Tag: lists

What’s Trending on Ask a Tech Teacher

0 Comments

I calculate what’s trending on my blog by which of my posts are popular in a particular time period. Here’s the run-down so far this year:

5 Favorite Activities to End the School Year

0 Comments

The end of the school year is a time when both students and teachers alike are distracted by thoughts of vacation, sleeping in, and no deadlines. For many, this means the last few weeks of school, learning limps to a grinding halt, but increasingly, teachers use this time to introduce curricular- and standards-aligned activities that “color outside the lines” — step away from the textbook to blend learning with dynamic activities that remind students why they want to be life-long learners. Many of these, educators would love to teach but “just don’t have time for“, even though they align well with broad goals of preparing students for college and career.

If you’re looking for meaningful lessons to wrap up your school year, here are my top picks:

Digital Passport
Cool book reports
Practice keyboarding
Dig into cyberbullying
Applied Digital Skills

Digital Passport

Common Sense Media’s award-winning Digital Passport is the gold-standard in teaching digital citizenship to grades 3-5 (or Middle School). This free-to-schools online program mixes videos, games, quizzes, and the challenge of earning badges to teach students the concepts behind digital citizenship:

Communication
Privacy
Cyber-bullying
How to search
Plagiarism

It includes certificates of achievement, badges at the completion of units, and a classroom tracking poster to show how students are progressing.

(more…)

40+ Visual Learning Options for your PBL

0 Comments

Here’s a list of resources to apply visual learning tools to your classroom:

Be sure to click heading links for more websites (more…)

Great Research Websites for Kids

0 Comments

Please click here for current and updated websites, kid-friendly browsers, citation resources, how-to’s for research, and lesson plans!

Quick, safe spots to send your students for research:

CoolKidFacts–kid-friendly videos, pictures, info, and quizzes–all 100% suitable for children
Fact Monster–help with homework and facts
Google Earth Timelapse–what changes to the planet over time
Google Trends–what’s trending in searches
History Channel–great speeches
How Stuff Works–the gold standard in explaining stuff to kids
Info Please–events cataloged year-by-year
National Geographic for Kids
Ngram Viewer–analyzes all words in all books on Google Books
TagGalaxy–search using a cloud
Wild Wordsmyth–picture dictionary for kids
World Book–requires membership

Citing Resources

Kids Search Engines

(more…)

Sure-fire Ways to Teach Vocabulary

0 Comments

Have you ever been around someone who knows exactly the right word when they talk? Don’t you conclude they’re smart? Capable? The one you want in your study group? How about the inverse–an individual struggling with language, maybe picks words that aren’t quite right or can’t come up with one at all. What do you conclude then?

Teachers have always taught ‘vocabulary’ using labels like word study, site words, Dolch, Hi-Frequency words. Common Core considers proper terminology part and parcel to preparing for college and career. They fall into three types:

Tier 1: Words acquired through every day speech, usually learned in early grades
Tier 2: Academic words that appear in textbooks, precise words that refine meaning, i.e. ‘sprint’ instead of ‘run’.
Tier 3: Domain specific words tied to content, included in glossaries, highlighted in textbooks, and considered important to understanding content.

The ‘tier’ you focus on in your teaching depends upon student age and material being taught. Here are five ways technology will make the time you spend on this subject more effective, fun, differentiated, and authentic:

Context clues
SpellingCity
Online graphic dictionaries
Word clouds
Vocabulary websites

Before we begin, let’s lay some groundwork. Vocabulary (or word study) isn’t done in a vacuum. You don’t pass out lists and have students memorize words and definitions (you don’t do that, do you?). If you used to, that’s changed with Common Core. Now, you are expected to integrate vocab into learning. Every time students run into a term they don’t get, you need to pause and help them decode it. It may be obvious from context, its parts (roots and affixes), but always–always—pay attention so students know unfamiliar words are not skipped. With Common Core, every nuance is important. It’s about uncovering knowledge.

