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!

You sit down to type, start in on that long project with an imminent deadline, and nothing happens. The cursor blinks… and blinks… and blinks… but goes nowhere.

What do you do?

Before you buy a new keyboard, try a few things:

• Is the keyboard’s power light on? If it is, check your screen. Is there something that’s preventing you from typing? Maybe a dialogue box that wants an answer? If the light isn’t on, continue down this list
• Check the plugs. Maybe the cord that connects the keyboard to the computer is loose or fell out.
• Reboot. Sometimes the stuff in the computer’s boot-up sequence that makes the keyboard work gets lost. Restart your computer so it can re-establish itself.
• Do you eat at your keyboard? Does anyone? I say this next solution hesitantly: Bang on the key. Sometimes keys get food between them. If that doesn’t work, turn the keyboard over and see what falls out.

If none of those work, here are some pretty good suggestions from ChatGPT:

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This is one of the most popular lessons I teach to Excel beginners. It is relevant, instantly usable and makes sense from the beginning. Before you start this one, you might want to complete Project 70 and 71.

–from 55 Technology Projects for the Digital Classroom

–image credit Deposit Photos

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https://forms.aweber.com/form/07/1910174607.htm

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“The content presented in this blog is the result of my 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, webmaster for four blogs, 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.

If your third grader has to write a report about landforms, try these websites:

1. Continents explained (with humor)
2. Explore the Colorado
3. Geography Games
4. Geography Quiz Game
5. Geologic movies–great and fun
6. Landforms—matching games, etc.
7. Mapping Game
8. Rainforest life—people, etc.
9. Rainforest tree house—virtual game
10. Rainforest—Enchanted Learning
11. Rainforests
12. The Colorado River
13. Virtual tour–undersea  

If any of these website links don’t work, please click here for an update. (more…)

Use this not only to create a gift for parents, but to practice writing skills, grammar, MS Word’s spell check. I have student compose the memory one week and we format it the next. For beginning writers, use KidPix and its text tools.   –from 55 Technology Projects for the Digital Classroom (more…)

Here’s the complete overview on the role of assistive tech in encouraging inclusivity in education:

• What does that mead?
• What are the benefits?
• What are the drawbacks?
• What types are available?
• How do you create one in your class or school?

The Role of Assistive Technology in Promoting Inclusive Education

Persons with disabilities may struggle with coordination problems, short attention spans, and limited mobility, which may or may not be obvious. Some disabilities include blindness, deafness, dyslexia, and autism. Whether the symptoms are apparent or not, these disabilities can affect their cognitive and learning processes.

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Technology Use and Wellness: How to Guide Students in a Digital Age

The amount of time young Americans spend staring at a screen has reached unprecedented levels. In 2021, they were logging more screen time than bedtime: Teenagers spent an average of eight hours and 39 minutes on a digital device, but only 22% were getting eight hours of sleep. Most alarmingly, a recent study found that as little as one to four hours of daily screen time among children aged one is linked with higher risks of developmental delays in communication, fine motor, problem-solving, and personal and social skills by the age of two. As such, parents and educators must be more proactive in managing technology use to mitigate these health consequences.

However, it’s not just excessive screen time that is a concern. While students’ access to information is highly beneficial for learning, technology also exposes them to mental, emotional, and psychological risks that, when left unchecked, can have long-term consequences. It’s unrealistic to eliminate screen time altogether, but there are a few ways to help young people use technology more responsibly, with overall health top of mind:

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Tell me if this sounds familiar:

With the 2023 New Year, you resolved to build your Professional Learning Network–finally, to stop living in the 20th century where your world revolved around a sticks-and-bricks building, a landline phone, and the mailbox. You joined all the big social media platforms (X, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging–just for starters). The plan was to learn from the movers and shakers in education, have them as a resource when you needed help on a lesson plan or to select the perfect webtool for a project. You committed hours to it, and then days, eager to make this work because everyone you know talks about how much they learn from social media. Now, six months into it, you know too much about your followers’ lunch plans and almost nothing about their educational pedagogy. You’re frustrated, angry, and ready to give this whole failed effort up.

Without knowing anything about you other than that paragraph above, I’m going to predict that you became overwhelmed by the volume of information that flooded your inbox every day. The purpose of a social media-based PLN is to extend your reach beyond the narrow confines of the bubble you live in, not lose everything important in constant noise.

Before you unplug, try these seven steps to clean up the clutter, smooth out the wrinkles, and put you back in the driver’s seat of your online life:

Keep your stream pure

Only accept friends in your professional area of interest. This is less like a speed-dating party and more like a job application. When you come across a promising educator, visit their social media, pass judgment on whether they fit your needs, and then make a decision.

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Before starting on Photoshop lessons for fifth grade and up, teach preparatory basics covered in this lesson plan here (reprinted in part below). If you have a newer version of Photoshop, adapt these instructions to yours:

Open Photoshop. Notice the tool bars at the top. These will change depending upon the tool you choose from the left side. These are the crux of Photoshop. We cover about ten of them in fifth grade. The right-hand tools are used independent of the left-hand tools. They are more project oriented.

• • Click the File Browser tool (top right-ish). It shows you the folders on your computer. From here, you can select the picture you’d like to edit (or use File-open)
  • Select a picture and notice how it displays all data—file name, size, date created, author, copyright and more
  • Click on several tools on the left side and see how the top menu bar changes, offering different choices. Go to Help. Have students view several of the ‘How To’ wizards available. Make sure they try ‘How to paint and draw’, ‘How to print photos’, ‘How to save for other applications’. Then have them select the ‘Help’ files. This takes them to the Adobe CS website and exposes a vast database of questions and answers. Encourage them to explore, engage their critical thinking and active learning skills. Remind them this is where they can find answers independent of teacher assistance.
  • Open a picture of the student’s choice. Show class how to zoom in and out (right-side toolbar). Explain pixels.
    Show students how they can take the paint brush and color just one pixel if they are close enough. This is
    how experts remove ‘red eye’ in photos.
  • Introduce the History toolbar (right side) as an undo feature (like Ctrl+Z in Word). Have students open a new blank canvas and draw on it. Now use the history tool to toggle between the canvas before and after drawing on it by clicking between the original picture and the last action taken (at the bottom of the History list).
  • Have students click through several tools on the left tool bar and show them how the top toolbar changes,
    depending upon the tool selected.
  • Watch the layers tools. You can only paint on the highlighted layer. Notice that the top layer covers all others
  • Show students how to save. The default is as a Photoshop file with a .psd extension. This won’t open in other programs, so show students how to change the file type format to a .jpg, .bmp, .tif or other for use in Word, Publisher, emails or a website.

Once students are comfortable with the Photoshop format, try these easy-to-do auto-fixes.

Auto-fixes is one of the easiest Photoshop skills. Depending upon your version of Photoshop, this may be found in different spots on the menu lists. If you’re familiar with your program, you’ll find it right away:

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As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions about computers. As often as possible, I’ll share those with you as well as my solutions. They’re always brief and focused. Enjoy! (more…)

Here are the most-read posts for the month of September:

1. Tech Ed Resources–K-12 Tech Curriculum
2. Unconventional Research Sites to Inspire Students
3. 21st Century Lesson Plan Updated
4. 5 Tips to Bring Joy to Education
5. ech Ed Resources for your Class–K-8 Keyboard Curriculum
6. 9 Mistakes Teachers Make Using Tech in the Classroom
7. Online Sites to Teach Mouse Skills
8. ech Ed Resources for your Class–Digital Citizenship
9. 8 Great Websites and Apps to Help Kids With Fractions
10. Tech Ed Resources–Lesson Plans

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