Have Santa Call Your Kids!

DialMyCalls (an AATT sponsor) has a special Christmas offer for kids:

Free Santa Calls To Your Family This Christmas

This Christmas we have a great gift for everyone! Whether you’re an existing DialMyCalls user or not, you can take advantage of our completely free phone call from Santa. Imagine the look on your child’s face when they receive a personalized phone call from Santa with his or her name on it!

Simply select your child’s name and the message from Santa you want sent on this link.
Pick the time, date and phone number you want the call sent to.
We create a personalized message and send the call when you want it sent!
Each household can send up to 3 free calls from Santa Claus.
Additional Santa Calls may be purchased for a small fee.

What an amazing gift to any child for Christmas!

@DialMyCalls

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Using ChatGPT to Revolutionize PE Teaching: 5 Expert Strategies!

Chat GPT is popular among teachers for lots of reasons. For example: to explain concepts, demonstrate ideas, answer specific questions, and assess knowledge. When we asked the Ask a Tech Teacher team to apply it specifically to teaching physical education–not something we usually think of with tech tools–they came up with these great ideas:

Using ChatGPT to Revolutionize PE Teaching: 5 Expert Strategies!

Education is no exception to how artificial intelligence (AI) has been making waves in various industries. AI is used in education to improve learning in multiple areas, including science, math, and languages. It is also having an impact on physical education and health. AI integration can make health and physical education more effective, entertaining, and personalized for teachers and students.

The integration of cutting-edge tools like ChatGPT marks an unprecedented milestone, heralding a new era of pedagogical evolution within PE. (more…)

Three Projects to Kick Off the Holidays

Three holiday projects to prepare kids to celebrate:

A Holiday Calendar

Kids love making this calendar. They get to talk about their upcoming vacations and hear what their friends are doing. It’s simple enough for third grade with advanced tools that satisfy a fifth graders growing intellect.

Click to enlarge lesson plan (more…)

Become a Master Essay Writer: 5 Innovative Approaches to Enhance Your Writing Skills

Writing an essay paper like a pro needs specific critical skills. Keep reading to enhance your ability to curate a unique essay paper.

Become a Master Essay Writer: 5 Innovative Approaches to Enhance Your Writing Skills

Introduction

Thinking of some topic and putting that into academic words is a cumbersome transition that most students fail to complete. Yes! We are talking about essay writing, which you find a daunting task.

Writing an essay is mostly difficult for students as they need to rely on their research and writing abilities. Well, in the modern context with digital approaches, it is possible to research firmly on any particular subject matter. You can also get help from prominent writing services who have experts in dealing with your unique subject matters.

They can provide you with all the essentials and even write a paper for you. However, writing uniquely is critical for your future conditions. It’s time to unleash your writing skills and bring out the best version of yourself.

Well, writing an essay can be your best choice to deal with your writing abilities. Becoming a good writer is your choice, but it’s difficult to assess. You need all the hard work and skills to put on the table at once.

From concentration to elaboration skills, all you need to work on immediately.

Well, don’t worry!

Writing a good essay paper requires some unique tricks to follow, and we have curated and listed those for you here.

Best Shots To Write A Unique Essay Paper

When you are required to come up with a unique and engaging piece, the essay becomes a comparatively more difficult task for you.

Well, we understand your concerns, and we know how most students suffer from their actions in writing an essay paper. Whether it’s your assignment or the home, your instructor will always try to focus on the quality of your writing.

Here comes the problems!

Not everyone is capable of writing well!

However, with the right approach, you can become a master essay writer and create compelling essays that stand out from the rest. In this article, we will share five innovative approaches that will help you enhance your writing skills and produce exceptional essays that captivate your readers.

From organizing your thoughts using a mind map to using evidence, reasoning, and scholarship to support your arguments, we have got you all covered. So, it’s time to read on to discover the best shots to write a unique essay paper.

Use A Mind Map To Organize Your Thoughts

Using a mind map might seem like an exasperated and exaggerated condition to follow. However, you will not understand the prominence of it until you try it.

Using a mind map is essential because it helps create the fortune for your writing.

How?

