Category: Teacher resources

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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If you’re new to Ask a Tech Teacher, be sure to click Getting Started first. It includes a free weekly newsletter:

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

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• Tech tips
• How-to’s–how to use web tools, software, hardware, more
• Dear Otto–questions from educators on tech questions
• Pedagogy that impacts tech in ed
• Reviews of books, apps, web tools, websites, tech ed products used in your classroom
• Subscriber Specials–monthly discounts (or FREE) on tech ed products
• Humorous life of a tech teacher

Find tech ed resources

• Free Lesson Plans–on software programs, core tech principles, subject-specific topics
• Free Posters
• Website reviews–on products you want to use in your classroom
• Great resources–for your teaching, integration, class management, more
• Structured Learning--where all the Ask a Tech Teacher crew’s tech ed books are published; there’s an insane number of topics and formats. Some free, most fee

Go ahead–check it out!

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Tessellations are repetitive patterns of shapes that cover a surface without overlapping. With Excel (or another spreadsheet program), you can create tessellations by arranging shapes in a grid and using formulas and formatting options to make the patterns visually appealing. Here’s a step-by-step lesson plan to use Excel or another spreadsheet program to teach tessellations:
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Here are the most-read posts for the month of June:

1. June is Internet Safety Month
2. 23 SAT/ACT Prep Online Resources
3. What is a Growth Mindset?
4. How to Clean Up Google Classroom for the Summer
5. How to Teach Digital Citizenship in Kindergarten and 1st Grade
6. When is Typing Faster Than Handwriting?
7. Are you as Tech-Smart as a Fifth Grader?
8. #3: Make Your Own Wallpaper
9. The Supreme Court in America
10. 13 Online Bridge Building Resources

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Earlier this month,, we posted activities for a summer school student program. Now, we’ll focus on you–what do you want to accomplish with your summer? Here are popular AATT articles. Pick the ones that suit you:

6 Must-reads for This Summer

Summer for me is nonstop reading — in an easy chair, under a tree, lying on the lawn, petting my dog. Nothing distracts me when I’m in the reading zone. What I do worry about is running out of books so this year, I spent the last few months stalking efriends to find out what they recommend to kickstart the upcoming school year. And it paid off. I got a list of books that promise to help teachers do their job better, faster, and more effectively but there are too many. 

10 Books You’ll Want to Read This Summer–prior edition

If you want more than those in the “6 Must-reads for This Summer”, this is the list from an earlier year.

5 Apps to learn this summer

Summer has a reputation for being nonstop relaxation, never-ending play, and a time when students stay as far from “learning” as they can get. For educators, those long empty weeks result in a phenomenon known as “Summer Slide” — where students start the next academic year behind where they ended the last.

This doesn’t have to happen. Think about what students don’t like about school. Often, it revolves around repetitive schedules, assigned grades, and/or being forced to take subjects they don’t enjoy. In summer, we can meet students where they want to learn with topics they like by offering a menu of ungraded activities that are self-paced, exciting, energizing, and nothing like school learning. We talk about life-long learners (see my article on life-long learners). This summer, model it by offering educational activities students will choose over watching TV, playing video games, or whatever else they fall into when there’s nothing to do.

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Summer is a great time to reset your personal pedagogy to an education-friendly mindset and catch up on what’s been changing in the ed world while you were teaching eight ten hours a day. My Twitter friends gave me great suggestions, but first:

A comment on the selections: I did get more suggestions than I could possibly list so I avoided books that involved politics or hot-button subjects that teachers are divided on and focused on positive and uplifting reading. Yes, there is a lot wrong with education around the world but I wanted a selection of books that would send me — and you —  back to teaching in the fall with a can-do attitude for how to accomplish miracles with your next class of students.

Having said that, here’s a granular list of teacher-approved books to keep you busy this summer:

Digital Leadership: Changing Paradigms for Changing Times

by Eric C. Sheninger

Digital Leadership defines a strategic mindset and set of behaviors that leverage resources to create a meaningful, transparent, and engaging school culture. It takes into account recent changes such as connectivity, open-source technology, mobile devices, and personalization of learning to dramatically shift how schools have been run for over a century.

Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns

by Clayton M. Christensen

Selected as one of Business Week’s Best Books on Innovation in 2008, Disrupting Class remains a worthy read. It is filled with fascinating case studies, scientific findings, and insights into how managed innovation can unleash education. Disrupting Class will open your eyes to new possibilities and evolve your thinking. For more detail, read my review, Disrupting Class.

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

1. School and Job Tips for Young Adults
2. The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Education
3. Tech Teacher Appreciation Week
4. Teacher-Authors: What’s Happening on my Writer’s Blog
5. Tech Tips to End the School Year
6. Summer Reading Online
7. How to Keep Learning Fresh Over the Summer
8. 5 Surprising Ways Homeschoolers Use Canva for Learning and Fun
9. 33 Online Research Resources
10. 7–no 10–OK, 13 Skills I Teach With Blogging

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Teachers have known for decades that ‘summer learning loss’ is a reality. Studies vary on how much knowledge students lose during the summer months–some say up to two months of reading and math skills–and results are heavily-dependent upon demographics, but the loss is real.

To prevent this, teachers try approaches such as summer book reports, but students complain they intrude on their summer time. When teachers make it optional, many don’t participate. The disconnect they’re seeing is that students consider these activities as ‘school’ rather than ‘life’. They haven’t bought into the reality that they are life-long learners, that learning is not something to be turned on in the schoolhouse and off on the play yard.

This summer, show students how learning is fun, worthy, and part of their world whether they’re at a friend’s house or the water park. Here are nineteen suggestions students will enjoy:

Math

• Youngers: Take a picture of making change at the store. Share it in a teacher-provided summer activity folder (this should be quick to use, maybe through Google Drive if students have access to that). Kids will love having a valid reason to use Mom’s smartphone camera.
• Any age: Take a picture of tessellations found in nature (like a beehive or a pineapple). Kids will be amazed at how many they find and will enjoy using the camera phone. Once kids have collected several, upload them to a drawing or photo program where they can record audio notes over the picture and share with friends.
• Any age: Pit your math and technology skills against your child’s in an online math-based car race game like Grand Prix Multiplication. They’ll know more about using the program and will probably win–even if you do the math faster. You might even have siblings compete.
• Grades 2-5: Set up a summer lemonade stand. Kids learn to measure ingredients, make change, listen to potential customers, and problem-solve. If you can’t put one up on your street, use a virtual lemonade stand.
• Any age: If your child wants to go somewhere, have them find the location, the best route, participation details, and other relevant information. Use free online resources like Google Maps and learn skills that will be relevant to class field trips they’ll take next year.

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In my school, 2nd grade and 5th grade have units on the human body. To satisfy their different maturities, I’ve developed two lists of websites to complement this inquiry. I put them on the class internet start page so when students have free time, they can visit (check here for updates):

2nd-3rd Grade

1. Blood Flow
2. Body Systems
3. Build a Skeleton
4. Can you place these parts in the correct place?
5. Choose the systems you want to see.
6. Find My Body Parts
7. How the Body Works
8. Human Body Games
9. Human Body websites
10. Human Body—by a 2^nd grade class—video
11. Human Body—videos on how body parts work
12. Inside the Human Body: Grades 1-3
13. Kids’ Health-My Body
14. Matching Senses
15. Muscles Game
16. Nutrition Music and Games from Dole (more…)