The Number One reason–according to students–why their computer doesn’t work is… It’s broken. Can I move to a different computer??? Doesn’t matter why they’re wrong. My teacher’s job is to provide strategies so they can independently solve problems like these.

As a tech teacher, I know that half the problems that stop students short in their tech lessons are the same few. Once they’ve learned the following twenty-five trouble shooting solutions, they’ll be able to solve more than half of their ongoing problems.

In the three years since I first posted this, I haven’t changed my mind about these problems. These transcend platforms, curricula, and Standards. When your youngest students can’t double click that tiny little icon to open the program (because their fine motor skills aren’t up to it), teach them the ‘enter’ solution. When somehow (who knows how) the task bar disappears, show them how to bring it up with the ‘flying windows’ key. When their monitor doesn’t work, go through all possible solutions together (monitor power on, computer power on, plugged into duplex, etc.)

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If you teach technology, you want to set the lab up so it’s inviting, non-intimidating, but doesn’t hide from the core ‘geek’ theme. In fact, from day one, exclaim that fact, be proud of your nerd roots. Even if you didn’t start out that way–say, you used to be a first grade teacher and suddenly your Admin in their infinite wisdom, moved you to the tech lab–you became a geek. You morphed into the go-to person for tech problems, computer quirks, crashes, and freezes. Your colleagues assumed you received an upload of data that allowed you to Know the answers to their every techie question. You are on a pedestal, their necks craned upward as they ask you, How do I get the Smartscreen to work? or We need the microphones working for a lesson I’m starting in three minutes. Can you please-please-please fix them?

As you organize your classroom, celebrate your geekiness. Flaunt it for students and colleagues. Play Minecraft. Use every new techie device you can get your hands on. That’s you now–you are sharp, quick-thinking. You tingle when you see an iPad. You wear a flash drive like jewelry. When your students walk into your class, they should start quivering with the excitement of, What new stuff will we experience today?

Here’s a summary of what happens your first day with a class. From this, you’ll figure out how to set up your classroom (no owl themes here. It’s all about bits and bytes):

• Introduce yourself—establish your bona fides. Share your blog, your background, your awards. Give them website addresses or post them to the class internet start page. You want to be easy to find.
• Tour the classroom with students. I walk K-2 around—they like getting out of their seats. Demystify any of the tech tools you will expect them to use—where they can get help in solving problems, what’s on the walls, where’s the printer/scanner/iPads/etc.

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Labor Day is annually held on the first Monday of September (this year, September 2nd). It was originally organized to celebrate various labor associations’ strengths of and contributions to the United States economy. It is largely a day of rest in modern times. Many people mark Labor Day as the end of the summer season and a last chance to make trips or hold outdoor events.

I’m going to repost an article I did last year with some updated (where necessary) websites for your kids while you work on dinner…

You’re bbq-ing. Friends are over. Life is good. Summer is ending, but that’s tomorrow. Not today. Today is about fun.

What do you do with the child who got sunburned so badly s/he can’t stay outside? Or those last fifteen minutes when the kids are hungry, tired, and completely disconnected with everything that they’ve been doing? Here’s a list of websites they’ll find irresistible:

Google Moon

You can access this from the downloaded software for Google Earth (under the satellite tool) or directly from the internet (click the link above). The online version includes built-in tours of the moon which are fascinating, but doesn’t have the flight simulator that my students can’t get enough of. They fly all around our galaxy, to other planets, other stars. They think it’s pretty amazing to land on the Sun!

I get students to the website and leave the rest to their curiosity and the explorative side of human nature. From first grade on, they figure out what to do. A great student-led activity to teach about space, exploration, science.

Electrocity

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Monday, September 2nd, is America’s Labor Day. It was originally organized to celebrate labor association strengths and contributions to the United States economy. Now, it has become a day of rest, the traditional end of the summer, and a last chance to make trips or hold outdoor events.

Here are some wonderful websites that will generate organic conversations about The Day:

1. Child Labor
2. Cybraryman’s Labor Day page--comprehensive as is his way
3. Labor Day activities, games, drawings for kids
4. Labor Day infographic
5. Ten Labor Day Facts (from Forbes)
6. Today in History (Labor Day)–from Library of Congress
7. Why do we celebrate Labor Day (from How Stuff Works)

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Dear Otto is an occasional column where I answer questions I get from readers about teaching tech. If you have a question, please complete the form below and I’ll answer it here. For your privacy, I use only first names.

Here’s a great question I got from Sandra:

I am a Tech teacher, I was told that my school is thinking of eliminating our computer lab, and that students will use their computers in their classrooms. I would love to hear other Tech teacher’s opinions as I think a tech lab is useful at this point where teachers are not so at ease with using technology, so I think students would be missing out. I believe in students coming to the lab with their teacher or not, with their own laptops (as we have 1:1), but a Tech teacher at this time seems necessary to me. I feel many of the things that I do like Google Maps, Programming, keyboarding, and so many software that I introduce which they don’t know of, will be left out. Not to say that in a few years, teachers will not be IT literate enough to do it all themselves, but right now and looking at the teachers at my school, they still need a lot of Professional Development to get to know all the fantastic tools out there, and learn how to adapt and use them with their students.
Really look forward to hearing other views.
Thanks,

This is a hot question. We rolled it around on my blog about a year ago and my opinions haven’t changed since then. Click the link. I know it’s the direction Admin wants to go, and it’s the right direction to satisfy Common Core and ISTE standards. The question is: How does one make it work? The classroom teachers aren’t trained to deliver tech. It would be like we tech teachers asserting we could deliver their content as well as them. Just not true. Yes, tech will get integrated into the curriculum with the best efforts of the classroom teachers, but student knowledge, skills, comfort will suffer. Who will teach keyboarding? Digital Citizenship? Techie problem solving tricks? And when will the classroom teachers have time to uncover those fabulously useful web-based tools like Animoto, Prezi, Bubbl.us, and the new ones that pop up every day?

