Category: Blogging

Here’s a preview of what’s coming up on Ask a Tech Teacher in September:

1. What is Genius Hour and Why Should I Love it?
2. teacher-Authors
3. Free Posters
4. Websites to teach Chemistry
5. 9/11…
6. Mouse Skills Webtools
7. Tech Tips

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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: Backup Your Blog

Category: Maintenance, Social Media, Writing, Problem-solving

Q: I’m paranoid of losing my documents so I back them up to an external drive, a flash drive, and in the cloud. My blog–it’s become an important cog in my PLN. If it blew up, I’d be lost. What do I do about backing it up?

A: If you use WordPress, it’s easy; they provide a native tool for that. Here’s what you do:

• Go to Tools>Export.
• Select the bubble for ‘all’.
• It’ll back document files up as an XML file (you don’t have to understand what that is. Just know it’s the file that will save you if Wordpress crashes).
• Save that backup file somewhere safe in case you need it. Preferably where your Cloud automatic backup will grab it (assuming you have one of those. If you use Carbonite, you do).
• Do this once a month–or a week if you’re active.

This will backup posts, pages, comments, categories, and tags. For the entirety of the blog–similar to an image where you can restore the entire website–you’ll need an external service. My Wordpress.org blog is hosted by GoDaddy. Part of that service is a backup of the blog. It’s worth it to me to pay a bit extra for that function.

World Backup Day just passed. Mark your calendar for next year, March 31st, and be sure to perform all backups–your blog and everything else–on that day.

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

What’s your favorite tech tip in your classroom? Share it in the comments below.

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Here are the most-read posts for the month of January

1. Classes in Remote Teaching
2. 5 (free) Shortkey Posters
3. 9 Great Websites to Inspire 3rd Graders
4. Ten Most Important Keyboard Keys
5. Great Websites for Special Needs
6. Edtech Trends From 2020 And Beyond
7. Game-based Learning in Remote Teaching
8. 5 Fun Science Experiments Kids Do at Home
9. Public Domain Day and Happy New Year!
10. Top 10 Reviews of 2020

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Here’s a preview of what’s coming up on Ask a Tech Teacher in February:

• Subscriber Special
• 100th Day of School Activities
• World Read Aloud Day
• Free Posters
• Why Kindergartners Must Learn Tech
• Math Word Problems
• Shortkeys
• Great Websites for Remote Teaching
• Websites to Enhance Social Studies
• How Fast Schould Kids Type
• Keyboarding Hints
• College Credit Classes for Your PD

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Since we at Ask a Tech Teacher started this blog nine years ago, we’ve had almost 5.3 million views from visitors (about 10,000 follow us) to the 2,444 articles on integrating technology into the classroom. This includes tech tips, website/app reviews, tech-in-ed pedagogy, how-tos, videos, and more. We have regular features like:

• Weekly Websites and Tech Tips (sign up for the newsletter)
• Dear Otto Help Column
• Edtech Reviews
• Lesson plans

If you’ve just arrived at Ask a Tech Teacher, start here.

It always surprises us what readers find to be the most and least provocative. The latter is as likely to be a post one of us on the crew put heart and soul into, sure we were sharing Very Important Information, as the former. Talk about humility.

Here they are–my top 10 of 2020 (though I’ve skipped any that have to do with website reviews and tech tips because they’re covered in separate posts):

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This week, I’ll post my updated suggestions for three holiday activities that will get your computers and technology ready for the blitz of teaching that starts after the New Year. Here’s what you’ll get (the links won’t be active until the post goes live):

For regular readers of Ask a Tech Teacher, these are yearly reminders. For new readers, these are like body armor in the tech battle. They allow you to jubilantly overcome rather than dramatically succumb. Your choice.

Today: 11 Ways to Update Your Online Presence

For most teachers I know, life zooms by, filled with lesson planning, teaching, meeting with grade-level teams, chatting with parents, attending conferences (to stay UTD), and thinking. There are few breaks to update/fix/maintain the tech tools that allow us to pursue our trade.

That includes your online presence and all those personal profiles. But, that must happen or they no longer accomplish what we need. If they aren’t updated, we are left wondering why our blog isn’t getting visitors, why our social media Tweeple don’t generate activity, and why you aren’t being contacted for networking. Here’s a short list of items that won’t take long to accomplish:

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Here’s a preview of what’s coming up on Ask a Tech Teacher in December:

• More Hour of Code projects, websites, resources
• Unplugged activities for coding
• Subscriber Special
• Holiday activities to keep the learning going
• Holiday gifts for teachers
• End-of-year maintenance–speeding up computers, updating your online presence
• Have Santa call your kids

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Here’s a preview of what’s coming up on Ask a Tech Teacher in November. It’s a short month and we wish you the best during your holiday celebrations:

• How to Make Kindness Part of Your Classes
• National STEM/STEAM Day
• Tech Tips: 4 Stages of Keyboarding Growth
• 16 Sites, 3 Apps, 7 Projects for Thanksgiving

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Here’s a preview of what’s coming up on Ask a Tech Teacher in October:

• National Bullying Prevention Month resources
• NaNoWriMo and Young Writers
• Election resources
• Dyslexia Awareness Month resources
• Digital Citizenship Week resources
• Long List of Shortkeys 
• Shortkey Posters
• Great Websites for Special Needs
• Apps that Inspire Students
• Tech Tips
• A Geek is asked, “Who are you?”
• Halloween Projects, Websites, Apps, Books, and a Costume

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Here’s a preview of what’s coming up on Ask a Tech Teacher in August:

• Tech Tips
• 21 Websites and 5 Posters to Teach Mouse Skills
• 9 Great Websites to Inpsire 2nd Graders
• 9 Websites to Inspire 5th Graders
• Favorite Shortkeys for Special Needs

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.