Category: 5th Grade

Tech Tip #58: Show all Your Tools on Toolbars

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 work with younger students (first grade, second grade, even third grade). We’re using Office 2003. When I direct them to the menu bar and one of the dropdown menu choices, sometimes it isn’t there. Instead, there’s a chevron–double arrow–that they have to click to expand the menu. This is confusing for youngers. Is there any way to have the entire menu drop down rather than the truncated version?

A: Absolutely. Go to Tools, Customise. Select the Options tab and select the ‘Always show full menus’ checkbox. (more…)

How to Find Reliable Internet Sources

So much of reliable sources in internet searches is the same as researching in the library. Pick:

primary sources
unbiased sources
sources with the background and training required to understand and present information

Young students have difficulty with these rules. They work hard just to maneuver through a search engine, the links, the search bar and the address bar. They’re thrilled when they get hits, much less trying to distinguish what’s good from bad. How do they know if it’s a ‘primary source’ or not? How can they determine what’s ‘biased’ or not? Or who has enough training to be trusted?Wikipedia is a great example. It’s edited by the People, not PhDs, encyclopedias or primary sources, yet it usually pops up pretty close to the top of a search list and lots of kids think it’s the last word in reliability.

With that in mind, I’ve made the rules simple: Look at the extension. Start with that limitor. Here are the most popular extensions and how I rate them for usefulness:

.gov

Published by the government and non-military. As such, it should be unbiased, reliable.

.mil

Published by the government and military. Perfect for the topics that fit this category, i.e., wars, economics, etc.

.edu

Published by colleges and universities. Historically, focused on research, study, and education

.org

U.S. non-profit organizations and others. They have a bias, but it shouldn’t be motivated by money

These four are the most trustworthy. The next three take subjective interpretation and a cursory investigation into their information:

.net

networks, internet service providers, organizations–traditionally. Pretty much anyone can purchase a .net now

.com

commercial site. Their goal is to sell something to you, so they are unabashedly biased. If you’re careful, you’ll still find good information here

.au, etc.

These are foreign sites. Perfect for international and cultural research, but they will retain their nation’s bias and interpretation of events, just as American sites have ours.

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.

Tech Tip #57: How to Create a Chart Really Fast

Q: What’s the easiest way to introduce 3rd graders to Excel charts?

A: When students have gone through the basics and feel like that scary interface (with the blank boxes and letters and numbers) isn’t so scary, you’re ready to create a chart. Collect class data. Highlight the labels and data and push F11.

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Tech Tip #56: Force a New Page

Q: I’m teaching my students to create a book report with a cover page. what’s the easiest way to get the cover on the first page and the report on the second?

A: Students as young as 2nd grade can learn to force a new page with Ctrl+enter. I have them create the cover page during one class and add the Ctrl+enter for the new page. That way, students can type the book report without me to help–even on the classroom computers.

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Weekend Website #75: Solar System Scope

Every Friday I’ll send you a wonderful website that my classes and my parents love. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of your students as they are of mine.

[caption id="attachment_5979" align="aligncenter" width="614"]

Interactive space on steroids[/caption]

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23 Websites to Support Math Automaticity in K-5

Summer is when parents worry about math facts and the automaticity of math skills. The following websites focus solely on that facet of math.

I’ve broken them down by grade level, but you can decide if your second graders are precocious enough to try the websites for grades 3-5:

You can find updates for this page here.

1^st

2^nd

Tech Tip #55: Find a Lost Shortcut

Q: I can’t find the shortcut for a program I want to open. It’s not on the desktop, on the start menu or in ‘all programs’. How do I open the program?

A: Try ‘Start button’, then type in the name of the program where it says ‘start search’. The shortcut shows up.

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Tech Tip #54: How to Auto Forward a PowerPoint Slideshow

Q: My students are learning to use Powerpoint for presentations. They’ll stand in front of the class and the slideshow will play behind them. We want it to go automatically without requiring them to click the mouse or push the space bar. How do we do that?

A: Presentations are a great skill to teach students. I applaud you on this. Auto-forward isn’t difficult:

go to Transition on the menu bar
go to Timing on the right side
Leave ‘on mouse click’ selected (in case you as the teacher need to move it forward automatically. I’ve had students mistakenly put five minutes on a slide instead of five seconds and we would sit waiting forever if I didn’t do the mouse click)
set the timer to serve the needs of the slide. This will require students to practice before presenting so they can put the correct time in. A good default of 5-10 seconds.

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Monday Freebies #3: How to Make Wallpaper

Today, I start a new program here on Ask a Tech Teacher. This year more than any before, classroom budgets have been cut making it more difficult than ever to equip the education of our children with quality teaching materials. I understand that. I teach K-8. To be sure you don’t miss any of these free lesson plans:

…and start each week off with a fully-adaptable K-8 lesson that integrates technology into core classroom subjects. Each has been tested on hundreds of students and includes step-by-step directions, as well as relevant ISTE national standards, tie-ins, extensions, troubleshooting and more. They’re all from the two-volume Technology Toolkit that integrates technology into classroom units of inquiry while insuring a fun, age-appropriate, developmentally–appropriate experience for students.

Eventually, you’ll get the entire book. If you can’t wait, you can purchase the curriculum here.

I love giving my material away for free. If everyone did, we would reach true equity in international education.

We’ll start with

#3: I Can Make My Own Wallpaper

Kids love personalizing their computer stations. Show them how to create their own wallpaper using internet pictures, pictures on the computer or their own photos or drawings (more…)