A great infographic done using Easelly:

Made with Easelly infographic templates

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Getting ready for extra time with kids? Here are five great ideas that are energizing and motivating:

5 Fun Science Experiments Kids Can Do at Home

All children are born scientists. Until education – or spoilsport parents – ruins them.

Kids have a natural curiosity that is insatiable due to their innate ability to get to the bottom of anything they set their minds on. Be it blowing soap bubbles or building towers of spaghetti, they are second only to seasoned engineers and CEOs at getting results.

However, over the past few months, kids have largely been cooped up at home due to the impact of COVID-19; the lack of access to a tried-and-true schooling process and resources will result in young children missing out on foundational concepts in literature, math and science that prepare them for a lifetime of learning and working.

Virtual schooling is clearly not an effective solution, according to a study done by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), which looked at schools specifically designed to teach coursework online with significant budgets invested in research and planning. “If they can’t make it work, it seems unlikely that parents and teachers Googling resources will do any better,” said Eric Hanushek, economist and education researcher at Stanford.

Well, don’t let that deter you. As a STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) learning advocate for kids, I can’t understate the importance of teaching simple scientific and number concepts at home, because science isn’t something you learn only in a classroom. Research shows that kids as young as pre-school or kindergarten age have divergent thinking capabilities. Trying out simple experiments with things found in and around the house can improve their critical reasoning as well as spatial skills, and promote a curiosity-mindset that they’ll carry well into adulthood.

So, here are some fun activities and easy DIY projects to get your kids excited about science. Before you let them dive right in, please make sure all experiments are done under adult supervision. (more…)

New Years–a time for rest, rejuvenation and repair. A time to assess life. Do we settle into our routine, enjoy where it’s headed, or is it time to grab our purse, iPhone, car keys, and get out of there?

As a teacher-author, New Year’s Resolutions are more of a To Do list. I break it down into Edtech Coaching/Mentoring, Blogging, and Fiction Writing (my novel writing):

Edtech Coaching/Mentoring

Focus on podcasts, webinars, online classes, and other web-based learning outlets for Ask a Tech Teacher. I have some great partners in this:

• Midwest Teacher’s Institute
• Teachers Pay Teachers
• Structured Learning

If you’re looking for this sort of extension in your platform, let me know.

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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 January 18, 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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Because AATT is a resource blog, we share lots of tips our group comes across in their daily teaching as well as materials shared by others we think you’d like. Some you agree with; others, not so much. Here’s a run-down on what you thought were the most valuable in 2020:

Top 10 Tech Tips

As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems which I share with you. Here are the Top Ten tech tips from 2020. Between these ten, they had over 183,000 visitors during the year.

1. Remote Learning: Tips for Thriving in This Ecosystem
2. Tech Tip #60: How to Add Shortcuts to the Desktop
3. 10 Tips for Teaching Remotely
4. Tech Tip #34: My Program Froze
5. 5 Tips to Avoid Plagiarism
6. Find Public Domain Images
7. Tech Tip #9–Quickly Hide Your Screen
8. Tech Tip #118–Top 10 iPad Shortkeys
9. Tech Tip #106–11 Great Typing Timesavers on iPads
10. Back to School Tips

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Throughout the year, I post websites and apps the Ask a Tech Teacher crew’s classes found useful, instructive, helpful in integrating technology into classroom lesson plans. Some, you agreed with us about; others not so much.

Here are the reviews you-all thought were the most helpful in efforts to weave tech into the classroom experience:

1. Quick Review of 7 Popular Math Programs
2. 4 Great Alternatives to Google Classroom
3. 7 Tech Tools for PE Teachers
4. 15 Websites to Teach Financial Literacy
5. 28 Unique Ideas for Publishing Student Work
6. How to Use Google Drawings
7. 3 Apps That Encourage Students to Read
8. 17 Great Research Websites for Kids
9. 22 Websites and 4 Posters to Teach Mouse Skills
10. 13 Ways to Use Canva in Your Classroom

Oh–would you mind adding me to your social media links? Here’s where you can find me:

Twitter:   @AskaTechTeacher

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/Jacqui.Murray1 

Instagram: @AskaTechTeacher

Sign up for the newsletter! 

Thanks! Have a wonderful 2021!

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Since we at Ask a Tech Teacher started this blog nine years ago, we’ve had almost 5.3 million views from visitors (about 10,000 follow us) to the 2,444 articles on integrating technology into the classroom. This includes tech tips, website/app reviews, tech-in-ed pedagogy, how-tos, videos, and more. We have regular features like:

• Weekly Websites and Tech Tips (sign up for the newsletter)
• Dear Otto Help Column
• Edtech Reviews
• Lesson plans

If you’ve just arrived at Ask a Tech Teacher, start here.

It always surprises us what readers find to be the most and least provocative. The latter is as likely to be a post one of us on the crew put heart and soul into, sure we were sharing Very Important Information, as the former. Talk about humility.

Here they are–my top 10 of 2020 (though I’ve skipped any that have to do with website reviews and tech tips because they’re covered in separate posts):

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Subscriber Special

Until January 18th:

Free Martin Luther King Day Lesson Plans

 

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Every year, January 1st, is Public Domain Day. This is an observance of when copyrights expire and works enter into the public domain–free for all to use. According to Duke Law Center for the Study of the Public Domain, here are some of the newly-available artistic works you might like a/o January 1, 2021:

• F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
• Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
• Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time
• Franz Kafka, The Trial (in German)
• Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy
• Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith
• Agatha Christie, The Secret of Chimneys
• Aldous Huxley, Those Barren Leaves
• W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil
• Edith Wharton, The Writing of Fiction
• Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto, A Daughter of the Samurai

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

I’ll be taking a few weeks off–until after the New Year–to edit/format my website, work on projects with a deadline, prioritize life, and wish my two adult military children could come home to visit. I may drop in on you-all as you enjoy your holidays, but mostly I’ll be regenerating.

I wish you a wonderful season, safe and filled with family.

See you in a few weeks!

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

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