Every Friday, I share a website (or app) that I’ve heard about, checked into, gotten excited to use. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

[caption id="attachment_8326" align="aligncenter" width="614"] Animoto–create a video in a minute (if you’re in a hurry) or take your time to make it perfect. Either way, it’s easy.[/caption]

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[caption id="attachment_9229" align="alignright" width="149"] Free or discounted–both are great[/caption]

If you subscribe to my blog, you are eligible for specials on tech ed books and ebooks every month. Here are some of the specials subscribers have received:

• 5 for $25 on tech themed bundles
• Discount of 98 Tech Tips
• Free 19 Posters

Click for this month’s special.

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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.

19 posters to Decorate Your Technology Lab is for new and experienced tech teachers to remind students of the basics of computer use. It includes keyboard tips, website usage, mouse control, how to solve common problems, parts of the computer, email netiquette, how to search, volunteer guidelines and more. As a Bonus: There’s a sample structure for a 45-minute tech class.

This is a must-have for new teachers, a time-saver for everyone.

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

Q: My taskbar disappeared. What do I do?

A: Push the flying windows key (it’s located between Ctrl and Alt on the bottom left of your keyboard). That brings up the start button

It might have disappeared because its properties got reset to Autohide. Here’s what you do to fix that:

• Hover over the area where the toolbar normally lives.
  
• If it appears, right click on it and select Properties
• Go to the tab that says Taskbar
• Make sure the box that says Autohide toolbar isn’t checked.

What if the toolbar doesn’t appear when you hover over it? That means it got minimized to the bottom edge of your screen. Here’s what you do:

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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 Dawn:

We have upgraded our Computer Lab computers to Windows 7, some programs are now obsolete since they were DOS and will not run with 7. Carmen San Diego is one we used for Geography. Some teachers are sad we can’t use that anymore – the students did enjoy it. Do you know of anything our that can take its place? Thanks for your time!

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There’s one good outcome from the Yahoo breach (a hacker defeated Yahoo’s firewalls, stole 450,000 accounts, and proceeded to post the user names and passwords onlines). You know all that dire advice about using numbers and letters and symbols in passwords? Turns out the Yahoo users didn’t. A peek at their twenty favorite passwords makes it clear once more that the biggest impediment to computer security remains human users:

1. 123456′ used by 1666 (0.38%)
2. ‘password’ used by 780 (0.18%)
3. welcome’ used by 436 (0.1%)
4. ‘ninja’ used by 333 (0.08%)
5. ‘abc123’ used by 250 (0.06%)
6. ‘123456789’ used by 222 (0.05%)
7. ‘12345678’ used by 208 (0.05%)
8. ‘sunshine’ used by 205 (0.05%)
9. ‘princess’ used by 202 (0.05%)
10. ‘qwerty’ used by 172 (0.04%)

If you’re thinking this looks familiar, you’re right. Here are the top 25 from 2011:

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With the school year almost back, I want to share some of the tech books I use in my classroom. I think you’ll enjoy them also. This one is a two-volume all-in-one for grades K-8. It includes a mixture of lessons that cover different skills, different subjects. Hope you like it!

55 Technology Projects for the Digital Classroom: Everything you need to integrate computers into K-8 classes

by Jacqui Murray

Volume I is 219 pages and Volume II 235 pages, making this series an all-in-one K-8 toolkit for the lab specialist, classroom teacher and homeschooler, with a years-worth of simple-to-follow projects for K-8. Integrate technology into language arts, geography, history, problem solving, research skills, and science lesson plans and units of inquiry using teacher resources that meet NETS-S national guidelines and many state standards. The fifty-five projects are categorized by subject, program (software), and skill (grade) level. Each project includes standards met in three areas (higher-order thinking, technology-specific, and NETS-S), software required, time involved, suggested experience level, subject area supported, tech jargon, step-by-step lessons, extensions for deeper exploration, troubleshooting tips and project examples including reproducibles. Tech programs used are KidPix, all MS productivity software, Google Earth, typing software and online sites, email, Web 2.0 tools (blogs, wikis, internet start pages, social bookmarking and photo storage), Photoshop and Celestia. Also included is an Appendix of over 200 age-appropriate child-friendly websites. Skills taught include collaboration, communication, critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, creativity, digital citizenship, information fluency, presentation, and technology concepts. In short, it’s everything you’d need to successfully integrate technology into the twenty-first century classroom. (more…)

Every Friday, I share a website or app that I’ve heard about, checked into, and/or gotten excited to use. This one is an all-in-one textbook provider. I love any website that makes necessary chores easier–and this one does. If you’ve never heard of Chegg, ask your college-age children or relatives. Or look for the orange boxes in college dorms. Everyone in higher education knows about Chegg.

Age:

5th-college

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Have you noticed what’s happening in your child’s school? Technology. There’s rarely a lesson taught, be it math or science or health, that doesn’t include some form of technology

to enhance its message, increase its reach, improve its communication. If you haven’t been in the classroom lately, drop by this week when you pick up your wonderful student. There’s likely to be a Smartboard (or some sort of interactive screen) on the wall, a pod of computers (if not 1:1 laptops) overflowing from a corner, maybe iPads on desktops or in a mobile cart, a digital camera and microphones to record events, streaming video from Discovery Channel. Those ubiquitous samples of student work that traditionally clutter the walls now include many created with computers.

Today’s education happens by standing on the shoulders of technology innovation.

If you don’t have a school-age child, take a peek at Cisco’s VNI Service Adoption blog. There’s an uptick in the impact of technology on all parts of consumer life. As Cisco suggests, these changes are all about connecting students to their future, empowering them with responsibility for their own education in areas such as:

• access to learning
• quality of instruction and education assessment
• innovative learning models
• decision making
• reduced costs with administrative efficiency (not yet, but it’s a good goal)

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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:

I am having my kids create websites that will not be shared publicly. They are “Googling” images and I just want to know what are the copyright rules for such images? Should I limit their images only from certain “free” graphic sites? Just confused by all the rules like creative commons, public domain, copyright etc.. They asked if they can use pictures from Microsoft and I honestly don’t know what the rules are or how to explain them in 4th grade terms.The kids are not trying to sell anything, just creating a site as a way to share their research. They know how to site online resources that contain facts but not sure what to do with images. Is just providing the URL from the website that the image was on acceptable?

Maybe, if those images are copyright-free. If they aren’t, you just can’t use them.

A rule of thumb is Google Images is fine if the images themselves don’t show copyright notices. Some do and those must be avoided. Others have easily-identifiable sources like NASA or Hubble. Many are copies of copies with no origination trail.

I use images as an introduction to copyright and privacy instruction. I explain what those are, demonstrate how to use best practices to avoid infringing. Here’s a good list of copyright-free image/clip art websites, but I DON’T limit students to these sites:

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