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3-ring binders–the mainstay of education for decades–now seem clunky, heavy, unwieldy even.. You never have a hole punch when you need one so you end up forcing holes into the margin. The rings break or bend and then the pages don’t turn properly, and still you persevere, using them even as your younger colleagues abandon them. There are digital alternatives, but you aren’t one of those teachers who jumps at the latest technology. You wait, see what colleagues like, and stick with the outmoded binders like comfort food.

What is it about binders that seems so irreplaceable? The fact that everything is in one place–you can grab it and have pretty much all the material you need for a particular class or event? Is it the nice tabbed set-up where you can quickly flip to the topic you need? Or maybe it’s the pockets–stuff papers in there that don’t seem to have a home among the tabs as they await filing.

Here are six free tools that are going to liberate you. They not only do everything a good binder does, but they’ll reorganize and share your notes, email colleagues, help you collaborate on projects, grow with you (no more buying a bigger binder), and magically appear wherever you are–no more forgetting to bring the binder. These ebinders are always there, in the cloud, ready, accessible by dozens of people at once from pretty much any digital device–computers, netbooks, iPads, smart phones.

Live Binders

Live Binders is the closest the internet gets to a three ring binder. It’s a free online service that allows you to collect webpages, images, and documents in a tabbed, book-like format. Students can collect not only the information they collect from websites, but what they’ve prepared in software programs like Word, PowerPoint, pdfs, and more. Live Binders are simple to set up. Just create an account, add tabs for primary topics (say, math), and then add collections to each tab of sub-topics (say, Common Core). When visitors see your LiveBinder, they see the main tabs, select the topic they want, and then see related materials. Very clean, organized, and appeals to the clerk in all of us.

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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. Each week, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: If you’re like me, you don’t like MS Office 2007 or 2010’s default font of Calibri, size 11 with a double space between paragraphs. Here’s how you fix that:

• Type a couple of paragraphs in any document
• Highlight what you typed and right click
• Select font
• Change the font to what you prefer. In my case, it’s TNR 12
• Click the Default button on the lower left and approve that this is, in fact, how you’d like a future documents to be formatted when opening a new document. If it asks whether you want this for future documents, say Yes.
  
• Now right click again and select Paragraph
• Make sure Line Spacing is single (or double if you’re following MLS)
• Go to Spacing and make sure both Before and After show 0 pts.
• Click Default

That’s it. The next time you open a document in MS Word, it will open with this revised formatting.

Questions you want answered? Leave a comment here and I’ll answer it within the next thirty days.

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As a passionate Economics major in college (which grew into an MBA), I find Econ at the root of much of the world around us. It starts with counting coins in first and second grade and grows up to a peek into NASDAQ and other adult subjects in middle school.

Here are my favorite websites (check here for updates to links):

Coins and Counting Money

1. Brain Pop Learn about Money
2. Cash Out
3. Coin Counting
4. Coin games—from US Mint
5. Count Money
6. Counting Money
7. Face on money
8. How much money
9. Make change
10. Money—counting
11. Moneyville
12. Pick A Coin
13. Piggy Bank
14. US Mint virtual tour (a slideshow)
15. World of Money—registration required

Economics–for youngers

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If you teach technology, it’s likely you’re a geek. Even if you didn’t start out that way–say, you used to be a first grade teacher and suddenly your Admin in their infinite wisdom, moved you to the tech lab–you became a geek. You morphed into the go-to person for tech problems, computer quirks, crashes and freezes.

Overnight, your colleagues assumed you received an upload of data that allowed you to Know the answers to their every techie question. It didn’t matter that yesterday, you were one of them. Now, you are on a pedestal, their necks craned upward as they ask you, How do I get the Smartscreen to work? or We need the microphones working for a lesson I’m starting in three minutes. Can you please-please-please fix them?

Celebrate your cheeky geekiness. Flaunt it for students and colleagues. Play Minecraft. That’s you now–you are sharp, quick-thinking. You tingle when you see an iPad. You wear a flash drive like jewelry. The first thing you do when you get to school is check your email

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Too often, like it or not, technology makes parents squirm. Few moms and dads embrace questions that start, ‘How do I use this program to…’ They’d rather describe the smell of the number eight or get a root canal. But, the digitization of education requires anyone with children possess a basic understanding of hardware, the internet, and concepts like what-the-heck-is-buffering.

As a tech teacher, an important part of my daily job is to get parents at least on speaking terms with their child’s tech needs. To do this, I answer their questions–any time of the day, about any tech issue whether school-related or personal. Things like How do I copy a file to a flash drive? How much RAM does my child need? My baby can’t [fill in the blank with a tech problem of your choice]. How do I make a roster for soccer?

And I run tech classes for moms and dads. Here, I teach basics, starting with the five utilities that will make a parent’s job as Head Family Geek simpler, more predictable, and more effective:

Security software

Parents always worry about what viruses end up on computers when their children surf the internet. That’s a reasonable concern, one which requires guidance beyond the simplicity of virus software. After you’ve pursued a discussion on digital citizenship and safe surfing, recommend two Free easily-installed programs that protect against malware, spyware, ad bots, and host of other digital bad guys:

• Spybot Search and Destroy
• Adaware

Use these two as part of a weekly computer maintenance routine (that also includes backing up data files, virus protection, and defragging–you might have to explain ‘defrag’ to them, too. Leave a comment below if you need help with that).

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