thought for the consequences.

Why is Kindness important?

Why kindness is important seems obvious but really, it isn’t. I can name a whole lot of people who have succeeded despite being, well, jerks so why should we think there’s merit in a gentler approach?

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Looking for a more interesting way to teach math in these unusual times? Here are a variety of sites that share Math Word Problems–the real-world way to teach what some see as a daunting subject:

1. Expii Solve–math word problems and puzzles, lots of them
2. IXL Word Problems–by grade
3. Math and Logic Problems
4. Math Pickle–puzzles, games, and mini competitions
5. Prodigy Math Word Problems–about 120
6. Thinking Blocks–free (app)
7. Word problems–type them in, Wolfram/Alpha provides the answer and the how-to. Amazing.
8. Word Problems from Math Playground
9. Would You Rather–more like a justification for decisions using math

Click for more online math resources.

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