From Shifts to Success: How Nurses Can Keep Learning Without Burnout

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Nursing is one of the most demanding careers. The hours are long, the work is intense, and the responsibilities are never-ending. Yet, many nurses know that professional growth is just as important as patient care. Whether aiming for leadership roles, higher pay, or specialized expertise, continuing education opens doors. The challenge is finding balance. How can nurses keep learning without adding stress or risking burnout?

In this article, nurses can find some smart strategies that can help them advance their careers without compromising their well-being. (more…)

Over many years, we at Ask a Tech Teacher have suggested puzzles as good tools to develop cognitive thinking and mouse skills, but there are other benefits we haven’t discussed, important learning skill like engaging student attention, redirecting their energy, and encouraging collaboration. Teachers say it calms, reducing disruptive behavior. Interested? Read what our Ask a Tech Teacher team has to say:

The Quiet Power Of Puzzles In A Noisy Classroom

There’s a moment I love right after the bell rings. Laptops open, pencils roll, someone asks for a charger, and the room hums with the usual first-period buzz. Then I drop a simple puzzle on the projector and the noise dissolves into that soft, focused silence teachers chase all year. It isn’t magic. It’s the way puzzles recruit attention, invite persistence, and let every learner start from what they know.

I still teach with games and projects, but puzzles are my favorite way to begin. They ask small questions that lead to bigger ones. They reward noticing. They let students fail without feeling like failures. When we’re exploring sound and pattern, I like to weave in music-themed challenges. A gentle warm-up with Music Puzzles gets students listening with their eyes and thinking with their ears. They start by spotting shapes and rhythms; ten minutes later they’re debating tempo, structure, and why patterns feel good to our brains. (more…)

What are parents and teachers most worried about over the summer? That kids will lose their sharp education edge, dulled by sun and sand and something else. Worry no more.

Your cure: learning disguised as play. Kids will think they’re playing games, but are actually participating in [mostly] free simulations available in the education field. A note: some must be downloaded and a few purchased, so the link might take you to a website that provides access rather than play. Choose what works for you:

• iCivics—experience what it means to be part of a democracy
• Second Life—simulates just about anything if you can find it
• Coffee Shop—run a coffee shop business

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Top Grant Sources to Bring Technology to Under-Resourced Classrooms

In today’s classrooms, technology is more than a supplement — it’s a necessity. From digital literacy tools to interactive learning platforms, access to reliable technology helps level the educational playing field. However, for many under-resourced schools, affording updated tech remains a major hurdle. Fortunately, a range of grants is available to help educators bring powerful digital tools into their classrooms.

This guide outlines top grant sources dedicated to supporting technology in education, with a special focus on schools in economically disadvantaged areas.

The Realities of Under-Resourced Communities

Before diving into funding sources, it’s important to acknowledge the broader context many schools face. In under-resourced communities, limited school budgets often coincide with other challenges, such as food insecurity, lack of transportation, and especially a shortage of stable, affordable housing.

Housing insecurity, including overcrowding, frequent moves, or even homelessness, can disrupt a student’s ability to attend school consistently, concentrate in class, or complete homework at home. For many students, school may be the only place where they have access to reliable internet, a quiet space to learn, or even a working device. When families are struggling just to keep a roof over their heads, it becomes even more critical that schools can offer strong in-class technology support.

This is where technology grants can make a major impact. By equipping classrooms with up-to-date devices and digital tools, educators can provide a more stable and equitable learning environment — one that compensates, in part, for the challenges students face outside the school walls. (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: Compare-contrast Digital Tools

Category: Problem-solving

Have students use these tables to compare-contrast digital tools available for their education:

Set them up in your spreadsheet program and add only the labels. Show it on the class screen and have students suggest what data fills in the cells. If you have the Structured Learning Tech Curriculum, you’ll find copies of these in the ebook. Just have students fill them in digitally. If you have the print book, simply, print copies (you have permissions to reprint single pages when you purchase the book).

