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

Free Martin Luther King Day Lesson Plans

Two lesson plans to prepare for Martin Luther King Day in January: 1) Students research events leading up to Dr. Martin Luther King’s impact on American history and share them with an Event Chain organized visually, including pictures and thought bubbles. 2) Students interpret the words of Dr. Martin Luther King in their own words in a visual organizer. Great project that gets students thinking about the impact of words on history.

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Designed for grades 4-7, it’s aligned with Common Core and ISTE Standards.

 

What’s included in each lesson plan:

• brief summary of the project
• Essential Question
• Big Idea
• Common Core and ISTE alignment
• materials required
• teacher prep required
  
• step-by-step instructions
• extensions to dig deeper into the subject
• assessment strategies
• sample grading rubric
• sample project
  
• resources

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Here are the most-read posts for the month of January

1. Classes in Remote Teaching
2. 5 (free) Shortkey Posters
3. 9 Great Websites to Inspire 3rd Graders
4. Ten Most Important Keyboard Keys
5. Great Websites for Special Needs
6. Edtech Trends From 2020 And Beyond
7. Game-based Learning in Remote Teaching
8. 5 Fun Science Experiments Kids Do at Home
9. Public Domain Day and Happy New Year!
10. Top 10 Reviews of 2020

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Here’s a preview of what’s coming up on Ask a Tech Teacher in February:

• Subscriber Special
• 100th Day of School Activities
• World Read Aloud Day
• Free Posters
• Why Kindergartners Must Learn Tech
• Math Word Problems
• Shortkeys
• Great Websites for Remote Teaching
• Websites to Enhance Social Studies
• How Fast Schould Kids Type
• Keyboarding Hints
• College Credit Classes for Your PD

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Through the Midwest Teachers Institute, I offer four college-credit classes that teach how to blend technology with traditional lesson plans. They include all the ebooks, videos, and other resources required so you don’t spend any more than what is required to register for the class. Once you’re signed up, you prepare weekly material, chat with classmates, respond to class Discussion Boards and quizzes, and participate in a weekly video meeting. Everything is online.

Questions? Email me at [email protected]

Here are the the ones I’m currently offering:

Building Digital Citizens

MTI 557

Starts May 17, 2021

If students use the internet, they must be familiar with the rights and responsibilities required to be good digital citizens.  In this class, you’ll learn what topics to introduce, how to unpack them, and how to make them authentic to student lives.

Topics include:

1. copyrights, fair use, public domain
2. cyberbullying
3. digital commerce
4. digital communications
5. digital footprint, digital privacy
6. digital rights and responsibilities
7. digital search/research
8. image—how to use them legally
9. internet safety
10. netiquette
11. passwords
12. plagiarism
13. social media

At the completion of this course, you will be able to:

1. Know how to blend digital citizenship into lesson plans that require the Internet
2. Be comfortable in your knowledge of all facets of digital citizenship
3. Become an advocate of safe, legal, and responsible use of online resources
4. Exhibit a positive attitude toward technology that supports learning
5. Exhibit leadership in teaching and living as a digital citizen

Assessment is based on involvement, interaction with classmates, and completion of projects so be prepared to be fully-involved and an eager risk-taker. Price includes course registration, college credit, and all necessary materials. To enroll, click the link above, search for MTI 557 and sign up.

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Every month, we’ll share themed posters that you can share on your website (with attribution), post on your walls, or simply be inspired.

This month: 

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Here’s a great list of age-appropriate, safe websites that will inspire third graders whether they’re in your classroom or at home (check here for updates):

1. Riding the Wind with Kalani
2. Weather Websites
3. Wild Weather Adventure
4. All About America
5. USA Puzzle
6. 360^o views from around the world
7. Computer lab favorites
8. How stuff works
9. Quick quizzes—how much do you know?
10. Thinking Skills–Riddles
11. USA Puzzle
12. Water Cycle–very visual; good tool for lower grades
13. Water cycle–interactive
14. Water cycle—label diagram

More resources for third graders

33 Resources for Read Across America Day

Hour of Code Lesson Plans by Grade

3rd Grade Resources

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.

In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: 10 Most Important Keyboard Keys

Category: Keyboarding

As you teach K-5 keyboarding, here are the ten most important keys you want them to learn—a few a year:

Buy the entire 169 Real-world Ways to Put Tech into Your Classroom.

