Business
World Backup Day–Once a Year
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 thisÂ
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.
International Blog Delurking Week–Get Involved!
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!
Technology and Writing: A Conversation with Vicki Davis
Vicki Davis is a teacher, author, podcaster, tweeter, blogger, international presenter, and so much more. I admire her podcasts and posts so was honored when she invited me to chat with her on her podcast, the 10-Minute Teacher. The topic is one dear to my heart:Â How to use technology to teach writing in creative ways.
Click the image below to access her post where you can listen to the podcast or read the transcript–whichever works better for you. Or scroll down a bit more and you’ll find the podcast embedded:
Vicki’s bio
Feeling Thankful? Any Spare Holiday Spirit?
Ask a Tech Teacher is a small group of tech-ed teachers with a big goal: provide free and affordable resources to anyone, anywhere that integrate technology into education. It’s an ambitious goal and we rely on donations from readers like you to make that happen. Use the PayPal Donate button below or in the sidebar of Ask a Tech Teacher (aka, Structured Learning LLC–our publisher):
About this time of each year, when several of our larger bills come due, we give a shout out for help. We thought we’d share some of the costs of running Ask a Tech Teacher:
Subscriber Special: December
Every month, subscribers to Ask a Tech Teacher get a free/discounted resource to help their tech teaching.
December 1st-10th:
Spend $28 or more on Structured Learning, get a free copy of the
Hour of Code bundle
[gallery type="slideshow" ids="56755,57665,57662,57663,57664,57667,57668"]
Here’s a preview (download as a PDF):
Here’s what you do:
Building Digital Citizens–the Class
If you have questions about how to build good digital citizens, questions like:
- how DO you get students not to steal images from Google and how important is that?
- what’s the best advice to students when they face cyberbullying?
- how do you know if you are plagiarizing or if you’ve been plagiarized?
We have a new certificate class (with 18 ECUs) called “Building Digital Citizens” that covers thirteen of the most-common topics everyone should know about Digital Citizenship (they’re listed in the video below). Each section has an introduction and then three phases to help you scaffold learning: Introductory, Working on, and Mastered. Work through all phases in each topic at your own pace, in whatever order you’d like. It’s all online, self-directed, with lots of links, videos, and top-notch online resources to help you figure it all out.
Here’s what you do:
- Sign up through this link. Be sure to include your email in Special Instructions.
- Receive a Join Code for the class wiki.
- Work through the units.
- Notify us when you’re finished and we’ll send the Certificate.
It’s that simple. Here’s a video introduction:
Subscriber Special: August
Teachers Pay Teachers annual back-to-school sale is going on right now! Visit my store over at Teachers Pay Teachers
Date: August 1st-2nd
Many items are marked 10 percent off today and tomorrow (August 1 and 2). To get the biggest savings, use the promo code BTS2017 at checkout, and this should take off an additional 5 percent, giving you a total of 15% off the original price of the item!
This would be a great time to pick up items from your wishlist on digital citizenship, keyboarding, lesson plans, coding, and more!
Visit My New Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Store!
Textbook publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, now offers an education resource website called HMH Marketplace. This is for teachers by teachers, giving educators an attractive, easy-to-maneuver online site where they can find exactly the right lesson plans, rubrics, activities, classroom decor, and more for their unique classroom needs. It’s free to sign up, carefully managed (they went through all of my products in detail before posting them–which I appreciate), with a wide variety of products you can browse by grade, subject, or category.
I invite you to visit my store, Ask a Tech Teacher. Browse through to see what I have available:
…and then visit the hundreds of other teacher stores with their thousands of resources.
New Year Brings Changes
I’ve noticed that the same people subscribe to both my weekly newsletter on Tech Tips and Websites. That means they get two emails a week in their email box from me, in what is probably already a cluttered, overcrowded bit of virtual real estate. That inspired me to make a change.
I’m going to merge the two lists and send one email a week that includes both a Weekly Tech Tip and a Weekly Website. No need to resubscribe though you may get a notification that you’ve been added to a list that will sound something like “Weekly Tech Tips and Websites”.  Here’s the new link:
I’ll still have a separate newsletter for resource announcements. Here’s that link:
Here’s to a wonderful, busy, productive, fulfilling new year!
Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, CSG Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, CAEP reviewer, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, and a weekly contributor to TeachHUB. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.
