Education has changed. No longer is it contained within four classroom walls or the physical site of a school building. Students aren’t confined by the eight hours between school bells or the struggling budget of an underfunded program. Now, education can be found anywhere — teaming up with students in Kenya, Skyping with an author in Sweden, or chatting with an astrophysicist on the International Space Station. Students can use Google Earth to take a virtual tour of a zoo or a blog to collaborate on class research.

Learning has no temporal or geographic borders and is available wherever students and teachers find an Internet connection. This vast landscape of resources is offered digitally, often free, but to take that cerebral trek through the online world, children must know how to do it safely, securely, and responsibly. This used to mean limiting access to the Internet, blocking websites, and layering rules upon rules hoping (vainly) to discourage students from using an infinite and fascinating resource. It didn’t work.

Best practices now suggest that instead of cocooning students, we teach them to be good digital citizens, confident and competent. Here are projects to teach kids authentically, blended with your regular lessons, the often complicated topic of becoming good digital citizens, knowledgeable about their responsibilities in an Internet world.

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One of the best ways to get students interested in technology is allow them to personalize their work area. That starts with placing wallpaper of their choice on their desktop. (more…)

I get a lot of questions from readers about what tech ed resources I use in my classroom so I’m going to take a few days this summer to review them with you. Some are edited and/or written by members of the Ask a Tech Teacher crew. Others, by tech teachers who work with the same publisher I do. All of them, I’ve found well-suited to the task of scaling and differentiating tech skills for age groups, scaffolding learning year-to-year, taking into account the perspectives and norms of all stakeholders, with appropriate metrics to know learning is organic and granular.

Today: K-8 Keyboard Curriculum

Overview

K-8 Keyboard Curriculum (four options)–teacher handbook, student workbooks, and help for homeschoolers

2-Volume Ultimate Guide to Keyboarding

K-5 (237 pages) and Middle School (80 pages), 100 images, 7 assessments

K-5–print/digital; Middle School–digital delivery only

Aligned with Student workbooks 

Delivered print or digital

Student workbooks sold separately

__________________________________________________________________________

1-Volume Essential Guide to K-8 Keyboarding

120 pages, dozens of images, 6 assessments

Delivered print or digital

Doesn’t include: Student workbooks 

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By fourth grade, my students are so good at PowerPoint, I don’t even teach it in fifth grade (I move on to Photoshop). They’ve learned enough to get them through school. Here’s how I do that: (more…)

Here are 50 animal websites for grades K-5, everything from Dinosaurs to the wildly popular Wolfquest (click here for updates):

1. 3D Toad—3D science study
2. Adaptations—game
3. Animal Adaptations
4. Animal games
5. Animal Games II
6. Animal games II
7. Animal Games III
8. Animal Habitats
9. Animal homes
10. Animal homes
11. Animal Homes II
12. Animal Homes III
13. Animal puzzle games–cool
14. Animals
15. Animals—San Diego Zoo Videos
16. Barnaby and Bellinda Bear
17. Bembo’s Zoo
18. Build a habitat
19. Build a habitat II
20. Butterfies and habitats
21. Classify animals
22. Cockroach—virtual
23. Dino collection
24. Dino Fossils then and now
25. Dino Games
26. Dino Games II
27. Dinosaurs
28. Dinosaurs II
29. Dinosaurs IV
30. Dinosaurs V
31. Dinosaurs VI
32. Endangered species collection
33. Food chain
34. Food Chains
35. Frog habitat
36. Google Earth—African Animals
37. Google Earth—endangered animals
38. Habitat Game
39. Habitats—create one
40. Habitats—match them
41. Life Cycles
42. Life—the Game–colorful
43. Ocean Currents—video from NASA
44. Ocean Safari
45. Ocean Tracks
46. Video Safari
47. Virtual Cockroach
48. Virtual Farm
49. Virtual Zoo
50. Wolfquest—simulation–DL

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Here are quick, safe spots to send students for research (click here for updates to the list):

1. CoolKidFacts–kid-friendly videos, pictures, info, and quizzes–all 100% suitable for children
2. Dimensions–academic research geared for college-level
3. Fact Monster–help with homework and facts
4. Google Earth Timelapse–what changes to the planet over time
5. Google Trends–what’s trending in searches
6. History Channel–great speeches
7. How Stuff Works–the gold standard in explaining stuff to kids
8. Info Please–events cataloged year-by-year
9. National Geographic for Kids
10. Ngram Viewer–analyzes all words in all books on Google Books
11. TagGalaxy–search using a cloud
12. Wild Wordsmyth–picture dictionary for kids
13. World Book–requires membership

Citing Resources

1. BibMe
2. Citation Machine
3. EasyBib

Kids Search Engines

1. Kiddle–visual search engine for kids
2. Kidtopia

How to Research

1. A Google A Day
2. How to Search on Google
3. Power Searching (with Google)
4. Teaching students to search/research
5. Internet Search and Research–a lesson plan for K-8

Lesson Plans

1. Image Copyright Do’s and Don’ts
2. Internet Search and Research

Resources/Research

1. BrainPOP–Bring learning to your fingertips™ with the BrainPOP® Featured Movie app
2. Kids Picture Dictionary
3. Primary Source Documents
4. SparkVue–collect and display live data from iPhone etc to the iPad
5. Talk to Books–research your topic based on books
6. TED app–TED’s official app presents talks from some of the world’s most fascinating people

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Click to enlarge lesson plan

A Holiday Calendar

Kids love making this calendar. They get to talk about their upcoming vacations and hear what their friends are doing. It’s simple enough for third grade with advanced tools that satisfy a fifth graders growing intellect.

Create a holiday card for Thanksgiving or Christmas in KidPix or another drawing program and reinforce early writing skills while teaching mouse skills, toolbars and tool use: (more…)

Education has changed. No longer is it contained within four classroom walls or the physical site of a school building. Students aren’t confined by the eight hours between school bells or the struggling budget of an underfunded program. Now, education can be found anywhere — teaming up with students in Kenya, Skyping with an author in Sweden, or chatting with an astrophysicist on the International Space Station. Students can use Google Earth to take a virtual tour of a zoo or a blog to collaborate on class research. Learning has no temporal or geographic borders and is available wherever students and teachers find an Internet connection. This vast landscape of resources is offered digitally, often free, but to take that cerebral trek through the online world, children must know how to do it safely, securely, and responsibly. This used to mean limiting access to the Internet, blocking websites, and layering rules upon rules hoping (vainly) to discourage students from using an infinite and fascinating resource. It didn’t work. Best practices now suggest that instead of cocooning students, we teach them to be good digital citizens, confident and competent. Here are eleven projects to teach kids authentically, blended with your regular lessons, the often complicated topic of becoming good digital citizens, knowledgeable about their responsibilities in an Internet world. (more…)

Reinforce fiction writing–characters, plot, setting, climax–with a short story in MS Word or another word processing tool. Then use color, borders, and pictures to enhance the words. Click the images below for larger sizes. Designed for grades 2-7: (more…)