Ask a Tech Teacher contributor, Jenny Wise, has navigated the complexities of raising a growing family, supporting her children through life’s difficulties, and finding strength through faith, resilience, and connection.

If you’re interesting in homeschool ideas, Jenny shares family homeschooling experiences, practical advice, encouragement, and resources for parents considering or navigating homeschooling through her platform, Special Home Educator. Her mission is to support and inspire other families by honestly sharing the ups and downs of creating a personalized education at home. Today, she’s exploring down the education journey–to a Masters:

Key Factors to Consider When Going Back to School for a Master’s Degree

For prospective master’s students weighing a returning to school decision mid-career, the question isn’t whether learning matters, it’s whether the degree will truly change what comes next. Career advancement considerations can point toward a credential that opens doors, but the financial investment in education can be hard to justify without clarity on outcomes. The time commitment can also pressure work obligations, family responsibilities, and education life balance in ways that don’t show up on a course catalog. A smart choice comes from treating the master’s degree ROI as a concrete tradeoff, not a leap of faith. (more…)

Top of mind–right after quality of educational tools–is security. Here’s a great article from Ask a Tech Teacher contributor, Melissa White. She is a technology writer and security specialist at TechCommuters. With extensive experience in digital safety, data protection, and threat intelligence, she creates insightful content that helps readers navigate the evolving technology landscape. Melissa focuses on online privacy, secure computing practices, emerging risks, and practical solutions for businesses and individuals.

This is longish, but worth the read–in a sentence:

Is your laptop camera spying on you? Learn the warning signs, how to check for spyware, and simple steps to protect your privacy right now.

How To Know If Your Laptop Camera Is Spying On You?

Your laptop camera may look harmless. It sits quietly above your screen. Most people barely notice it. But in some cases, it can become a privacy risk.

Hackers and harmful software can sometimes access your webcam without permission. Certain apps may also use the camera in the background. The worst part is that you may not notice anything unusual while it happens.

This type of attack is often called camfecting. It happens when someone remotely takes control of your webcam. They may watch you, capture photos, or record videos without your knowledge. In some situations, the camera light may not even turn on. Security experts continue to find many devices affected by these attacks every year.

The good part is that there are warning signs you can look for. There are also simple ways to secure your laptop and block unwanted access. In this guide, you will learn how to spot suspicious webcam activity and what steps to take if something feels wrong. (more…)

For those already thinking about next year, Ask a Tech Teacher contributor, Jenny Wise, has ideas on managing class projects without burning out. This time of year, we all feel on the edge. Jenny has great ideas to prepare for summer school classes if you teach them, or the new school year. She has navigated the complexities of raising a growing family, supporting her children through life’s difficulties, and finding strength through faith, resilience, and connection.

If you’re interesting in homeschool ideas, Jenny shares family homeschooling experiences, practical advice, encouragement, and resources for parents considering or navigating homeschooling through her platform, Special Home Educator. Her mission is to support and inspire other families by honestly sharing the ups and downs of creating a personalized education at home.

A Teacher’s Guide to Managing Creative Projects Without Burnout

For busy classroom teachers who also lead clubs, performances, showcases, or other creative work, the real strain isn’t the project itself, it’s the extra layer of coordination piled onto an already full day. Teacher workload challenges grow fast when student team coordination, shifting expectations, and last-minute questions keep spilling into planning periods and evenings. That pressure can make managing extracurricular projects feel like a personal endurance test instead of a normal part of the job. The good news is that stress management for teachers often starts with educational project planning that makes responsibilities, communication, and follow-through predictable. (more…)

As you prepare to regenerate for the next school year, Ask a Tech Teacher contributor, Jenny Wise, has some ideas on strengthening your school community with collaborative projects. Jenny is a homeschooling mom of four children, including her youngest daughter, Anna, who is on the autism spectrum. She and her husband chose to begin home-educating when their oldest was just four years old, embarking on a journey filled with both challenges and meaningful rewards. Along the way, Jenny has navigated the complexities of raising a growing family, supporting her children through life’s difficulties—including the recent loss of her father—and finding strength through faith, resilience, and connection.