–Comments are closed but feel free to contact me via Twitter (@askatechteacher).

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Here’s a great list of Special Needs websites. I’ll display it below but click the link for an updated library (check here for updates on links):

1. Occupational Therapy–a long list of great apps including stress, social skills building, and more
2. Read&Write–for students with dyslexia or English language learners who struggle with reading and writing.
3. Signed Stories–beautiful stories in sign language
4. Speech Therapy and Language Apps–apps like Conversation Builder, StoryBuilder, Tense Builder, Rainbow Sentences, designed for kids who need a different approach

So much available to differentiate for every student’s special need. Here are 50 of them:

1. Disabilities—Microsoft

Autism

1. Autism browser—Zac Browser

Blind

Dyslexia

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There is so much tech kids need to learn these days, it’s easy to forget the basics. Like file extensions. These help kids categorize websites, prioritize credibility, and streamline their browsing. Here are the most essential of these:

What are the popular file extensions kids should learn about?

As kids work their way through the education system, they will use different types of documents for their projects. Therefore, it is important that children learn about the popular types of file extensions early on.

A file extension is the suffix used at the end of a file name to show what type of computer file is being used. The suffix also implies what program can be used to read the content of the file. Here are the most popular file extensions that kids should learn about.

DOC and DOCX

There is no actual difference between DOC and DOCX. Both are native formats of Microsoft Word, which is one of the most commonly used file types used for school projects and beyond. Whether DOC or DOCX is used is simply dependent on the version of Microsoft Office being used. DOC and DOCX files can contain text, images, tables, and other elements. The file type is perfect for writing essays and presenting graphics. Once a DOC or DOCX file has been saved, users can easily edit it in a Word program.

PDF

The PDF file extension is used for documents created in the PDF file format. PDFs are so popular because they maintain the formatting used to create the document. A PDF can contain text, images, tables, graphs, 3D drawings, and other elements. Due to the formatting being maintained, the elements of a PDF document appear richer and more presentable, making them ideal for school projects. PDFs have many benefits, but users can often not edit them directly unless they have a specific Adobe program. However, you can convert PDFs into other file types, such as DOC or JPG, by using an online tool. For instance, with PDF Simpli, you can convert a PDF into an editable JPG picture file in an instant.

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Hi there, my name is Roman Zhidkov, a happy contributor to Ask a Tech Teacher. I’m the CTO of a tech company and for more than five years I have been busy with teaching programming courses and sharing my expertise with novice specialists. I can tell from experience that it’s a prerequisite for a teacher to follow trends due to the fast-changing market and nuances of working with young professionals with a progressive mindset.

Besides, the living conditions can dramatically change at any moment like it has been with the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s why it’s better to prepare for any changes in advance. So, in this article, I’m going to share my thoughts and experience about the technologies and solutions that reshape the educational industry and the way we learn in 2020 and beyond.

6 Edtech Trends to Keep an Eye On

The educational field was constantly evolving along with new technologies even before the pandemic. However, due to the rapid spread of the coronavirus and the global lockdown, distance learning became vital in 2020. That led to a rise of different e-learning platforms and solutions such as learning management systems (LMSs), learning experience platforms (LXPs), learning analytics platforms (LAPs), and so on. All that opened a lot of doors and possibilities for both teachers and students.

Integration of various technologies can help you to improve the courses, making the process more engageable, immersive, personalized, effective, interacting, etc. Below you’ll find 6 tech trends that are must-have in 2020 and beyond. Let’s analyze them to find out what profit they offer.

Video-Based Learning

Do you know that 70% of millennials used YouTube videos for learning something new even before the quarantine? And due to the pandemic, video-based learning is booming in distance learning conditions because all we — teachers — were forced to use the technology during the lockdown.

And I can say that watching my students, who come to my courses to gain knowledge, the effectiveness of learning not only didn’t begin a downturn but raised. Videos are extremely beneficial to make content comprehensible and enrich lessons. All that not only improves the learners’ outcomes but reduces teachers’ workload.

The key features of video-assisted learning are scalability and repetitiveness. Thus, you can record a series of lectures and students can watch them at any time, anywhere. Besides, lecturers can prepare such types of videos as:

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