Excel makes graphs simple and easy for beginners. Even my parent helpers are amazed at how much students can do with a simple F11 shortkey and a right click. This lesson plan works just as well with Google Sheets though you may have to adapt a few of the instructions.

Over the next few months, we’ll provide a series of lessons on spreadsheet basics you can use in your K-8 classroom. Here are some of the topics we’ll cover:

1. #74: Mastering Excel (for Beginners)
2. #71: Beginning Graphs in MS Excel
3. #70: Create a Timecard in Excel for Grade Two and Up
4. #73: How to Graph in Excel
5. #12: Create Simple Shapes in Excel
6. #75: Tessellations in Excel
7. #72: How to Check Your Math in Excel
8. How to Use Excel to Teach Math Arrays
9. #62: Email from Word (Or PowerPoint or Excel)
10. #79: Excel Turns Data Into Information

If the lesson plans are blurry, click on them for a full size alternative. (more…)

I have to reblog this wonderful post by my efriend, Lisa. How many of these fit you? Can you add to this list?

You Know You’re a Techy Teacher When…

1. You can’t remember the last time you printed a classroom document.
2. Plurking, tweeting, and playing with your wiki in public are acceptable behaviors.
3. Your Notebook isn’t spiral bound – it plugs into the wall.
4. Forget the garden…you spend more time on the weekend weeding out your Inbox.
5. You can recite your school’s Acceptable Use Policy by heart.
6. On parent/teacher night, instead of exchanging business cards, you Bump.
7. You express yourself with emoticons.
8. You no longer consider it graffiti to write on someone’s wall.
9. Your significant other gets jealous of your PLN.
10. It’s not creepy to have lots of followers.
11. Your students call you the “cool” teacher.
12. The other teachers are jealous of your Instagram.
13. YouTube is blocked in your school, and you know how to get around it.
14. The Tech Department is sick of your constant requests to unblock Twitter.
15. You’ve Googled your principal.
16. You know that TweetDeck is not a patio with a lot of birds.
17. You correct your friends’ grammar when they text you.
18. “Casual Fridays” means logging into the EdTech UNconference in your bunny slippers.
19. You wear your “I Heart EdTech” button everywhere you go.
20. You read this blog post then tweet it, like it, and pass it on to a friend (more…)

This is one of the most popular lessons I teach to Excel beginners. It is relevant, instantly usable and makes sense from the beginning. Click the images below to enlarge them for viewing.

–from 55 Technology Projects for the Digital Classroom

Copyright ©2023 usna.wordpress.com – All rights reserved.

One of the most popular applications of math is through spreadsheets (like Excel) that make those numbers relevant to everyday life. We’re going to provide a series of lessons on spreadsheet basics you can use in your K-8 classroom. Here are some of the topics we’ll cover:

1. #74: Mastering Excel (for Beginners)
2. #71: Beginning Graphs in MS Excel
3. #70: Create a Timecard in Excel for Grade Two and Up
4. #73: How to Graph in Excel
5. #12: Create Simple Shapes in Excel
6. #75: Tessellations in Excel
7. #72: How to Check Your Math in Excel
8. How to Use Excel to Teach Math Arrays
9. #62: Email from Word (Or PowerPoint or Excel)
10. #79: Excel Turns Data Into Information

Today:

This project (#70 in the collection of #110) hides a spreadsheet’s power behind a template you create and students fill out at home. If they’re older and more familiar with spreadsheets, involve them in creating the template. If the lesson plans are blurry, click on them for a full size alternative.

Note: The example uses Excel, but it works just as well with Google Spreadsheets.

–from 55 Technology Projects for the Digital Classroom

(more…)

January 4th-9th

the 56-page PDF, “25 Digital Tools for the Classroom”

for free!

“25 Digital Tools for the Classroom” is a thorough discussion on which are the most useful tools in a K-8 classroom, organized by grade level. This includes popular digital tools such as blogs, backchannel devices, vocabulary decoding tools, avatars, digital portfolios, digital note-taking, as well as others you may not have thought of. Here’s what you do:

• Sign up for our newsletter, Weekly Websites, Tech Tips, and Tech Ed News. If you already subscribe, qualify by purchasing one of our resources on the Structured Learning website. Any product, any price qualifies.
• Email us the welcome message or receipt you receive (we’re at askatechteacher at gmail dot com). Make the subject line read, “Please send free ’25 Digital Tools for the Classroom'”.
• We’ll send you the collection.
• If the newsletter doesn’t work for you, there’s an ‘unsubscribe’ at the bottom of each email.

(more…)

Every month, we’ll share five themed posters that you can share on your website (with attribution), post on your walls, or simply be inspired.

This month: Security

–for the entire collection of 65 posters, click here

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.

Subscriber Special

Until January 18th:

Free Martin Luther King Day Lesson Plans

 

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Every month, we’ll share five posters you can post on your website (with attribution), on your (virtual) walls, or simply be inspired by.

This month: Safety and Security

–for the entire collection of 65 posters, click here

(more…)

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: Top Ten Internet Shortkeys

Category: Internet

Sub-category: Keyboarding

Here’s a poster with ten favorite shortkeys students will love when using the internet:

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

(more…)

Here’s an update to my Favorite PC Shortkeys poster:

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.