Through her platform, Special Home Educator, Jenny shares her family’s homeschooling experiences, offering practical advice, encouragement, and resources for parents considering or navigating homeschooling, especially those raising children with special needs. Her mission is to support and inspire other families by honestly sharing the ups and downs of creating a personalized education at home.”

How Collaborative School Projects Build Stronger Campus Communities

K–12 educators working to integrate technology often face a tough mix of social challenges in schools and uneven digital habits that can quietly weaken day-to-day connection. When engagement slips, classroom tech can feel like another management problem, and student-staff relationships can become transactional instead of trusting. Collaborative school projects offer a practical way to bring students and adults back into shared purpose, giving learning a visible, collective reason to matter. Done well, these experiences strengthen educational engagement and set the conditions for lasting campus community building.

Understanding Shared Creation and Belonging

At the heart of a stronger campus culture is shared creation that students can see, revisit, and contribute to. When a class publication, art showcase, or storytelling series runs in repeating cycles, participation becomes normal, and identity becomes shared. The scaffolded and disciplined learning journey idea matters here because community grows when skills and contributions build over time.

This matters for tech-enhanced teaching because visible outputs turn digital tools into a reason to collaborate, not just another platform to manage. When students expect their work to be published or displayed, routines tighten, feedback improves, and quieter students have more ways to belong. Over time, roles and norms solidify, much like students who build skills at each of these levels from self to relationships to the wider system.

Picture a monthly “campus stories” drop: one team interviews staff, another designs pages, and others curate photos and captions. Each release becomes a small tradition, and each new student can join without starting from zero. The project becomes a shared mirror of the school, not a one-off assignment.

With the concept clear, adaptable project ideas and a simple publication workflow become easier to put into motion.

Design 6 Collaborative Projects—Plus a Yearbook Workflow

Shared creation builds belonging when students can see themselves, and each other, in a product the whole campus can access. Use the ideas below as plug-and-play models, then adapt the workflow to fit your schedule and tech setup.

1. Launch a “People of Our School” story series: Assign pairs to interview classmates, staff, and community helpers, then publish short profiles with a consistent template: 150–200 words, one quote, and one photo or illustration. This works because repetition creates a recognizable campus narrative and lowers the barrier to participation. Add roles like interviewer, fact-checker, photographer, and editor so every student contributes in a visible way.
2. Build a voter’s guide or issues explainer (grade-appropriate): Students act as newsroom teams to research a local issue, compare perspectives, and publish a guide with verified sources, vocabulary support, and a “how to take action” box. The voter’s guide model is effective because it requires students to practice gathering evidence, synthesizing, and writing for an authentic audience. Use a shared folder with a source log and require each claim to link back to a note or citation.
3. Run a cross-grade “how-to” knowledge base: Create a living digital handbook such as “How to succeed in 6th grade” or “Lab safety and STEM routines,” written by students for students. Publish one new entry weekly and rotate teams through drafting, peer review, and accessibility checks, such as headings, alt text, and readable fonts. The community-building payoff is huge: students feel responsible for helping others, not just finishing an assignment.
4. Host a collaborative data story about your campus: Have small groups collect simple data that doesn’t identify individuals, cafeteria choices, recess activities, library favorites, then produce charts and short write-ups that interpret patterns. Assign a data steward to check for privacy and a designer to standardize visuals across teams. This often boosts participation when students who don’t love writing can own an analysis or design.
5. Create a digital citizenship “micro-campaign”: Teams design a set of 3–5 shareable assets for homerooms or advisories: a poster, a 30-second script, a mini-quiz, and a reflection prompt. Add a clear production constraint such as “one message, one example, one action step” to keep quality high. This helps rebuild momentum when student engagement has declined by giving students fast cycles and a real audience.
6. Use a yearbook/publication workflow with sprints (repeatable all year): Start with a kickoff where you assign roles and norms, editor-in-chief, section editors, photographers/illustrators, copy editors, and a permissions manager, then set a two-week cadence: Week 1, gather content, Week 2 compile and review. Compile pages in an online design studio using templates so students focus on storytelling and consistency; a comprehensive school yearbook design approach can help keep templates and standards aligned, then run a final checklist for captions, names, and image rights before publishing.

