Today’s tip: 5 Cures for Technophobia

1. Just Use it--Be that teacher in your school who always tries whatever new gimmick the Tech Geeks come up with. Do it in private  before kids enter or faculty drops by. Boot up the computer, test drive the Google Apps trick someone emailed you. It doesn’t matter if it takes you a half hour or half minute to figure out what all those terms mean, or if it doesn’t work the first five times. It doesn’t even matter if it never works–because next time it will. Or the next time. You get better at tech by doing, not by watching others. I promise you, it works.
2. Train Yourself–Spend ten minutes exploring the tool before using it with students. If you don’t have time, try it with the students. Model Common Core and 21st Century learning skills for them, like critical thinking, close reading, and problem solving. Let them see that adults use the same skills students learn.
3. Don’t worry if you make a mistake--Lots of experts do. They are searching for answers, being risk-takers, ignoring the fear of failure. Be that person, too. Try to find answers with the knowledge you have. You’ll either succeed or find what doesn’t work, and in that way inform yourself about the answer. Exactly as we teach kids.
4. Use Keyboard shortcuts–Put a list by the computer. It won’t take students long to remember them because kids love a faster way to an end. They’re quicker and less stressful than finding the button that does… [fill in the blank]. To push Ctrl+Z and have lost typing reappear (after accidentally deleting it) is a WOW. From that point, you’ve got them. Just keep sprinkling around the keyboard shortcuts.
5. Revel in your geekiness--Use your tech. Teach it to others. Listen to conversations about techie topics. Wear a flash drive as jewelry. Straighten your shoulders and punch your chin up when someone calls you a geek. You are proud of it. Don’t be surprised people treat you with awe, like your brain grew two sizes, like Sheldon should be your best friend or a Tardis your home. Just nod and say nothing. You are a geek. You’re enigmatic. You’re confident and sure of yourself.  You answer questions that bamboozle everyone else (at least, you know where to look).

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Today’s tip: How to Teach Writing to Non-writers

Here are seven categories of tools that address specific learning styles, with suggestions:

Art: A picture is worth a thousand words–what better way for a writer to understand the intricacies of a story than to draw them.  Excellent online drawing tools include Lunapic, Paint Studio, and Pixlr.

Audio: Audio “writing” is simply taping words rather than putting them on paper.  They are consumed without eyes (great if you’re driving or watching TV), and appeal to learners who have difficulty with traditional writing methods.  Three great options include Audacity, VoiceThread, and SonicPics.

Comics: A popular medium for blending art and writing is comics. Options include Bitstrips, Pixton, and Powtoons.

Desktop Publishing: Desktop publishing mixes a wide variety of media–pictures, text, audio, visual, color, and layout–to communicate a message. Good options are LucidPress and Canva.

Music: For some students, it’s all about music. Celine Dion’s popular Titanic song drenched millions of listeners in the debilitating emotion of a lost love. Nothing “examines complex ideas” better than music. Popular choice for composing music is GarageBand.

Slideshow: Slideshows have long been the alternative to the written report, used when an oral presentation was required. Most slideshows include bulleted draft text, images, sounds, videos, color, and movement. Three popular tools are PowerPoint, Google Slides and Haiku Deck.

Spreadsheet: For numbers-based communication, nothing turns data into information better than spreadsheets. Traditional options include MS Excel, Google Sheets, and Numbers.

Video: For students who aren’t writers and have difficulty presenting to a group, a video is unintimidating and stress-free. (more…)

In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: 5 Tips to Stay on Top of Technology

If you’re like most teachers, it’s a struggle to stay on top of technology. Here are five suggestions:

1. Keep up-to-date on trends.
2. Use up-to-date devices at home.
3. Surround yourself with technophiles.
4. Build your own app.
5. Read articles and books about new and future technologies.

For more, visit “5 Ways Teachers Can Stay on Top of Technology” on Ask A Tech Teacher. (more…)

In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: The Easiest Way to Outline

Q:  My fifth graders are learning to outline. Can technology make it easier?

A:  Outlining can’t be easier than doing it in MS Word or Google Docs. Here’s what you do:

• Select the Numbered List or the Bullet List in the program toolbar. They’re usually grouped together.
• Once you press it, your first bullet or number appears on the screen. Type your item.
• When finished, push enter to add another number or bullet.
• Use the ‘indent’ tool or push tab to create a subpoint.
• Use the exdent tool or Shift+tab to push a subpoint up a level.

That’s it–three keys: 1) bullet list or numbered list 2) indent, and 3) exdent. (more…)

In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of the tech topics most important to your teaching as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: Tips for the Inquiry-based Teacher

So how do you create the inquiry-based classroom? Here’s advice from a few of my e-friend teachers: (more…)

As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. I’ll share these with you. They’re always brief and focused. Enjoy!

I was helping one of the faculty at my school. She couldn’t print a document (server problems) so I suggested she email it to herself at home and print it there. She started going online to her Yahoo account and I stopped her. Click the email tool on the Word toolbar. She was so excited–an epiphany! What fun to share that with her. She was so happy about it, I’m going to email it to all the teachers in the school (I’m the tech teacher). (more…)

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!

This week’s tip: I’m supposed to find a tool on the toolbar, but there are so many and I have no idea what they are for? It’s just as bunch of pictures to me. Is there an easy way to figure this out?

A: To figure out what a tool does on the toolbar, hover your mouse over the tool (place the mouse above it without clicking). A tool tip will appear with a clue as to what it’s for.

This works in any program with a toolbar or ribbon–MS Office, the internet, Photoshop, and more.

If you’d like to add screentips (tips that appear when you hover over a word in a document), check out this video:

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Last month, I talked about my secret to making all elementary-age students tech savvy. I promised to give you a list of the sixteen tech problems I teach between kindergarten and 5th grade so by Middle School, students feel capable not only in facing common tech problems, but in solving new ones.

Here’s the table:

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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. I’ll share these with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: I’m afraid of getting slammed with viruses, malware, all that bad stuff that comes with visiting the internet. What can I do?

A: If you take reasonable precautions, the chances of being hit are minimized. Here’s what I do: (more…)

Tech Tips for Writers is a (occasionally) weekly post on overcoming Tech Dread. I’ll cover issues that friends, both real-time and virtual, have shared. Feel free to post a comment about a question you have. I’ll cover it in a future Tip.

Q: I’m writing a very (very) important paper and all of a sudden, the screen froze. I can’t save it, or anything else. What do I do?

A: Programs do freeze for no reason sometimes, but not often (I’m assuming you take care of your computer–defrag, don’t download with abandon, update it occasionally). Before you declare a dog-ate-my-homework sort of catastrophe, try this:

• Check your desktop for an open dialogue box and close it. You might have to answer its question first.
• Push escape four times. You might have inadvertently got yourself into something you don’t even know you’re in. Escape often lives up to its name.
• Click your program on the taskbar. You might have gotten out of it by accident.

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