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 popular online resources to teach about news sources for kids (click here for updates to this list):

1. Allsides (news stories compared across multiple political perspectives)
2. Breaking News–from Class Tools, create your own screen
3. BBC News (app)
4. C News for kids
5. Kids News – Current Events
6. Listenwise
7. Newsela–news for kids, reformatted at different reading levels
8. News-o-matic for kids (app)
9. NewseumEd
10. News for Kids–free
11. Newspaper Navigator–from the Library of Congress; search endless newspapers
12. PBS Newshour Extra–for grades 7-12
13. Scholastic
14. TeachingKidsNews
15. TweenTribune–by Smithsonian
16. US News Map–the news headlines between 1789 and 1922
17. Youngzine
18. Youth Radio
19. Yummy Math—math news

Fake News (click for resources)

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As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each week, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: Some kids are hard workers, but they just don’t get computers. Their effort deserves a good grade, but their product is nowhere near class requirements. What can I do?

A: Don’t be afraid to give students a Mulligan–a do-over for you non-golfers. Some students don’t perform well under the pressure of a deadline. Some are so sure they’re no good at technology, that becomes their reality. Offer students a second chance if they’ll work with you after school. I have had countless students take advantage of this and come out after a few of those sessions strong and confident in class. All they had to see was that they could do it. Maybe some simple phrasing confused them and you can clear that up. Maybe the noise of a full class distracted them. Whatever it is, if you can show them how to find alternatives, solve their problems, they can apply that to technology class and other classes.

Most of the students I help 1:1 only need a few projects and then I never see them again for help. In fact, their confidence is so improved, they often are the kids who come in during lunch to offer assistance to other struggling students. (more…)

Has this happened to you? You spend hours rewriting an old lesson plan, incorporating rich, adventurous tools available on the internet. You test it several times just to be sure. It’s a fun lesson self-paced lesson plan with lots of activities and meandering paths students undoubtedly will adore. Technology enables it to differentiate authentically for the diverse group of learners that walk across your threshold.

Everyone who previewed it is wowed. You are ready.

Until the day of, the technology that is its foundation fails. Hours of preparation wasted because no one could get far enough to learn a d*** thing. You blame yourself–why didn’t you stick with what you’d always done?  Now, everyone is disappointed.

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5 Internet Safety Tips for Teachers

The internet has provided teachers with numerous tools to enhance their students’ learning experience. However, it’s not without a few downsides. Cyber threats, in particular, can expose both educators and learners to new kinds of risks that could endanger their privacy and security.

As a teacher, taking proactive measures to avoid and mitigate them is critical for creating a safe environment to teach and learn while maximizing the perks of the vast digital resources the internet offers.

Common Cyber Threats Facing Educators

Every profession has had its fair share of internet-based troubles. But what scams and crimes are teachers most likely to encounter? (more…)

This week, I’ll post updated suggestions to get your computers and technology ready for the blitz of projects you’ll accomplish in the New Year. Here’s what you’ll get (links won’t be active until the post goes live):

1. 12 Ways to Update Your Online Presence— December 11th (today)
2. 8+ Ways to a Speedier Computer — December 12th 
3. Backup and Image your computer — December 13th

Regular readers of Ask a Tech Teacher know these are updated each December. New readers: Consider these body armor in the tech battle so you can jubilantly overcome rather than dramatically succumb. If you also read WordDreams, these are also posted there with some adaptations to writers.

Today: 12 Ways to Update Your Online Presence

For most teachers I know, life zooms by, filled with students, parents, meetings, grades, reports, reviews, and thinking. There are few breaks to update/fix/maintain the tech tools that allow us to pursue our trade.

That includes our online presence. But, if they aren’t updated, we are left wondering why our blog doesn’t attract visitors, why our social media Tweeple don’t generate activity, and why we aren’t being contacted for networking. Here’s a short list of  items that won’t take long to accomplish. The ones you read last year, consider a reminder!

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