Category: DTP

Dear Otto is an occasional column where I answer questions I get from readers about teaching tech. If you have a question, please complete the form below and I’ll answer it here. For your privacy, I use only first names.

Here’s a great question I got from Ganasini:

I want to create a literary e-zine for my small, rural elementary school. What is the best program or venue–blog, wiki, or something else? I am looking more for a way to display work. In the past, I’ve done hard copy photocopied “newspapers” for students to publish their stories, reports, art work, book and movie reviews etc. I would like to try to publish something similar on the computer. One idea is that each student contributor could have a bi-line with their photo and then links to their various entries, or else I could organize it with links to student fiction, for instance. I think it would only go out to our small school community. Thanks so much for your input and direction! It is much appreciated.

This is especially important because of the requirements for publishing in the CCSS K-5 education standards and ISTE technology standards. There are a lot of solutions, I think, that could work for you:

• Adobe Professional–collect pdfs into a bundle and publish online with a cover, table of contents, or whatever else you’d like to include. I did this one year for a 4th grade poetry book. Students designed the cover. I added a TofC with each student poem, and then each poem. It can be displayed as a book or a rotating selection or a variety of different ways. And, it didn’t take long to create
• Issuu–collect all student work into a traditional magazine. Just upload and Issuu does most of the heavy lifting.
• Glogster–create a poster which includes each student name and is linked to their work..
• Check this link at Cool Tools for School. Scroll down to ‘publish’ (it’s under ‘presentation tools’) and see nine more options like Youblisher and Scribd.

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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 Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: I want my home/business/classroom to be as paperless as possible. What’s a good first step?

A: Do you make fliers or announcements in Publisher, then print them? Don’t do that. Use the email tool on the toolbar:

• Create your flier. Make sure its perfect
• Click on the email tool on the toolbar
• Fill in To, Subject, as you normally would on an email
• The flier appears as the body of the email.

This can also be done in MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

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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 Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

When I try to insert a text box or object into Word 2003, a drawing canvas appears around it. It gets in the way–everything has to wrap around it and it leaves too much white space, even when I resize it.

My solution: Get rid of it. It’s huge and designed to allow you to place multiple shapes that are moved and resized as one. Most of us are only interested in inserting one text box, so it is cumbersome, annoying and useless. To turn the drawing canvas off:

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This year more than any before, classroom budgets have been cut making it more difficult than ever to equip the education of our children with quality teaching materials. I understand that. I teach K-8. Because of that, I’ve decided to give the lesson plans my publisher sells in the Technology Toolkit (110 Lesson Plans that I use in my classroom to integrate technology into core units of inquiry while insuring a fun, age-appropriate, developmentally-appropriate experience for students) for FREE. To be sure you don’t miss any of these:

• Subscribe to Ask a Tech Teacher by Email
• Sign up to the RSS feed

…and start each week off with a fully-adaptable K-8 lesson that includes step-by-step directions as well as relevant ISTE national standards, tie-ins, extensions, troubleshooting and more. Eventually, you’ll get the entire Technology Toolkit book. If you can’t wait, you can purchase the curriculum here.

I love giving my material away for free. If everyone did, we would reach true equity in international education.

A Holiday Card

Create a holiday card using Publisher’s templates. Make it simple (don’t edit text, add only one picture) for youngers. Let olders change as much as they wish. Use this lesson to teach youngers about templates and olders about design, and menus. This project is very easy so shows students how fun and simple computers are.

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This year more than any before, classroom budgets have been cut making it more difficult than ever to equip the education of our children with quality teaching materials. I understand that. I teach K-8. Because of that, I’ve decided to give the lesson plans my publisher sells in the Technology Toolkit (110 Lesson Plans that I use in my classroom to integrate technology into core units of inquiry while insuring a fun, age-appropriate, developmentally-appropriate experience for students) for FREE. To be sure you don’t miss any of these:

• Subscribe to Ask a Tech Teacher by Email
• Sign up to the RSS feed

…and start each week off with a fully-adaptable K-8 lesson that includes step-by-step directions as well as relevant ISTE national standards, tie-ins, extensions, troubleshooting and more. Eventually, you’ll get the entire Technology Toolkit book. If you can’t wait, you can purchase the curriculum here.

I love giving my material away for free. If everyone did, we would reach true equity in international education.

A Holiday Newsletter

Have students collaborate on a newsletter for a classroom unit of inquiry or a theme (colonies, animals, etc). Pick a template. Add text and pictures. Pay attention to layout details. Allow several class periods to complete

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This year more than any before, classroom budgets have been cut making it more difficult than ever to equip the education of our children with quality teaching materials. I understand that. I teach K-8. Because of that, I’ve decided to give the lesson plans my publisher sells in the Technology Toolkit (110 Lesson Plans that I use in my classroom to integrate technology into core units of inquiry while insuring a fun, age-appropriate, developmentally-appropriate experience for students) for FREE.

I love giving my material away for free. If everyone did, we would reach true equity in international education.

#20: How to Make a Card for Halloween, Thanksgiving or Christmas

Kindergarten-2nd Grade

Throughout the year, offer opportunities for students to reinforce learned skills by creating holiday cards geared toward whichever holiday is occurring. They will be excited and work hard to remember how to use old skills so they can create the festive card. Limit your assistance as you challenge them to draw on their problem-solving skills. Always use skills (i.e., paint brush, pencil tool, backgrounds, spray can, etc.) that have been learned in prior lessons.

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Use the Quick Publication template to make a fast cover page for a report, project, etc, in the classroom. Pay attention to layout, grammar, spelling, design.

[caption id="attachment_5021" align="aligncenter" width="614"] computer lesson plan[/caption]

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Use the Quick Publication template to make a fast cover page for a report, project, etc, in the classroom. Pay attention to layout, grammar, spelling, design.

[caption id="attachment_5021" align="aligncenter" width="614"] computer lesson plan[/caption]

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Are you here for a lesson plan… Tech tips… Humor? Click the category below and you’re there.

[caption id="attachment_1055" align="aligncenter" width="154"] 52 weeks of tech tips[/caption] [caption id="attachment_1057" align="aligncenter" width="150"] KidPix lessons for K-2[/caption] [caption id="attachment_1058" align="aligncenter" width="150"] Google Earth lesson plans[/caption] [caption id="attachment_1059" align="aligncenter" width="150"] Photoshop lesson plans[/caption] [caption id="attachment_1063" align="aligncenter" width="150"] Web 2.0 lesson plans[/caption] [caption id="attachment_1064" align="aligncenter" width="150"] MS Word lesson plans[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1075" align="aligncenter" width="176"] Mouse lesson plans[/caption] [caption id="attachment_1072" align="aligncenter" width="150"] Take a break[/caption]

They’re user-friendly, kid-tested, organized by grade and topic. Just click this link to Great Kids Websites and scroll down until you find your grade and subject.

Send me an email with any websites you use with your students: