Tagged With: new year
10 Most Popular Tech Tips and Click-throughs in 2017
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 2017:
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 2017. Between these ten, they had over 174,000 visitors during the year.
- End-of-Year Maintenance: 19 Steps To A Speedier Computer
- 6 Ways to Make Classroom Typing Fun
- 67 K-8 Hour of Code Suggestions–by Grade Level
- 13 Reasons For and 3 Against Technology in the Classroom
- 22 Digital Tools You Must Have in Your Classroom
- Chromebooks in the Classrooms–Friend or Foe?
- 19 Topics to Teach in Digital Citizenship–and How
- What is the 21st Century Lesson Plan?
- How to Create a Curriculum Map
- What are Common Core keyboarding standards?
What changed this year? The favorite tips were more general in nature than specific. Where last year a lot of ‘how-tos’ made the top ten, this year there’s only one.
10 Hits and 10 Misses for 2017
Since we at Ask a Tech Teacher started this blog six years ago, we’ve had over 5.3 million visitors to the 1,797 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.
Before you look at what statistics say are the most popular posts, tell me what your most popular categories are by voting in this poll:
Top 10 Websites and Apps of 2017
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, I’ll share which sites you-all thought were the most helpful in efforts to weave tech into the classroom experience. Between these, they had over 240,000 visitors during the year. See if you agree:
- 12 Websites to Teach Mouse Skills
- 16 Great Research Websites for Kids
- 10 Tech Tools for Your Math Class
- 67 K-8 Hour of Code Suggestions–by Grade Level
- 6 Ways to Make Classroom Typing Fun
- 16 Websites on Natural Disasters
- 9 Best-in-Class Digital Storytelling Tools
- 84 Math Websites for K-8
- Hour of Code Suggestions by Grade Level
- 13 Ways to Use Canva in Your Classroom
Have a wonderful 2018!
End-of-Year Maintenance: 19 Steps To A Speedier Computer
This week, I’m sharing three holiday activities that will get your computers, technology, and social media ready for the new year. Here’s what you’ll get:
-
A note: The links won’t work until the articles publish!
Today: 19 Steps to a Speedier Computer
There are two ‘speed’ problems that arise when using computers:
- the computer itself is slow, for lots of reasons
- you are slow–meaning: You have too much to do. We’ll deal with this later…
Here’s what you need to do:
End-of-year Maintenance: Image and Back-up Digital Devices
This week, I’m sharing three holiday activities that will get your computers, technology, and social media ready for the new year. Here’s what you’ll get:
- Update Your Online Presence
- Backup and Image your computer
- 19 Ways to Speed Up Your Computer
-
A note: The links won’t work until the articles publish!
Today: Image and Backup Your Digital Devices
Two critical maintenance tasks that lots of people skip are:
- image your computer
- back up your documents
Image your computer
Every computer must be reformatted eventually. Every time you download from a website or open an email attachment or update one of your online tools or software, you collect digital dust and grunge that affects the speed and efficiency of your computer. Performing the cleanup items suggested in 19 Ways to Speed Up Your Computer helps, but eventually not enough. The only way to return your computer to its original zippy youthful self is by reformatting.
End of Year Maintenance: Update Your Online Presence
This week, I’ll share three holiday activities that will get your computers, technology, and social media ready for the new year. Here’s what you’ll get:
A note: The links won’t work until the articles publish!
Today: Update Your Online Presence
For most teachers I know, life zooms by, filled with lesson planning, meetings, classes, collaborations with their grade-level team, parent meetings, and thinking. There are few breaks to update/fix/maintain the tech tools that allow us to pursue our trade.
But, that must happen or they deteriorate and no longer accomplish what we need them to do. Cussing them out does no good. Buying new systems takes a long time and doesn’t fix the problem that the old one wasn’t kept up. If they aren’t taken care of, we are left wondering why our teacher blog or website isn’t accomplishing what it does for everyone else, why our social media Tweeple don’t answer us, and why our TPT materials languish. There’s a short list of upkeep items that won’t take long to accomplish. The end of the calendar year is a good time to do these:
New Year, New Mindset
Every year, I make New Year resolutions and ignore them. I don’t promise to fulfill them. I don’t even check my progress and revise as needed. I make-and-forget, check it off the New Year’s To Do list and move on.
This year, I’m trying something different: resolutions that aren’t quantified, that won’t take extra time from my too-busy schedule. Resolutions that will, instead, are more about my teaching mindset. Here’s my list:
I will learn one new tech tool a month
There are so many. I get massive lists of webtools, websites, apps, extensions, and links in my inbox, mostly proclaimed as “the tool I can’t do without”. Every month, I’ll pick one and try it.
Just to be clear: Today’s tech ed tools aren’t like they used to be. The ones I’m interested in are easy-to-use, intuitive, easily differentiated for varied student needs, and free or inexpensive. Anything that requires a time commitment to learn and buckets of creativity to use is off the list. My schedule is too packed for that sort of commitment. And, I’ll unpack them with the students, authentically, as part of a project we’re doing. An example: I use Padlet to curate and share projects. Instead, I’ll use Tozzl at least once.
To get me started, would you add a comment with your favorite tool — the one I should start with in January.
Did You Miss These Posts Over the Holidays?
Here are four articles to get you ready for the demands of a new school year:
- End-of-year Tech Tips:Â Update Your Online Presence
- End-of-Year Tips:Â Image and Backup Digital Devices
- End of Year Tips:Â 22 Steps to a Speedier Computer
- How to Teach with Videos
Try them out–post a comment if you need help. I’ll be here.
Top 10 Websites and Apps of 2016
Every week, I post a website(s) or app(s) that my classes found useful, instructive, helpful in integrating technology into classroom lesson plans. Some, you agreed with me about; others not so much. Here, I’ll share which sites you-all thought were the most helpful in efforts to weave tech into the classroom experience. Between these twenty, they had over 240,000 visitors during the year. See if you agree:
Websites
- 12 Websites to Teach Mouse Skills
- 67 K-8 Hour of Code Suggestions–by Grade Level
- Hour of Code Suggestions by Grade Level
- 16 Great Research Websites for Kids
- 84 Math Websites for K-8
- KidzType–the Keyboard Practice Site You’ve Been Waiting For
- 31 Websites for Poetry Month
- 15 Websites to Learn Everything About Landforms
- 5 Programs That Make Digital Note-taking Easy
- 14 Websites That Will Excite Students About Tech
10 Hits and 10 Misses for 2016
Since I started this blog five years ago, I’ve had over 4.8Â million visitors to the 1,454 articles I’ve written on integrating technology into the classroom. This includes how to use wikis or blogs in the classroom and what I’ve learned from my students as we got through another tech week. I 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 me what readers find to be the most and least provocative. The latter is as likely to be a post I put heart and soul into, sure I was sharing Very Important Information, as the former. Talk about humility.
Before you look at what statistics say are the most popular posts, tell me what your most popular categories are by voting in this poll:
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