Category: Teacher resources

Teachers work hard. We start before students arrive at school, spend hours after school tutoring, in faculty meetings, and chatting with parents, and evenings are spent grading papers after kids are put to bed. We juggle computers, calculators, laptops, Chromebooks, Smartscreens, erreaders, and IPads to entice students to learn whatever standards and curriculum requires.

Every once in a while, we need a mental health break. That’s when we pull out a few apps that put the Zen back into life. Here are five of my favorites. They’re great to shake up the day, add a little pizzazz to the routine for an hour or so:

GoSkyWatch

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It used to be simple to post grades. Add up the test scores and see what the student earned. Very defensible. Everyone understood.

It’s not that easy anymore, especially in technology. Here are all the factors I take into consideration when I’m posting grades:

• Does s/he remember skills from prior lessons as they complete current lessons?
• Does s/he show evidence of learning by using tech knowledge in classroom or home?
• Does s/he participate during class discussions?
• Does s/he complete class goals?
• Does s/he save to their network folder?

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The British-based Telegraph recently posted an article about how technophobia could hold back the use of technology in the classroom. Their experts (including Lord David Puttnam, Member House of Lords and Chancellor of Open University) had this to say:

“We are watching a massively disruptive evolution within education, possibly for the first time in 100 years,” he continued. “A lot of people are finding that very uncomfortable…”

I recently had a conversation with my PLN about how they like technology in their classrooms. Few contest it’s presence (though some teachers absolutely refuse to allow it in the front door–some whole schools even), but is it used because we find it helpful or we’re forced to?

My PLN’s answers were all over the place, but far too many along themes like these–

• unable to squeeze one more thing to learn into my daily schedule
  
• are teachers prepared well to be effective facilitators
• training needs to be ample, effective, constructive, continuous and mandated
• serious lack of training and I’m so over loaded that I do not have the ability to add on one more thing
• we oooh and ahhh ANY TIME technology is used and label it innovative, creative, etc. when in reality it is not
• it is simply about common sense and using the tool that the teacher and the students get the best results with

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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: The file I’m trying to use say’s ‘read only’. I need to edit it. What do I do?

A: A ‘read only’ document does not allow editing the author’s original work. You can read, but not make any changes–or save it.

Here’s how you solve that: Save it by a different name, say, call it ‘edited’, and then you can edit it. There might be an amber bar at the top of the document asking you to do just that.

Questions you want answered? Email me at [email protected] and I’ll answer within the next thirty days.

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.

A new page-–Getting Started–-to guide you through. It includes:

• newsletters available
• columns available
• Hall of Fame articles
• how/where to find tech ed resources
• where/how to find video resources
• Questions for Dear Otto
• Free K-5 curriculum companion

Go ahead–check it out!

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.

Recently, Common Sense Media named Ask a Tech Teacher as one of the 2014 blogs to watch on the topic of Digital Citizenship. It reminded me what a massive topic this is! To my count, it includes at least 19 topics (check here for updated links):

1. Cyberbullying–Harassment that happens on the Internet
2. Digital citizenship–Live in the digital world safely, responsibly, and ethically
3. Digital commerce–Electronic buying and selling of goods
4. Digital communications–Electronic transmission of information including email, IM, SMS, chatrooms, forums, and multi-player games
5. Digital footprint–Trail left in cyberspace by the use of digital communication
6. Digital law–Legal rights and restrictions governing technology use
7. Digital privacy–Protection of citizen information, reputation, and rights   while using digital mediums
8. Digital rights/ responsibilities–Privileges and freedoms extended to all digital users and behavioral expectations that come with them. (Ribble & Bailey, 2007)
9. Digital search and research–Search and research that relies on online sources
10. Effective Passwords–Make these easy to remember but hard to guess
11. Fair use–Legal use of copyrighted materials without permission of the owner provided the use is fair and reasonable, does not impair the value of materials, and does not curtail profits expected by owner
12. Image copyright–Exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute the matter and form of an image
13. Internet safety–Security of people and their information when using the Internet
14. Netiquette–Electronic ‘etiquette’ on the net
15. Online Plagiarism–Wrongful appropriation of another author’s “language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions”
16. Online presence–An individual’s collective existence online including any activity that takes place on the internet
17. Public domain–The realm embracing rights to online material that belong to the community at large, are unprotected by copyright or patent, and can be appropriated by anyone
18. Social media–Online platforms like Facebook and Twitter by which individuals and communities create and share content
19. Stranger Danger–Perceived danger by strangers

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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: My picture file is a .bmp and I need a .jpg. What do I do?

A: Blogs and wikis and lots of online sites won’t accept .bmp image files. I no longer even save pictures in that format because so much of what I do is collaborative, which means online.

If you have an image you want to use, but it’s in this .bmp format, here’s what you do:

• Open it in MS Paint (which comes with Windows) or Photoshop
• save-as a .jpg.

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Computer technology isn’t as hard as it sounds, but it does require consistent use. You can’t learn a skill and stick it on a shelf for three months without it molding. Here’s how you do that: Read this blog. I cover the stuff you will use daily. It won’t get stale. Take my test. Try these eighteen:

Basics

• 7 Education Trends You Don’t Want to Miss
• 8 Education Tools That Are Going Away
• 11 Ways to be an Inquiry-based Teacher
• 12 Tips on Handling Hard-to-teach Classes
• How to be a Tech Teacher
• Mouse Skills
• My Classroom
• New Students? 7 Tips to Differentiate with Tech

Common Core Basics

• 11 Things I Love About Common Core
• Common Core Writing–Digital Quick Writes
• How to Prepare Students for PARCC Tests
• What are Common Core keyboarding standards?

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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 Karela:

I would like something funny. I saw the site about making avatars. It is good for students above first grade but, how can they use those avatars later? I just saw a BUY option.

Avatars are great. They inform an overarching discussion on digital citizenship, privacy, and online safety. After all, why do we use avatars? I take every opportunity to use and discuss avatars with students, even if they show up on a website we’re using rather than as a student-directed project.

A few ideas on how to incorporate them into your curriculum and teaching:

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I love teaching problem solving in the classroom. It’s authentic, rigorous, and often amazing to students. They think the first resource when at school is the teacher.

Not.

So I start in kindergarten and bang away at the same theme for the nine years I have them: You (dear student) are your best resource.

Here are some inspiring quotes from men who laugh at problems, shake their fist at adversity, revel at the idea that some consider a problem impossible to solve:

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

—Winston Churchill

In times like these, it is good to remember that there have always been times like these.

— Paul Harvey Broadcaster

Never try to solve all the problems at once — make them line up for you one-by-one.

— Richard Sloma

Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well-informed just to be undecided about them.

— Laurence J. Peter

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