Category: Teacher resources

5 (free) Posters on Teaching I

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Every month, we’ll share five themed posters that you can share on your website (with attribution), post on your walls, or simply be inspired.

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What You Might Have Missed in June

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

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5 (free) Posters on College and Career

Every month, we’ll share five themed posters that you can share on your website (with attribution), post on your walls, or simply be inspired.

This month: College and Career

–for the entire collection of 65 posters, click here

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.

7 Coding Words You Need To Know

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Ask a Tech Teacher contributor, Jeremy Keeshin, is the CEO and co-founder of CodeHS, a leading coding education platform for schools, used by millions of students. He believes educators must focus on teaching students the building blocks of technology–coding, problem-solving, and the vocabulary that clarifies both. Here are a few of the essential tech words that should be part of a students’ daily conversation not just in a tech class but in all learning. OK, maybe not ‘Assembly Language’ but definitely ‘coding’, ‘bits’, ‘debugging’, and ‘apps’ with all of its cousins:

Your Coding Vocab Lesson: 7 Words You Need To Know

There’s a lot of new vocabulary to pick up as you enter the world of coding. Here’s a few words to help you get started navigating code.

1. Code and Coding

Let’s start at the beginning: What is code? What is coding?

Coding is giving instructions to a computer. Code is the instructions for the computer.

Your first line of code might look something like this:

print("Hello")

This prints “Hello” out to the screen. When you type an email and hit send, someone has written code to make that work. When you open your phone, hit an icon that looks like a camera, take a photo, and it saves to the cloud—that is code. Code is what powers any technology or software you use.

2. Programming Language

Code is written in a particular programming language, which is the set of rules, or language, for giving instructions to the computer. The language may have some specific syntax about what code you can write.

There are many different programming languages used for different things. A few popular programming languages include JavaScript, Python, C++, and Java. They are built for different use cases and have different tradeoffs.

Just like foreign languages, programming languages are often related to each other; they have different histories and taxonomies; and they evolve over time.

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Here’s a Preview of June

Here’s a preview of what’s coming up on Ask a Tech Teacher in June:

What is Genius Hour and Why Should I Love it?
Internet Safety Month
How to Motivate Summer School Students
Tech Tips
Coding Vocabulary
Online PD
5 Steps to Personal Privacy
Free Posters
What’s the hardest tech problem?
K-8 Tech Curriculum

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What You Might Have Missed in May

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

10 Digital Platforms to Teach Remotely

There are more options for digital learning than Zoom. Check out these:

Big Blue Button–great conference app but embedded in LMS (not standalone)
Canvas–with their Conference option (Big Blue Button)
Draw Chat–virtual meeting with a whiteboard
FaceTime–from Apple
Google Meet–through Google Classroom or not; must use Google account and Chrome browser
Microsoft Teams
Skype
Webex–from Cisco
Webroom.net — virtual conference or meeting room
Zoom

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5 (free) Posters on Internet and Websites 1

Every month, we’ll share five themed posters that you can share on your website (with attribution), post on your walls, or simply be inspired.

This month: Internet and Websites 1

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12 Tech Tasks To End the School Year

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Wrapping up your school technology for the summer is as complicated as setting it up in September. There are endless backups, shares, cleanings, changed settings, and vacation messages that — if not done right — can mean big problems when you return from summer vacation. If you have a school device, a lot of the shutdown steps will be done by the IT folks as they backup, clean, reformat, and maybe re-image your device. If you have a personal device assigned by the school but yours to take home, the steps may be more numerous but really, not more complicated.

Here’s a list. Skip those that don’t apply to you and complete the rest. I won’t take time in this article (I’m at about 1000 words right now) for a how-to on each activity so if you don’t know how to complete one, check with your IT folks or Google it:

Make sure your firewall and antivirus programs are working.

Many computers come with a built-in one to keep viruses and malware out that slow your computer. Sometimes, they seem to turn off by themselves (I have no idea why). Check to be sure yours is active. If you have a Chromebook or an iPad, don’t even worry about this.

Clean out your documents.

Sort through the documents you collected this year and get rid of those you don’t need anymore. It’s intimidating, like a file cabinet that hasn’t been opened in months –- or years — and is covered with spider webs. If you don’t do this regularly, the computer must finger through these unused files every time you search. If you hate throwing anything away, create an ‘Old’ folder, toss them all in it, and save that to a flash drive or in the cloud.

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