Dear Otto: Do Students Still Need to Learn Keyboarding?

Do you have a tech question?

Dear Otto is an occasional column where I answer questions I get from readers about teaching tech. If you have a question, please complete the form below and I’ll answer it here. For your privacy, I use only first names.

Here’s a great question I got from Joe :

I am a tech teacher at my school, and I just got word that the admin want to discuss eliminating “teaching kids to type”. She feels it is not an important skill to teach our “tech savvy” kids. This stems from the idea that many devices have virtual keyboards instead of physical keyboards. While I have my check-list of the reasons why typing is important for kids to learn, I also want to collect ideas and reasons from other experts in the field. Any research based data would be great too.Thanks for your help,

Before I answer Joe, I need to send a shout-out to my son, Sean, in Kuwait, as he defends America’s liberties–HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Back to my regularly scheduled post…

Hi Joe

The assumption of those who follow that line of thought is that technology can be self-taught, learned by doing. Just as it doesn’t work with piano or basketball, students who receive no direction in typing end up with bad habits that slow them down by the time they’re in middle school and need speed and accuracy for homework demands. If no one tells them otherwise, they think it’s fine to hunt-and-peck with two fingers (maybe that’s how dad does it) or type with their thumbs (the newest approach, thanks to texting). These students will struggle to deliver quality content for essays, reports, and high school and college applications. Where opinions are more and more forged by words on a screen–not by personal interaction or real-world connections (thanks to social media like FB and blogs)–these students will be found inferior.

5 Must-have Skills for New Tech Teachers Plus One Extra

If you teach technology, it’s likely you were thrown into it by your Admin. You used to be a first grade teacher or the science expert or maybe even the librarian and suddenly, you walked into school one day and found out you’d become that tech person down the hall you were always in awe of, the one responsible for classroom computers, programs, curriculum, and everything in between. Now that’s you–the go-to person for tech problems, computer quirks, crashes and freezes, and tech tie-ins for classroom inquiry.

You have no idea where to begin.

Here’s a peek into your future: On that first propitious day, everything will change. Your colleagues will assume you received a data upload of the answers to every techie question. It doesn’t matter that yesterday, you were one of them. Now, you will be on a pedestal, colleague’s necks craned upward as they ask , How do I get the Smartscreen to work? or We need microphones for a lesson I’m starting in three minutes. Can you please-please-please fix them? You will nod your head, smile woodenly, and race to your classroom for the digital manuals (if you’re lucky) or Google for online help.

Let me start by saying: Don’t worry. Really. You’ll learn by doing, just as we teach students. Take a deep breath, engage your brain, and let your brilliance shine.

It’s Here! K-5 Tech Curriculum Aligned with Common Core!

The educational paradigm has changed. New guidelines (most recently, the National Board of Governors Common Core Standards) expect technology to facilitate learning through collaboration, publishing, and transfer of knowledge. Educators want students to use technology to work together, share the products of their effort, and employ the skills learned in other parts of their lives.

If you purchased SL’s Fourth Edition, consider the tech changes in education since its 2011 publication:

• Windows has updated their platform—twice
• iPads are the device of choice in the classroom
• Class Smartboards are more norm than abnorm(al)
• Technology in the classroom has changed from ‘nice to have’ to ‘must have’
• 1:1 has become a realistic goal
• Student research is as often done online as in the library
• Students spend as much time in a digital neighborhood as their home town
• Textbooks are considered resources rather than bibles
• Teachers who don’t use technology are an endangered species
• Words like ‘blended learning’, ‘authentic’, ‘transfer’, ‘evidence’ are now integral to teaching
• Common Core Standards have swept like a firestorm through the education community, most timed to take effect after 2011

Here’s what you’ll find in the SL Technology Curriculum–5th Edition (see slideshow below):

11 Ways to Make an Inquiry based Classroom

You became a teacher not to pontificate to trusting minds, but to teach children how to succeed as adults. That idealism infused every class in your credential program and only took a slight bump during your student teacher days. That educator, you figured, was a dinosaur. You’d never teach to the test or lecture for forty minutes of a forty-five minute class.

Then you got a job and reality struck. You had lesson plans to get through, standards to assess, and state-wide tests that students must do well on or you’d get the blame. A glance in the mirror said you were becoming that teacher you hated in school. You considered leaving the profession.

Until the inquiry-based classroom arrived where teaching’s goal was not the solution to a problem, but the path followed. It’s what you’d hoped to do long ago when you started–but how do you turn a traditional entrenched classroom into one that’s inquiry-based?

11 Ways to be an Inquiry-based Teacher

It’s hard to run an inquiry-based classroom. Don’t go into this teaching style thinking all you do is ask questions and observe answers. You have to listen with all of your senses, pause and respond to what you heard (not what you wanted to hear), keep your eye on the Big Ideas as you facilitate learning, value everyone’s contribution, be aware of the energy of the class and step in when needed, step aside when required. You aren’t a Teacher, rather a guide. You and the class find your way from question to knowledge together.

Because everyone learns differently.

You don’t use a textbook. Sure, it’s a map, showing you how to get from here to there, but that’s the problem. It dictates how to get ‘there’. For an inquiry-based classroom, you may know where you’re going, but not quite how you’ll get there and that’s a good thing.  You are no longer your mother’s teacher who stood in front of rows of students and pointed to the blackboard. You operate well outside your teaching comfort zone as you try out the flipped classroom and the gamification of education and are thrilled with the results.

And then there’s the issue of assessment. What your students have accomplished can’t neatly be summed up by a multiple choice test. When you review what you thought would assess learning (back when you designed the unit), none measure the organic conversations the class had about deep subjects, the risk-taking they engaged in to arrive at answers, the authentic knowledge transfer that popped up independently of your class time. You realize you must open your mind to learning that occurred that you never taught–never saw coming in the weeks you stood amongst your students guiding their education.

Let me digress. I visited the Soviet Union (back when it was one nation) and dropped in on a classroom where students were inculcated with how things must be done. It was a polite, respectful, ordered experience, but without cerebral energy, replete of enthusiasm for the joy of learning, and lacking the wow factor of students independently figuring out how to do something. Seeing the end of that powerful nation, I arrived at different conclusions than the politicians and the economists. I saw a nation starved to death for creativity. Without that ethereal trait, learning didn’t transfer. Without transfer, life required increasingly more scaffolding and prompting until it collapsed in on itself like a hollowed out orange.

Dear Otto: How do I prevent printer pandemonium?

Do you have a tech question?

Dear Otto is an occasional column where I answer questions I get from readers about teaching tech. If you have a question, please complete the form below and I’ll answer it here. For your privacy, I use only first names.

Here’s a great question I got from Cheryl in Indiana:

It seems that my well-structured primary tech classrooms fall apart when it is time to print.  Some students just keep pushing Print & end up printing multiple copies, 25 students scramble to the printer to collect their printouts.  Total chaos!  Any ideas?

I have a two-step solution to that:

• Teach students how to print. I take lesson time to show them the print box, the varied spots where things can be changed, and how to do it right. After that, I know it’s not lack of knowledge causing problems
• I don’t let them go to the printer. First, it gets to be the lab water cooler–everyone hanging out back there, chatting, while they wait for the stuff to print. That’s no good. Second, I’ can’t monitor that everything printed is appropriate if they’re taking papers from the printer. Third, if they print more than one, I want to chat with them about it.
• Consistent offenders aren’t allowed to print. I’ll email it to parents/teacher, but they lose the privilege

15 Great Simulations to Gamify Your Class

I’ve been spending every spare moment editing the upcoming 7th Grade Technology Curriculum Textbook (click to be notified when it’s available–projected: June 2013). One unit I’ve fallen in love with is ‘Gamification of Education’. I haven’t spent a lot of time on that topic and am now over-the-top about its possibilities.

If you’re into gamifying your classes, you understand.

Here are 15 websites I’ve found that do an excellent job of using games to promote critical thinking, problem solving skills, and learning:

Which is better for schools: iPads or laptops?

Do you have a tech question?

Dear Otto is an occasional column where I answer questions I get from readers about teaching tech. If you have a question, please complete the form below and I’ll answer it here. For your privacy, I use only first names.

Here’s a great question I got from Roxi in South Africa:

Please could you share with us your opinion on school i-pads for ALL work the learners do. We have many requests from parents wanting to know when we will be switching to i-pads only. There seem to be many schools over the world that actually only use android devices for all their work and have great success in doing so. I have just started to research recently but up to now it seems to me that one cannot do all the academic stuff you need to do on an i-pad as comfortably and as inexpensively as you can do on a computer. Also the paradigm shift and hours of work to apply the curriculum to using androids might prove to be quite a daunting tasks for teachers who not confident with technology.

We have 3 labs at our school – I find that our learners are very much challenged and learn something new every day using laptops and computers. Please could you let me know what your findings are.