Well, the moment you start using a mind map, you will understand that the topic of an essay has a lot of unexplored areas. Now, a mind map can help you organize your thoughts in a way that can curate the essay paper wholly.

Primarily, it’s not a big deal, but most students forget to follow it. Among many, you might get confused about what to go for and what not to do.

In the meantime, your mindmap can help you focus on particular areas that are especially relevant to the topic. With mind map processing, you can make decisions on your writing process and heading selection. Apart from that, it will also help you micro-manage things under the whole paper.

Organize A Coherent Essay

This is the most basic form of essay writing:

Introduction
Discussion
Conclusion

We have seen people consider the dissertation writing style and form in essay writing. However, you need to understand that essay paper does not depend mostly on the headings. It is more about discussion and how you interpret the whole topic.

While the introduction considers a firm statement on the topic, people will be confused and curious about your writing steps. So, an introduction with statements can help you engage the reader in your essay paper.

In the body section, you will write it all! Consider the whole development of your statement in the discussion part. You will also elaborate and argue on your discussions likewise.

This might seem critical, but it is not! Now, you can follow and stage the significance in the conclusion part with all firm discussions.

Analyze The Question

Analyzing the question might seem hard, but the more you focus on your topic, the better you will understand what things you need to dig into in particular. Knowing the topic is not enough; but you need to find out which aspects you want to work on.

It is not possible to cover all the aspects of a particular topic in a single essay paper. While you are not alone in this mess, you will need to understand the importance of being specific with your writing process and maintaining the whole structure on your own.

Find out what you can discuss better, and depending on the questions, deliver your discussion gradually. Never hurry to the conclusion!

Be patient and deliverable to your writing process.

Use Evidence, Reasoning, And Scholarship

From citation to collaboration, you need to handle it all. In an essay paper, delivering the evidence is crucial.

The more you focus on your writing process, the better it will be for you to deliver proper reasoning of the evidence.

After that, use pre-existing scholarly articles to cite your evidence and collaborate with those in writing a new essay paper. If you want to establish something, you need to engage proper evidence from the previous scholars.

Write Clearly

There is nothing more effective than dealing with the right approaches to writing on a particular subject matter. If you are not clear with your word choices and topic-specific writing style, it may lead to a poor writing process altogether.

Here comes the importance of your writing style!

You cannot be efficient in all forms of writing, and you need to accept that. As a student, you hardly get time to nurture your particular skills. However, writing an essay is a good chance to nurture your writing skills.

Try to always focus on the subject matter and see examples of how to write on those topics. For instance, if you are writing on legal issues, you can add some special words that are firmly used in law-based articles.

In the same process, you will be able to separate different topics and related writing styles to engage clarity in your writing process. Consider those to ensure that you can put the best effort into your writing process.

Here’s the sign-up link if the image above doesn’t work:

https://forms.aweber.com/form/07/1910174607.htm

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.

What You Might Have Missed in November–What’s up in December

Here are the most-read posts for the month of November:

Here’s a preview of what’s coming up in December:

The Subscriber Special–freebies for coding
Holiday projects
Our holiday break–we’ll return early January

Here’s the sign-up link if the image above doesn’t work:

https://forms.aweber.com/form/07/1910174607.htm

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, 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.

Subscriber Special: Lots of Coding Resources

Every month, subscribers to our newsletter get a free/discounted resource to help their tech teaching.

December 14-18th

Buy the K-8 curriculum; get the 55-page Hour of Code bundle for free

Perfect if you’re doing Hour of Code in December.

What’s in the Hour of Code bundle?

30 K-8 coding activities, organized by grade

138 images

aligned with ISTE and Common Core

lots of options to differentiate for student needs

Questions? Ask Jacqui Murray at askatechteacher at gmail dot com.

How do you get your free book: Email your receipt to us at askatechteacher at gmail dot com. We’ll verify and then send you the PDF bundle.

Here’s the sign-up link if the image above doesn’t work:

https://forms.aweber.com/form/07/1910174607.htm

How to Backup and Image Your Computer

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Today: Backup and Image Your Computer

Two maintenance tasks lots of people skip are:

- back up your documents
- image your computer

Backup Data Files

Every teacher I know has lost critical work because they didn’t back up on a regular basis. There’s no reason for that. Backing up is easy, fairly quick, and usually free. For details on backing up your computer, check out LifeHacker, PC World, and Windows online help.

