Holiday gifts for teachers are a challenge. If your child has many teachers, it’s difficult to find a personalized gift for each that is both affordable and valued. For me, as a teacher, I am always happy with a gift certificate that works anywhere but there are time-proven ways to get more creative than a gift that sounds like “money”.

When I chat with teacher friends, here are the most popular gifts they’ve gotten over the years. Many are free and others allow you to spend only what you can afford while still giving a gift the teacher will love.

Most popular gifts

Let’s start by stipulating that what defines a great teacher gift is subjective. It depends upon the teacher’s subject, how long they’ve taught, their personal style, and so much more. The seven suggestions below provide ample ways to provide a gift your child’s teacher will love regardless of how well you know them.

A Helping Hand

Probably the most popular gift with most teachers is the gift of time. Sure, money is nice but when parents are willing to give of themselves to organize class events, chaperone, help out on lesson plans, or any number of other activities, that’s priceless.  As a tech teacher, my ideal is to have two parents for every K-2 class I teach. That’s a lot of helpers and a huge commitment from parents. I rarely found that many so was thrilled whenever parents offered to assist.

Compliments to the Administration

Happy parents often forget to share their joy with the teachers’ administrators. Too often, Principals hear from parents only when they’re angry about the teacher or some class activity. Providing unsolicited good news about the teacher’s effectiveness is a wonderful treat for both the teacher and the school’s administrators.

A Thank You Letter

Handwrite a note to the teacher telling them how much you and your child appreciate what they do. There’s little more valuable to a teacher than the acknowledgment from stakeholders that what they work on nights and weekends is working.

(more…)

December 10th-January 2nd

15% Discount Sitewide on

Structured Learning.net

Code: HAPPYHOLIDAY15

How to use this:

• Go to Structured Learning
• Fill your shopping cart with your holiday gifts
• When checking out, apply the code, HAPPYHOLIDAY15

Here’s a preview of what’s coming up on Ask a Tech Teacher in December. Bear in mind–it’s a short month!

1. Holiday Gifts for Teachers
2. Why Should Students Learn Computer Science? A Teacher’s Perspective
3. Have Santa Call Your Kids
4. 16 Holiday Websites and 13 Projects For Your Student
5. Where did Christmas Come From?
6. End-of-Year Maintenance: 19 Steps To A Speedier Computer
7. End of Year Maintenance: Update Your Online Presence
8. End-of-year Maintenance: Image and Back-up Digital Devices
9. Happy Holiday!

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-8 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 reviewer, CAEP reviewer, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today and TeachHUB, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

We’ve provided a lot of projects and lesson plans, as well as websites you’ll like organized by grade. Here are all those that don’t easily differentiate by grade. See if some of them work for you:

Websites

1. Animatron–design and publish animated and interactive content that plays everywhere, from desktop computers to mobile devices.
2. BrainPop coding games
3. Build a website–a guide
4. Chrome Experiments–geeky experimentation with programming
5. I like programming video
6. Kodu—game programming
7. Learn to code
8. Minecraft coding mod
9. Pivot Stickfigure Animator–free, download, powerful, with a cult following
10. Robby Leonardi–programmer–a game played about programming in the style of Mario
11. Roboblockly–to teach coding and math, from UCDavis
12. Stencyl–build games without coding with downloaded software
13. Stickman–draw a stick figure and the site animates it
14. Symbaloo collection for coding
15. TED Talk on young programmers

Apps

(more…)

This December will again host the Hour of Code, a one-hour introduction to programming designed to demystify the subject and show that anyone can be a maker, a creator, and an innovator. Last year, almost 300,000 students (age 4-104) participated from over 180 countries and wrote almost 20 billion lines of code. The 200,000+ teachers involved came away believing that, of all their education tools, coding was the best at teaching children to think. It’s easy to see why when you look at fundamental programming concepts:

• abstraction and symbolism – variables are common in math, but also in education. Tools, toolbars, icons, images all represent something bigger
• creativity – think outside the box
• if-then thinking – actions have consequences
• debugging – write-edit-rewrite; try, fail, try again. When you make a mistake, don’t give up or call an expert. Fix it.
• logic – go through a problem from A to Z
• sequencing – know what happens when

If you’re planning to participate in Hour of Code, here are activities by grade that will kickstart your effort. They can be done individually or in small groups.

(more…)

Coding–that geeky subject that confounds students and frightens teachers. Yet, kids who can code are better at logical thinking and problem solving, more independent and self-assured, and more likely to find a job when they graduate. In fact, according to Computer Science Education, by 2020, there will be 1.4 million coding jobs and only 400,000 applicants.

December 3-9, 2018, Computer Science Education will host the Hour Of Code–a one-hour introduction to coding, programming, and why students should love it. It’s designed to show that anyone can learn the basics to be a maker, a creator, and an innovator. Here are ten unusual projects (each, about one hour in length) you can use in your classroom to participate in this wildly popular event:

1. Alt Codes
2. Animation
3. Coding with pixel art
4. Human robot
5. Human algorithm
6. IFTTT
7. Macros
8. QR codes
9. Shortkeys
10. Wolfram Alpha widgets

(more…)

December 3-9th, 2018, Computer Science Education will host the Hour Of Code–a one-hour introduction to students on coding, programming, and why they should love it, designed to demystify “code” and show that anyone can learn the basics to be a maker, a creator, and an innovator. Throughout participating websites, you’ll find a variety of self-guided tutorials that say “anybody can do, on a browser, tablet, or smartphone”. You’ll even find unplugged tutorials for classrooms without computers. No experience needed.

Coding–that mystical geeky subject that confounds students and teachers alike. Confess, when you think of coding, you see:

…when you should see

It feels like:

When it should feel like:

Computer Science Education will host the Hour Of Code–a one-hour introduction to coding, programming, and why students should love it. It’s designed to demystify “code” and show that anyone can learn the basics to be a maker, a creator, and an innovator. If you’re not sold 100% on the importance of computer science in a student’s future, watch this video:

Click here to accept Marketing cookies and load this content

(more…)

Check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store for big savings on November 26th and 27th!

(more…)

I’m taking next week off. I’ll be preparing for my daughter’s holiday visit from her home in DC and my son who’s visiting virtually from Okinawa Japan. I am so excited to see both of them!

I’ll be back November 26th. Any emergencies–drop me a line at askatechteacher@gmail.com.

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-8 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 reviewer, CAEP reviewer, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today and TeachHUB, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

Last year, I did a poll on the meaning of the word ‘turkey’. This was to demonstrate how powerful symbols are to your students and do so with an authentic use of technology to support discussion on math, language standards, and the holidays.

As a summation to your discussion with students on symbols, idiomatic expressions, geography, farms, or another topic, post this on your Smartscreen. The poll includes lots of definitions for the word ‘turkey’. Have each student come up sometime during the day (or class) and make their choices.

What definitions did your students come up with I didn’t list?

(more…)