When these projects run on clear roles, short cycles, and shared quality rules, collaboration feels fair, and students can take creative risks without the usual confusion about permissions, privacy, and feedback.

Collaborative Project FAQs for K-12 Classrooms

Q: How do I set roles and permissions without turning into the tech help desk?
A: Create three access levels: view, comment, and edit, then assign them by role (writer, editor, designer, checker). Start students on comment-only for shared “master” files and let teams edit their own working drafts. Post a one-slide “who can do what” chart so requests do not pile up in your inbox.

Q: What’s a manageable feedback cycle that doesn’t stall progress?
A: Use a 2-round routine: peer feedback first (one glow, one grow, one question), then teacher spot-checking on a small sample. Timebox feedback to 8 to 10 minutes and require students to accept or reject each comment with a short note. This keeps revisions moving and makes decisions visible.

Q: How can I protect student privacy when work is shared campus-wide?
A: Default to first names only, no personal identifiers, and pre-approved photos or avatars. Teach a quick “privacy scan” before publishing, and consider a digital literacy mini-lesson using ProjectEVOLVE, which is used by many schools.

Q: What can I do when one or two students dominate the collaboration?
A: Grade both the product and the process using role-based checkpoints, not just participation points. Rotate high-visibility tasks and require each student to submit a short evidence link or screenshot of their contribution. Structured turn-taking in meetings also helps quieter students be heard.

Q: How should I handle AI tools in group projects without creating new issues?
A: Set a clear rule: AI can support brainstorming and clarity, but students must cite sources and verify facts. A useful norm is a shared “AI use log,” especially since AI prompts in their classes are already common in many learning settings. Keep any student data out of prompts.

One clear routine at a time makes collaboration feel doable and fair.

Turning Collaborative Projects Into Lasting School Community Traditions

Even with a solid checklist, collaborative projects can fade once the deadline passes, leaving relationships and momentum underused. A community-first approach, grounded in student and staff collaboration and shared ownership, keeps the work focused on connection, not just completion. When teams repeat and refine a familiar project, strengthening relationships becomes part of the school’s rhythm and students experience a stronger sense of belonging. Projects become powerful when they turn into school traditions. Choose one project to run next term again, tighten what worked, and share the story so others can join. That consistency builds resilience and lasting community impact of projects across the campus.

–image credit Deposit Photos

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“The content presented in this blog are the result of creative imagination and not intended for use, reproduction, or incorporation into any artificial intelligence training or machine learning systems without prior written consent from the author.”

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, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

I get thousands of visitors a day–over six million since I started. The most common reason why you-all drop by is for resources. I have lots of them–lesson plans, real stories, tips and tricks–but one area I always welcome new ideas is from the experiences of fellow teachers:

• your personal teaching experiences
• your informed take on tech ed topics
• pedagogy

If you’re an educator interested in guest posting on this blog or start your own column, leave a comment below and I’ll be in touch.

(more…)

Spelling Force by EdAlive:

A Smart Solution for Mastering Spelling

Spelling Force, developed by Australian edtech company EdAlive, is a powerful and engaging platform designed to boost spelling proficiency in children through interactive learning, intelligent adaptation, and curriculum alignment. With a proven track record in classrooms across Australia and beyond, Spelling Force is a valued resource for teachers, students, and parents alike.

What is Spelling Force?

Spelling Force is an online spelling program designed for students from Year 1 to Year 10, although it is most commonly used in primary and lower secondary classrooms. It combines dynamic learning activities with a powerful adaptive learning engine that tailors content to each student’s individual needs. Students work through interactive spelling exercises, games, and quizzes that are designed not just for repetition, but for true understanding and mastery.