Hi Roxi

This is a question so many schools are struggling with. IPads are the exciting new toy (like laptops were just a few years ago) so schools are taking the issue of whether or not to buy seriously. Consider these Pros and Cons:

IPads have a great purpose in education:

• kids love them, are excited to learn anything that is taught via an iPad. What’s not to like about that as a teacher? Students will practice math facts, read books, happily gamify learning.
• iPads are light-weight, easy to care for, boot up quickly, and are fairly sturdy
• compared to a laptop, iPads are affordable. That leaves lots of money for other uses
• they are easier to care for, have less IT issues, and are not as likely to be ‘messed with’ by students. Plus, a certain amount of the upkeep can be performed easily by teachers
• iPads are great for collaboration–maybe better than laptops (unless you’re a Google Apps school. That could drop this off the list)
• for those parts of education that are media-centric–such as viewing videos, reading books, drawing–it’s hard to beat the iPad.
• iPad battery life is long compared to a laptop. Students don’t have to remember to recharge as often
• iPads have a much higher ease of use and accessibility than laptops. Between instant on, touch screen, not as many choices, they are much simpler to get up to speed on.
• I have to admit, iPads make recording, taking videos and pictures much simpler than if I used the laptop. Find out how important this is to teachers as you make your decision.

But there are downsides:

Why Keyboarding Should NOT be Dead

Teaching keyboarding in the classroom continues to be a hot topic. Sides have formed up and dug in–is it critical or unnecessary? Can students teach themselves or will that create bad habits? Educated, knowledgeable experts fall on both sides of these  question so it’s going to come down to what works for you, in your classroom.

If you are Pro-keyboarding (as I am), here are some reasons to consider as you make your decision and prepare for what might be a all-out battle for Truth and Justice with your Admin:

Dear Otto: I need reading resources for ELL/ESL

Do you have a tech question?

Dear Otto is an occasional column where I answer questions I get from readers about teaching tech. If you have a question, please complete the form below and I’ll answer it here. For your privacy, I use only first names.

Here’s a great question I got from Shelley:

Tomorrow is a half day planning day so I can’t wait to look at all of the websites you have for 1st grade. I’m wondering what recommendations can you give for ELL/ESL students? One of my student’s home language is Spanish and the other home language is Pashto. Thank you for any recommendations!

I found three websites that share story books in lots of languages:

• BookBox
• Children’s International Library
• Sounding Board–create custom boards using AbleNet symbols or your own photos; designed for children with autism or other special ed needs
• Speak-all–designed to help children with special needs learn the process of constructing sentences.
• Talk and Touch–create custom buttons that ‘talk’ when pushed
• TapTapSee–takes pictures and speaks aloud what the object is. Designed to help the blind and visually impaired identify objects they encounter in their daily lives.
• World Library

7 Ways Common Core Will Change Your Classroom

The biggest pedagogic change to American education since the arrival of John Dewey is happening right now. It’s called Common Core State Standards. Its goal: to prepare the nation’s tens of thousands of students for college and/or career. If you are involved in any part of teaching, administrating, or planning, you are holding your breath, downing an aspirin, and crossing your fingers, knowing a storm is about to hit. You’ve prepared, but is it enough?

46 states adopted the Common Core in an effort to bring consistency and uniformity to the hodge podge of state standards that dot the education landscape from California to Maine and Alaska to Florida. For most states, implementation is piecemeal, a bit at a time, with the full roll out not expected until sometime in 2015.

Besides turning your curriculum upside down, there are philosophic changes you as a teacher will have to buy into to fit the mold that is Common Core:

1. Depth not width—Dig into ideas. Make them clearer, more robust. Teachers will cover fewer topics in a year, but with greater detail. Trust that the breadth of learning will come from that deeper understanding. The accepted pedagogy that similar topics be introduced every year, each with more detail, is no longer. Now, students will cover new topics at each grade level–fewer but fuller.
2. Nonfiction, not fiction—Literacy and reading is likely to be comprehensive narratives rather than inference from stories. Why? Post-high school reading in both college and career is more often expository than fiction as high school grads study for college courses or receive specific training on a job. Students need to know how to perform the critical reading necessary to pick through the staggering amount of print and digital information required to thrive at the game called life.
3. Evidence is required–It will be paramount that students logically and dispassionately prove their claims with organic conversations and authentic, well-understood evidence. Statements must have supporting facts that stand up under cerebral scrutiny. A claim of acceptability because it is ‘their interpretation’ will not be sufficient in a CCSS classroom.
4. Speaking and listening--Anyone who thrives in the adult world knows the importance of these two skills. Now, they will be taught in the K-12 curriculum. The youngest learners will have guidelines for how to carry on a conversation–come to a discussion prepared, listen respectfully to others, take turns speaking, build on each other’s conversations, ask clarifying questions. As they advance grade levels, so too will the requirements.
5. Technology is part of most/all standards--Not overtly, but teachers will find a fundamental understanding of how technology scaffolds learning to be essential in delivering Standards correctly. Many times, standards expect knowledge be ‘collaborated on, published and shared’. This is done through technology–pdfs, printing, publishing to blogs and wikis, sharing via Tagxedos and Animotos. Students and teachers will use the internet, online tools, software, tech devices as vehicles for achieving educational goals. No longer will they be ‘fun’ tools employed in the computer lab. Now, they will be integral to the curriculum. This means teachers will have to be comfortable with iPads, online widgets, Google Docs, and all those geeky tools that they admired from afar, when colleagues used them, promising they would try them ‘one day’. That day has arrived.
6. Life skills are emphasized across subject areas.  It’s not good enough students can write in literacy classes. CCSS expects them to communicate just as effectively in every subject. And, where critical thinking has always been fundamental to math and science, that now expands to all classes. Students must understand cause and effect, transfer knowledge from one subject area to another throughout their educational day. That means, math teachers must pay attention to writing and literature teachers to cognitive processes.
7. An increase in rigor–Accountability will be expected of students and teachers. Too often, passing a test was all the assessment that was expected. CCSS will look for more–transfer of knowledge (see 6 above), evidence of learning, student as risk-taker, authenticity of lessons, vertical planning, learning with increasingly less scaffolding and prompting, and differentiated instruction so all learners get it.

