Ask a Tech Teacher is a small group of tech-ed teachers with a big goal: provide free and affordable resources and insight to anyone, anywhere on how to integrate technology into education. It’s an ambitious goal and we rely on donations from readers like you to make that happen.

About this time of each year, when several of our larger bills come due, we give a shout out for help. This year, we thought we’d share some of the costs of running Ask a Tech Teacher:

• Site hosting–we use GoDaddy–an excellent company that keeps the site up and running over 99% of the time.
• Domain name hosting--for that, we also use GoDaddy. They always take my calls, walk us through how to fix problems in terms we understand. we’re teachers, not network geeks, but they don’t hold that against us.
• Legal images–to avoid problems with illegal images, we buy ours through a service.
• Constant and chronic techie problems–such as IPNs and plug-in updates and so much more. Again, we’re teachers. This double geek stuff makes our heads hurt. We have a monthly maintenance service for that who can solve 99% of the problems we face.
• Plan B–problem solvers for techie stuff beyond the monthly stuff, including hardware issues
• The geeky tools and programs that deliver content–like the apps we review and the programs we use for webinars.

We could sell ads (like Google does), but clutter on the pages distracts readers from why they arrive at our destination–to search out resources for your classroom. We rely on donations. Any amount you can contribute–$5… $10… using the PayPal Donate button below or in the sidebar, would be appreciated.

BTW, we love sponsors!  If you’re an edtech company interested in helping spread Ask a Tech Teacher resources to everyone, contact us at [email protected]. We can add you to the sidebar, review your product, or another sponsor sort of activity.

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Every month, subscribers to our newsletter get a free/discounted resource to help their tech teaching.

Over the next few weeks, we will be sharing details on our blog (Ask a Tech Teacher) about Structured Learning resources to get your new school year started. These are often collected into back-to-school survival kits. Purchase one of those with the coupon code:

Back-to-school Special Survival Kits

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Get 20% off listed price.

Offer expires Sept. 15, 2024

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Every month, subscribers to our newsletter get a free/discounted resource to help their tech teaching.

September 2nd-3rd:

Subscribe to the Ask a Tech Teacher newsletter through Rafflecopter. Each new subscriber is entered in a contest to win a $10 Amazon card

a Rafflecopter giveaway

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/ca9c2f912/?

Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular prehistoric fiction saga, Man vs. Nature which explores seminal events in man’s evolution one trilogy at a time. She is also the author of the Rowe-Delamagente thrillers and Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. Her non-fiction includes over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, reviews as an Amazon Vine Voice,  a columnist for NEA Today, and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. Look for her next prehistoric fiction, Natural Selection Fall 2022.

If you’re a teacher-author–like me!–I’d love your help launching this HS-level historical fiction book with your community. In return, I’d be more than happy to share yours with mine!

The world has changed. Can Lucy, too, if it will save her tribe?

In this conclusion to Lucy’s journey, she and her tribe leave their good home to rescue former tribemembers captured by the enemy. Lucy’s tribe includes a mix of species–a Canis, a Homotherium, and different iterations of early man. More join and some die, but that is the nature of prehistoric life, where survival depends on a combination of developing intellect and man’s inexhaustible will to live. Based on true events.

If you’d like to know a little more about Natural Selection, here’s the trailer.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZhlvou9hvg]

An Indie author’s most powerful marketing tool is word of mouth. We don’t have a big publisher behind us or an agent that pushes us out to the world. What we have is each other, telling our friends about the latest great book we’ve read.

I need your help

If you’re willing to help me promote my latest book, I’ll help you! Here’s how it works:

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The least-known international holiday coming up this week: International Comment Week. This is a time where you make the extra effort to leave a comment on the blogs you visit.

I would love that–share your thoughts about any of the topics I post on this week. I’ll do the same on your blog. Or, just say hi. In this way, we’ll grow our community.

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Visit our brand new website

A friend started a free blog directory that includes categories for writers and teacher-authors. I’ve added both of my blogs, Ask a Tech Teacher and WordDreams. It’s free, just getting going. If you’re looking for another way to market your books and/or teaching resources, here’s how you sign up:

https://mohamadkarbi.com/2020/11/23/blog-directory/

Why the Blog Directory?

• Find blogs of a specific category; and/or find bloggers of similar interests.
• Drive more traffic to your blog and enhance its SEO. Search engines like to crawl websites in such directories*.
• I believe it’s the first of kind for bloggers by a blogger. And unlike others, it’s human moderated directory.
• It’s FREE!

How to submit your blog?

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March 31st is called World Backup Day. At least once a year, backup your data files to an external drive (like a flash drive). This is one that isn’t connected to your local computer so can’t be compromised if you get a virus. It’s good to always backup data to cloud drives or a different drive on your computer but once a year, do the entire collection of data files to what is called an ‘air gap’ drive–one that is separated from any internet connection.

How to do this 

There are various ways to back up your data. You can back up your data to an external device or you can back up your data to a cloud-based backup service, or back up your data to both an external device and a cloud backup service. You might even make more than one backup to external storage devices and keep the two copies in different places (providing protection and access to your data even if one of the backup devices is destroyed or inaccessible. Preserving your valuable documents and images for future access and use requires planning, as well as the use of automatic backup services.

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Check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store for big savings on November 26th and 27th!

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Believe it or not, there is an International Blog Delurking Week that traditionally takes place in the first full week of January. It’s an opportunity for bloggers to find out who quietly reads their blog without commenting. As Melissa the founder of this event says:

“…there is a huge discrepancy between the number of readers in actuality and the number of readers I actually know are reading. Or a tongue-twister like that.”

Yep, I noticed I missed that week. I was still getting the year started! But Melissa also says you can run it anytime you want so I’m taking advantage of that codicil.

OK, another yep–comments are always closed on this blog. So here’s what I’d love you to do:

• Follow Ask a Tech Teacher (sign up in the sidebar)
• Sign up for my newsletter
• Like and Follow us on Facebook
• Follow us on Twitter

If you do, you’ll probably find one of us over at your social media, checking things out in your corner of the tech ed world. We love a good road trip!

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