Image your computer

When you image your computer, you take a picture of what your hard drive looks like, including all the programs and extras, and save in a secure backup area. If malware blows up your computer or ransomware locks you out, all you have to do is re-install from the image.

I use @acronis. It creates an image on the schedule I set up. It’ll even image drives that are plugged in (like my USB drive).

–image credit: Deposit Photos

8+ Ways to Speed Up Your Computer

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8+ Ways to Speed Up Your Computer

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12 Ways to Update Your Online Presence

This week, I’ll post updated suggestions to get your computers and technology ready for the blitz of projects you’ll accomplish in the New Year. Here’s what you’ll get (links won’t be active until the post goes live):

12 Ways to Update Your Online Presence— December 11th (today)
8+ Ways to a Speedier Computer — December 12th
Backup and Image your computer — December 13th

Regular readers of Ask a Tech Teacher know these are updated each December. New readers: Consider these body armor in the tech battle so you can jubilantly overcome rather than dramatically succumb. If you also read WordDreams, these are also posted there with some adaptations to writers.

Today: 12 Ways to Update Your Online Presence

For most teachers I know, life zooms by, filled with students, parents, meetings, grades, reports, reviews, and thinking. There are few breaks to update/fix/maintain the tech tools that allow us to pursue our trade.

That includes our online presence. But, if they aren’t updated, we are left wondering why our blog doesn’t attract visitors, why our social media Tweeple don’t generate activity, and why we aren’t being contacted for networking. Here’s a short list of items that won’t take long to accomplish. The ones you read last year, consider a reminder!

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5 Unplugged Hour of Code Activities

Over the next weeks, I’ll share ideas that will get you ready for Hour of Code. This includes (links are live on publication day):

An Overview of This Week — Dec. 5, 2023
Long list of websites by grade — Dec. 6, 2023
9 Unusual Projects— Dec. 7, 2023
5 Unplugged Hour of Code Activities — (this post) Dec. 8, 2023

***

These unplugged activities go back to the roots of coding. The idea started as a clever way to teach students to think critically and problem-solve, show them that deep thinking was fun and problem-solving exhilarating.

I happen to agree. Some of my most gratifying moments are when I accomplish the impossible, unravel a Mobius Strip-like problem, or force myself to do what I’ve never before done. Hour of Code does that every year for oh-so-many students. But here’s my issue: Too often, kids forget that the goal is to practice critical thinking and problem solving, not pursue a career in programming.

Let’s reinforce that goal by stepping away from the digital device, recognize that critical thinking and problem-solving apply to any part of life, even without a computer, iPad, or smartphone in hand. All kids need is their brain which happily, every child carries with them.

Here are some of my favorite unplugged activities:

Crazy Circuits With Squishy Circuits

Ages: MS

I admit, when I first received this kit, I didn’t get the name–Crazy Circuits with Squishy Circuits. I couldn’t get my brain around all those words until I unwrapped the box and pulled the parts out. Then I got it: This had a ton of promise. If you’ve ever made Play Dough at home or in science class and used it as conductors and insulators–that’s the squishy part. When you poke circuits that light up or run motors or a bunch of other stuff into the dough–that’s the crazy part. With this relatively inexpensive kit, a wide age range of students learn about seemingly complicated topics such as insulators, conductors, resistance, and parallel and series circuits.

This is ready to go out of the box which means no soldering required.

The Crazy Circuits With Squishy Circuits kit includes six containers of colored squishy dough–some conductive and some insulating–and a variety of Crazy Circuits Chips. You don’t have to make anything or buy anything else. Detailed directions, project guides, educational resources, and videos can be found online in the Ward’s Science database. Crazy Circuits are compatible with LEGO™ and similar brick building systems.

If you’re wondering how squishy dough can conduct electricity, watch this 4-minute TED Talk. Though the video shows how to make the dough, you don’t have to do that. Ward’s Science sends it as part of the kit. You just attach the circuits, motors, and conductors, and let your creativity flow: