One of my favorite PD sites, EdWeb, recently offered a free webinar (with CE Certificate) on Returning to Rigorous Mathematics. Here’s a preview:

As students return to a hopefully more typical school year, learning is likely to be anything but typical. Student and teacher experiences over the past 18 months have varied greatly and classrooms are filled with students representing a wider range of learning needs than ever before. The challenge for teachers is to help each student move their mathematics learning forward. While it will take time for most students to return to typical “on-grade-level” expectations, we must support students to move forward rather than picking up instruction where “regular school” left off in March 2020. Responding to this wide range of learners is part of the job in education; the pandemic has made this part of the work more prominent in many classrooms.

Read on (one of two parts)

I have several articles over December that discuss this issue (links won’t work until publication date):

What is ‘Technical Math’–December 10, 2021 (this article)

Returning to Rigorous Mathematics–December 16, 2021

Math Scores Drop Again–December 17, 2021

If you’re struggling with math success in your classroom, here are some more resources offered by Ask a Tech Teacher:

(more…)

Teaching the days before big holidays is challenging. Students and teachers alike are ready for a break. Both struggle to pay attention regardless of how innovative and engaging are the lesson plans.

I’ve been there often. As a result, I’ve come up with fun ways to support learning while students power through the last few days of school. Here are seven I use during the pre-holiday season:

ASCII Art

Time required: Less than one class

ASCII Art is the graphic design technique of creating images by typing the letters, numbers, and symbols defined by ASCII Standards. Here’s how you do it:

1. Open your word processing program (MS Word, Google Docs, or another).
2. Add a watermark of a picture you’d like to use, preferably a single image rather than one that includes a background. Silhouettes are perfect for this sort of project.
3. Type over the image with the letters, symbols, and numbers that best fit the outline. It’s fine to use one letter throughout (like an X).
4. Add color by highlighting the letters, numbers, and symbols typed over the parts you’d like colored (such as the stem of a pumpkin or the bow on Christmas bells in the linked samples above).
5. When you’ve covered the image with characters, delete the watermark. That leaves just your typing.
6. Save, print, share, publish as is customary in your classes.

Tie-ins: Use this not only for holidays but any academic class by creating an artistic image of the topic being discussed. Click the link for an example of Abraham Lincoln to align with study of the American Civil War. This is also a fun and authentic way for students to practice keyboarding.

(more…)

Need a few websites to fill in free minutes? Here are Holiday websites that will keep students busy while teaching them:

1. 12 Days of Christmas
2. Christmas Celebrations Across the World (video)
3. Christmas puzzles and games
4. Christmas—history—fun video
5. Christmas Traditions Around the World (video)
6. Gift Hunt–updated version of 12 Days of Christmas–just as much fun
7. Holiday Crossword
8. Holiday Elf Games
9. Holiday Hangman II
10. Holiday music II–sing along with the music–the site provides the words
11. Holiday—Math Facts
12. Holiday—North Pole Academy
13. Phone call from Santa
14. Santa Tracker

(more…)

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

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

http://eepurl.com/chNlYb

(more…)

For regular readers of Ask a Tech Teacher, these are yearly reminders. For new readers, these are like body armor in the tech battle. They allow you to jubilantly overcome rather than dramatically succumb. 

11 Ways to Update Your Online Presence

For most teachers I know, life zooms by, filled with lesson planning, teaching, meeting with grade-level teams, chatting with parents, attending conferences (to stay UTD), and thinking. There are few breaks to update/fix/maintain the tech tools that allow us to pursue our trade.

That includes your online presence and all those personal profiles. But, that must happen or they no longer accomplish what we need. If they aren’t updated, we are left wondering why our blog isn’t getting visitors, why our social media Tweeple don’t generate activity, and why you aren’t being contacted for networking. Here’s a short list of items that won’t take long to accomplish:

(more…)

The difficulties with engaging children in math learning grows each year. I have several articles coming up next week that discuss that issue (links won’t work until publication date):

What is ‘Technical Math’–December 10, 2021 (this article)

Returning to Rigorous Mathematics–December 16, 2021

Math Scores Drop Again–December 17, 2021

An excellent solution is to change the focus, teach kids what will be required. One of our Ask a Tech Teacher partners has a good article on that topic:

What Is Technical Math?

There’s an old joke about how kids are forced to learn algebra and trigonometry in school, but have no use for those subjects in real life. But in reality, that depends heavily on what kind of profession you choose to go into. A lot of professions you might think wouldn’t call for much math actually require it as a core skill set for certain trades, including plumbers, electricians, welders, and construction workers.

Why do trades like this require so much mathematics? These are supposed to be the jobs you don’t need extensive education for, right? Well, as it turns out, they’re not.

In fact, many technical trades require more math than some white-collar professions. Let’s look at welding, for example. To excel in their profession, a welder needs to understand and calculate concepts like material usage, which requires using fractions and sometimes algebra. They’ll also need to know how to use charts and graphs for some processes.

The same is true of construction workers, who must deal with equations, conversion of quantities, and taking measurements. In a typical workday, a construction worker may have to use equations to convert between units of measure, or use ratios to figure out the proportion of a roof’s length to its height. Getting some calculations wrong in construction work can have dangerous, if not deadly, consequences. In more advanced construction work (i.e. the jobs that pay well), they’ll even have to know some geometry.

The skills required for these sorts of jobs comes from a particular field, called “trade math” or “technical math.”

(more…)

What could be more organic during Hour of Code than creating your own app? There are a lot of ways to do that, often expensive, time-consuming, and coding-intensive. There’s a new online option available that’s none of those. In fact, it’s intuitive, uses tools you already know, and–dare I say?–fun. Check out Jotform Apps:

***

You may know Jotform as one of the most popular tools in the form builder category, recognized for its versatility, ease-of-use, and sophistication in what could otherwise be the complicated process of collecting and analyzing data. Jotform works on all platforms (including tablets, desktop computers, and smartphones) and can be shared via a link, QR Code, and embed (as well as other options).

Over the past several years, JotForm has released many apps designed to simplify and automate teaching’s more mundane tasks (Smart PDF Forms, a PDF Editor, Cards, Tables, Approvals, and Reports–click for my reviews).  I’m excited to partner with them for their latest release, Jotform Apps.

Jotform Apps is a web-based tool that enables you to create a professional-looking cross-platform app quickly and with no knowledge of coding. It can include forms, links, widgets, text, images, videos, a photo gallery, PDFs, calendars, maps, interactive pieces, and more. Thanks to drag-and-drop modality, it can be customized to your needs and branded to fit your class or school. Once you’ve completed the app, it can be downloaded onto any smartphone, tablet, or computer, shared to your social media, or pushed out via a link or QR code.

Best of all, Jotform Apps is free with any JotForm account.

(more…)

Over the next week, I’ll share ideas that will get you ready for Hour of Code. This includes (links won’t work until the articles are posted):

1. Hour of Code? Here’s why you should participate
2. Long list of websites by grade
3. 15 Unusual Projects
4. The Easiest No-coding Way to Build an Education App

***

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…)

Over the next week, I’ll share ideas that will get you ready for your Hour of Code. This includes (links won’t work until the articles are posted):

1. Hour of Code? Here’s why you should participate
2. Long list of websites by grade
3. 15 Unusual Projects
4. The Easiest No-coding Way to Build an Education App

This is a long list of online activities related to coding and programming. It is updated once a year so I apologize in advance for any dead links. At any time during the year, click to take you to the master list.