Unlike many spelling tools that simply drill lists of words, Spelling Force offers a much richer and more strategic approach. It identifies each student’s weaknesses and presents targeted exercises to improve their skills, building confidence and competence along the way. (more…)

I get thousands of visitors a day–over six million since I started. The most common reason why you-all drop by is for resources. I have lots of them–lesson plans, tips and tricks–but one area I have not enough depth is the experiences of fellow teachers:

• your personal teaching experiences
• your informed take on tech ed topics
• Education pedagogy

If you’re interested in guest posting on this blog or start your own column, leave a comment below and I’ll be in touch. It’s a challenging time but one we-all can get through if we talk to each other.

(more…)

I don’t write enough about special needs so when Rose contacted me with an article idea, I was thrilled. Rose Scott is a literary teacher with a goal of making education comfortable for students with special needs. Her dream is to help students explore their talents and abilities.

In this article, Rose writes about a little-known problem that students may unknowingly suffer from that may make it look like they are plagiarizing when–to them–they aren’t.

Read on:

Many people have come to believe that plagiarism is intentional and evil, and all students whose works have text coincidences are shameless wrongdoers. While it may seem that the majority of plagiarists do turn out to be cheaters, there are exceptions. Have you ever heard of cryptomnesia?

Cryptomnesia, according to the Merriam-Webster medical dictionary, is “the appearance in consciousness of memory images which are not recognized as such but which appear as original creations.” In other words, a person says something for the first time (as he or she thinks), but in reality he/she has already mentioned it, and now just doesn’t remember the previous occurrence.

(more…)

How to incorporate podcasting into your curriculum this school year

School is almost back in session and educators are busy working on curriculum for the upcoming school year that will challenge students, improve their communication skills and provide a platform to express their thoughts and interests. If you haven’t created a podcasting unit before, there are plenty of platforms that will help you get started with low or no start-up costs.

My son and I started The Middle School Mind podcast last fall as a way to give him a platform  to express his, sometimes random, 6th grade thoughts. We had so much fun making the podcast that we’ve created a tutorial to encourage students to plan, produce and publish their own podcasts and hope educators will incorporate podcasts into their curriculum.

Why podcasting?

According to a recent survey published by Kids Listen, an organization of advocates for high-quality audio content for children, nearly two-thirds of the respondents have been listening to podcasts for more than one year.

Respondents cited that podcasts are fun and offer entertainment value while some offer educational value through current events, history or science and nature-themed shows as primary reasons for listening to podcasts. Many families like podcasts as a way to keep kids engaged and off screens and something the entire family can listen to in the car.

Meet The Middle School Mind

We started The Middle School Mind because we also love listening to podcasts. We started the show when my son started 6th grade and wanted his own YouTube or Twitch channel to stream video games like Minecraft and Fortnite.

My wife and I had strong reservations with him posting online content that would include his name or image. People can be cruel on the internet and online message boards and comments sections can be places that are detrimental to a middle schooler’s ego and view of self-worth.

We go by Father and Son on our show to maintain a level of anonymity and privacy. This allows my son to speak freely and openly on the show without fear of being judged, identified or bullied online. During our first season, we covered a wide variety of topics ranging from school resource officers, video games and even a two part episode where we interviewed middle school teachers (who also happen to be close family members).

(more…)

It’s always interesting to find out what new teachers learned in their early teaching that affected their later years. Here’s Ask a Tech Teacher contributor, Elaine Vanessa’s, take on that–5 bits of wisdom she acquired while surviving the early teaching years:

My first five years of teaching were the shortest and longest years of my life. I was living the best and the worst time simultaneously. However, it was the most memorable time of my life that I don’t want to forget. Also, those five years made me a well-groomed educator and a better person in my life.

Every teacher has a dream of having a classroom with respectful kids having fun activities and love while learning. It makes teaching easy if kids love to be in the room every day. However, my first years were not like that. As I continued, I got better every year. There was one thing consistent; learning. Below are five lessons that I have learned in my first five years of teaching. I am sharing them in the hope of being a candle in someone’s darkroom.

(more…)