(more…)

Great Websites to Make Spring Sparkle

0 Comments

Last year was a boom year for edtech web tools. There were so many, I couldn’t keep up. I would discover what seemed to be a fantastic tool from one of the tech ed blogs I follow, give it about five minutes to prove itself, and then, depending upon that quick review, either dig deeper or move on. If it was recommended by a colleague in my professional learning network, I gave the site about twice as long but still, that’s harsh. I certainly couldn’t prove my worth if given only five minutes!

Nevertheless, that’s how it is because there are too many options. Here’s what I wanted to find out in the five minutes:

Is the creator someone I know and trust (add-ons by Alice Keeler always fit that requirement)?
Is it easy to access? Meaning, does it open and load quickly without the logins I always forget?
Is it easy to use? Meaning, are links to the most important functions on the start page? For example, in Canva, I can create a flier for my class in under five minutes because the interface is excellent.
For more complicated tools, how steep is the learning curve? Does the site offer clear assistance in the form of videos, online training, or a helpline?
Is the content age-appropriate for the grades I teach?
Is it free or freemium, and if the latter, can I get a lot out of it without paying a lot? I don’t like sites that give me “a few” uses for free and then charge for more. Plus, free is important to my students who may not be able to use it at home unless there’s no cost attached.
Is there advertising? Yes, I understand “free” probably infers ads so let me amend that to: Is it non-distracting from the purpose of the webtool?
How current is it? Does it reflect the latest updates in standards, pedagogy, and hardware?
Does it fulfill its intended purpose?
Has it received awards/citations from tech ed groups I admire?

After all that, here are websites that will brighten the Spring months: (click here for updates to lists): (more…)

Keyboarding 101

0 Comments

When students — and adults — think of learning to keyboard, it usually generates images of rote drills where you sweat over a keyboard as you’re graded on speed and accuracy.

Trying to change that image is what has driven many teachers to online sites but these often teach in an automated, undifferentiated way — logon, do exercises, repeat — that bores some and doesn’t work for others.

The feedback I often get on these sorts of sites is that students do improve speed and accuracy but only on the site. When they apply the knowledge to authentic situations (like typing a book report or an essay), students return to hunt-and-peck, watching their hands, and hating what they’re doing.

There’s a better way to learn keyboarding: Blended Learning. When I teach keyboarding, I use a variety of approaches, none too long and never too much, so each remains fresh and challenging rather than boring and repetitive. Here are some of the methods I mix up in my classes:

(more…)

Winter Websites

3 Comments

Here are some Winter activities to share the joy of winter (click for updates on this list):

5 Videos to teach about winter
Winter Facts and Worksheets
The Winter Solstice, from PBS–a video for youngers
Winter Vocabulary–a video
What is a Solstice, from National Geographic–a video
What is the Winter Season–a video
Winter Coloring Pages, Printables, and more
Winter Games–digital

(more…)

January is Braille Literacy Month

0 Comments

January marks Braille Literacy Month (January 4th is Braille Day) and a remarkable milestone: 200 years since Louis Braille developed his revolutionary code that continues to impact lives today. In 1824, at just 15 years old, Louis Braille created a tactile code that would open new worlds of literacy and learning.

Braille uses 63 combinations of raised dots to represent letters, numbers, punctuation, and contractions. Each cell has two columns of three dots. The left column is numbered 1, 2, 3 from top to bottom, and the right column is numbered 4, 5, 6. Each dot has a unique number.

Braille literacy websites (click for updated list of special needs websites for the vision challenged):

HumanWare–various writing/reading tools for the blind
JAWS
National Library Service for the Blind–free, from the Library of Congress
Natural reader–paste text into the dialogue box and the site reads it to you
Panopreter–text-to-speech
Snap n Read–select text and click speaker icon on the toolbar.

–image credit DepositPhotos

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

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

“The content presented in this blog is the result of my creative imagination and not intended for use, reproduction, or incorporation into any artificial intelligence training or machine learning systems without prior written consent from the author.”

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, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.