Program on computers, iPads, laptops–whatever works, whatever age. I’ll start this list with web-based options, by grade level and then continue with a mash-up:

Kindergarten

1st grade

2nd grade

3rd grade

4th grade

5th grade

MS

HS

Build an App

1. Apps Geyser
2. App Inventor–build Android apps on a smartphones; from MIT
3. Game Salad
4. Glide–create an app from a spreadsheet
5. Jotform App Builder
6. Metaverse–create apps using Metaverse’s AR platform
7. Thunkable

Coding Curriculum

1. C-STEM Studio–download to teach computers, science, technology, engineering and math with robotics
2. Code Academy
3. Coursera
4. Everyone Can Code–from Apple
5. Free Code Camp
6. Google Computer Science for High School–free workshops (with application) for K-12 teachers
7. Learn to Code (for free)
8. PluralSight
9. Ted-ED Think Like A Coder–a 10-episode cartoon-based series to teach kids about coding in a game format
10. Tree House

Hour of Code

Miscellaneous

1. Animatron–design and publish animated and interactive content that plays everywhere, from desktop computers to mobile devices.
2. Basics of Coding–from AT&T
3. BeeBop–based on the Beebop floor robot–free
4. BotLogic–great for Kindergarten and youngers
5. BrainPop coding games
6. Build a website–a guide
7. Cargo-Bot—logic iPad game
8. Cato’s Hike (K+)
9. Chrome Experiments–geeky experimentation with programming
10. Codea (Perfect for Intermediate+)
11. Code.org–learn to code; with teacher accounts, no student emails required (join with Join code)
12. Codespace–coding curriculum
13. Daisy the Dinosaur—intro to programming
14. Edabit–learn to code with interactive challenges
15. Foos–app or desktop; K-1
16. Grasshopper–coding app for beginners with lesson tutorials; intuitive
17. Hopscotch (for up to intermediate–more complicated that Kodable)
18. Hummingbird Robotics
19. I like programming video
20. Kodable–-great for K-2–learn to code before you can read
21. Kodu—game programming
22. KOOV–by Sony Education
23. Learn to code
24. LightBot Jr.–programming for six-year olds
25. Lightbot–solving puzzles with programming; MS
26. Minecraft coding mod
27. Move the Turtle–programming via iPad for middle school
28. Osmo Coding--a purchased game system to teach coding
29. Pencil Code
30. Pyonkee–free, a little glitchy
31. Robby Leonardi–programmer–a game played about programming in the style of Mario
32. Roboblockly–to teach coding and math, from UCDavis
33. ScratchJr--for ages 5-7
34. Stencyl–build games without coding with downloaded software
35. Stickman–draw a stick figure and the site animates it
36. Swift Playground–from Apple, includes lessons and challenges designed to teach kids to code
37. Symbaloo collection for coding
38. TED Talk on young programmers
39. Which Language Should You Learn to Code–an infographic of options

Robotics

1. C-STEM Studio
2. Cue–from Wonder Workshop
3. Dash and Dot — from Wonder Workshop–younger thinkers
4. Drones
5. Mebo
6. Robot Don
7. Sphero

Scratch

Click for an Hour of Code lesson plan bundle (K-8).

Click for Robotics 101 lesson plan.

Windows apps

1. CodeWriter 
2. HTML Programs

More on Hour of Code

6 Unplugged Activities for Hour of Code

Build Your Own Apps

Build Websites

Hour of Code–Is it the right choice?

Kid-created Games That Teach

Looking for a Class Robot? Try Robo Wunderkind

Minecraft Review

PrimoToys–unplugged programming for youngers

Root Robotics–Great Way to Extend Hour of Code

Scratch Jr.

Should Coding be a Part of the Modern School’s Curriculum?

Websites and Apps to Support Hour of Code

Why Should Students Learn Computer Science? A Teacher’s Perspective

Wonder Workshop’s Amazing Dash

@CSEdWeek #hourofcode #hoc #edtech

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.

December 6-12th, 2021, 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. Coding is that mystical geeky subject that confounds students and teachers alike.  It feels like:

When it should feel like:

(more…)