Category: Websites

valentine day

8 Fresh Activities for Valentine’s Day

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If you’re looking for project websites for Valentine’s Day, go to my post last Friday and you’ll find 20 Great Valentine Websites for your students. If you’re looking for something else, read on:

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digital literacy

120+ Digital Citizenship Links on 22 Topics

digital citizenshipHere’s a long list of websites to address Digital Citizenship topics you teach in your classroom:

Avatars

to promote digital privacy

  1. Avatar 1–a monster
  2. Avatar 2–Lego you
  3. Avatar 3–animal
  4. Tellagami–a video avatar
  5. Vokis
  6. With comics, via Pixton — fee-based

Copyrights and Digital Law

  1. Copyrights–BrainPop video
  2. Copyright and Fair Use–Common Sense Media video
  3. Copyright Law Explained (fun video, informative, thorough)
  4. Copyright law curriculum
  5. Creative Commons
  6. Take the mystery out of copyrights–by the Library of Congress
  7. Videos on licensing, copyrights, more (from Creative Commons)

digital image of laptop with human hands and eyesCurriculum

  1. Common Sense media
  2. Ask a Tech Teacher

Cyberbullying

  1. Bullying—Watch this (videos)
  2. Cyberbullying video
  3. Cyber-bullying–5th grade
  4. Cyber-bullying—BrainPop
  5. Cyberbullying—what is it
  6. Think Time: How Does Cyberbullying Affect You

DigCit (General)

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three-click rule

Tech Tip #115: Three-click Rule

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!

Q: Some websites/blogs are confusing. I click through way too many options to get anything done. What’s with that?

A: I hadn’t put a lot of thought to this until I read a discussion on one of my teacher forums about the oft-debunked-and-oft-followed 3-click rule made popular by Web designer Jeffrey Zeldman in his book, “Taking Your Talent to the Web.”. This claims ‘that no product or piece of content should ever be more than three clicks away from your Web site’s main page’.

This is true with not just programming a website, but teaching tech to students. During my fifteen years of teaching tech, I’ve discovered if I keep the geeky stuff to a max of 2-3 steps, students remember it, embrace it, and use it. More than three steps, I hear the sound of eyes glazing over.

Whether you agree with the ‘rule’ or not, it remains a good idea to make information easy and quick to find. Readers have a short attention span. Same is true of students.

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