Category: Teacher resources

Every month, subscribers to Ask a Tech Teacher get a free/discounted resource to help their tech teaching.

This month:

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

It’s not that way anymore. Here are the factors I consider 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 class knowledge in classroom or home?
• Does s/he participate in class discussions?
• Does s/he complete daily goals (a project, visit a website, watch a tutorial, etc.)?
• Does s/he save to their network folder?

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I got this from one of my Christian friends. Thought I’d share:

After being interviewed by the school administration, the prospective teacher said:

‘Let me see if I’ve got this right.

‘You want me to go into that room with all those kids, correct their disruptive behavior, observe them for signs of abuse, monitor their dress habits, censor their T-shirt messages, and instill in them a love for learning.

‘You want me to check their backpacks for weapons, wage war on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases, and raise their sense of self esteem and personal pride.

‘You want me to teach them patriotism and good citizenship, sportsmanship and fair play, and how to register to vote, balance a checkbook, and apply for a job.

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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 Kellie:

I want to teach my younger students how to make a slide show with photographs. It needs to be free! I have already taught them how to add photos to PowerPoint, but I want something a little more fun and flashy. I have seen mixed reviews about SmileBox. All tips are appreciated.

The first one that comes to mind is Animoto. It will take pictures as well as music and creates a beautiful–albeit quick–presentation. Here’s my review of it. Then there’s Photostory–software, but a free download. That allows for longer slideshow-type presentations that also include sound. We use it with Windows 7 despite what the website says.

Here are a few others that might work for your purposes:

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You’ve heard the chatter. IPads have become the go-to literacy tool for authentic learning in the K-8 classroom, the one that says ‘Our program is cutting edge, up-to-date, inquiry-driven‘. Students want to use them, want to share and collaborate on them, and will follow almost any rules if it means they get that tablet in their hands.

The problem with the iPad as with the internet is: TMI–too much information. There are tens of thousands of apps, each proclaiming itself to be the solution to all classroom problems, each promising to be the practical strategy for learning math or science or state capitals or whatever their buzz word happens to be.

How do teachers sort truth from marketing?

You evaluate the apps. It won’t take long to realize that the best share similar characteristics. They encourage organic conversation, scaffold learning, are student-centered, and inspire risk-taking on the part of student users. What’s that look like when it plays out on an iPad? According to the Texas Computer Education Association, apps should:

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Some great quotes to start your week with a touch of humor:

1. “Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.” – H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
2. “Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.” – Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
3. “Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.” – Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)
4. “Don’t be so humble – you are not that great.” – Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat
5. “His ignorance is encyclopedic” – Abba Eban (1915-2002)
6. “If a man does his best, what else is there?” – General George S. Patton (1885-1945)
7. “I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.” – A. J. Liebling (1904-1963)
8. “People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.” – Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
9. “Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.” – Saint Augustine (354-430)
10. “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” – Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
11. “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” – Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
12. “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” – Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
13. “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” – Galileo Galilei
14. “The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.” – Emile Zola (1840-1902)
15. “This book fills a much-needed gap.” – Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a review
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When PhDs notice what I’m doing over here, I am honored. So when I heard that Ask a Tech Teacher came in fourth in the Top 25 Education Technology Sites in 2012, I just had to share the news.

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I talked to a lot of people to prepare this article. Sure, I have my 5 Fabulous List, but is it representative of what YOU might want? To determine that, I asked the faculty at my school, the members of my Personal Learning Network, and a bunch of efriends I’ve met while blogging. Here’s the list we came up with:

Old-style Kindle

They’re on sale for $59! What do you get? A screen that shows you the book you want to read, no matter the glaring sunlight, the internet outage, the fact that you’re on a flight and finished your book and now what do you do (hint: if you have the Kindle, you open the next one). The new Kindle Fire is morphing into a tablet. That’s OK if that’s what you want. But if you want to read a book without the battery expiring, in a dead wifi zone, get Old Kindle.

iPad

I love my iPad, but truth, any pad computer is a great way to stay on top of the most important things you need every day:

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Thanks to the pervasiveness of easy-to-use technology and the accessibility of the internet, teachers are no longer lecturing from a dais as the purveyor of knowledge. Now, students are expected to take ownership of their education, participate actively in the learning process, and transfer knowledge learned in the classroom to their lives.

In days past, technology was used to find information (via the internet) and display it (often via PowerPoint). No longer.  Now, if you ask a fifth grade student to write a report on space exploration, here’s how s/he will proceed:

Understand ‘Digital Citizenship’

Before the engines of research can start, every student must understand what it means to be a citizen of the world wide web. Why? Most inquiry includes a foray into the unknown vastness of the www. Students learn early (I start kindergartners with an age-appropriate introduction) how to thrive in that virtual world. It is a pleasant surprise that digital citizenship has much the same rules as their home town:

Don’t talk to bad guys, look both ways before crossing the (virtual) street, don’t go places you know nothing about, play fair, pick carefully who you trust, don’t get distracted by bling, and sometimes stop everything and take a nap.

In internet-speak, students learn to follow good netiquette, not to plagiarize the work of others, avoid scams, stay on the website they choose, not to be a cyber-bully, and avoid the virtual ‘bad guys’. Current best practices are not to hide students from any of these, but to teach them how to manage these experiences.

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Celebrate your geekiness. Flaunt it for students and colleagues. Play Minecraft. That’s you–you are sharp, quick-thinking. You can’t help but smile when you see an iPad and the first thing you do when you awake is turn on the computer.

It’s OK. Here at Ask a Tech Teacher, we understand. The readers understand. You’re at home. To honor you, I’ve created this poster. It gives fifteen more ways to get your fully geek on as you go through your day:

1. Be smart. Yeah, it feels good
2. That’s my inner Geek speaking
3. Think. Exercise your brain.
4. Waves. Sigh.
5. Repeat after me: People are my friends. Like Siri.
6. Move away from the keyboard–Not.
7.  Some people watch TV. I play with a Rubik’s Cube
8. Be patient. I’m buffering.
9. There must be a shortkey for that
10.  Life needs an Undo key
11. Leave me alone for 2 minutes and I’ll go to sleep
12. Yes, I can fix your computer
13. Like a computer, I do what you tell me to
14. My RAM is full. Come back later.
15. Slow down. My processor isn’t that fast

Want that as a poster? Here you are:

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