FREE Tech Teacher Training–But Join Quickly

OK, FREE’s gone. Sorry, guys. Now it’s ‘discounted’. I have joined with Curriculum Study Group to teach online tech ed classes for teachers (only teachers). A little background on the program:

Who is Curriculum Study Group

It is a company name, but also a learning style. ‘Curriculum Study Groups’ are a powerful way to transform teaching and learning through online collaboration among teachers of the same subject and grade, under the guidance of master teachers. The goals:

• Magnify the impact of teachers, while providing them with potentially the most powerful professional development of their careers
• Reduce needless reinvention of the wheel, by enabling participants to build on the experiences and resources of master teachers
• Provide tangible support for lesson planning, instruction, and assessment that goes beyond what is offered in published curriculum
• Make high-quality, curriculum-based professional development available to any teacher, anywhere
• Assist teachers in addressing the challenge of meeting Common Core State Standards and other rigorous standards in specific content areas.

14 Factors to Consider for Tech Report Cards

It used to be simple to post grades. Add up test scores and see what the student earned. Very defensible. Everyone understood.

It’s not that way anymore. Here are the factors I consider when I’m posting grades:

• Does s/he remember skills from prior lessons as they complete current lessons?
• Does s/he show evidence of learning by using tech class knowledge in classroom or home?
• Does s/he participate in class discussions?
• Does s/he complete daily goals (a project, visit a website, watch a tutorial, etc.)?
• Does s/he save to their network folder?

Dear Otto: How Can Students Keep Track of Passwords?

Do you have a tech question?

Dear Otto is an occasional column where I answer questions I get from readers about teaching tech. If you have a question, please complete the form below and I’ll answer it here. For your privacy, I use only first names.

Here’s a great question I got from Kaylene in Ohio:

How do you teach students to keep track of the many usernames and passwords they will need when using all of the great web 2.0 tools? I personally use an encrypted Excel file, but what do you suggest for students in K-8?

Hi Kaylene

Great question. Here’s what I do for K-5: I have a binder by each station in the computer lab with a template for recording UN and PW for all accounts. This isn’t private (anyone could look in the binders), but most accounts don’t require any degree of security. The process is to get students used to tracking log-ins, that they have a source to check when they need a log-in. I do ask that each UN and PW be different so they acclimate to that and figure out a logic to accomplishing that which works for them. For example, they might come up with a sentence where they use the first letter of each word as the PW with some combination of number/symbol appended to the front or back. We also use Password Bird to create them, but this is entirely random–harder to remember.

Ramp up Your iPad Use

Too often, iPads end up like a babysitter–students love them, can get lost in their fun, but forget inquiry. My efriend, David over at Dakinane.com, and I got in a long conversation about that. Turns out, he’s put a lot of thought to that very question and has some innovative solutions. He wrote a wonderful article addressing those concerns and how to fix them, with a video that shows more details. Here’s the gyst of it, as well as a link back to the original:

Layering Apps on an iPad

I have just written an article for Interface Magazine about how to best use an iPad in the classroom.  I wrote the article in response to my own observations about how iPads are being used and also in response to a blog post  written by Tom Whitby, who did the Emporer’s New Clothes task of stating that a worksheet is still a worksheet, even when it is on an iPad.  This echoes my own observations with teachers who use an iPad in their classroom.  They tend to use this high tech device to deliver low level learning.  The trouble is to the casual observer, it looks great to see engaged students working enthusiastically on their shiny new iPads in a classroom, but what learning is happening? I have also been part of a conversation with Jacqui Murray who was sharing her thoughts on the best apps for a classroom.  I shared my thoughts on formative assessment and publishing, points which she agreed on.

When I work with teachers who are using iPads in their classroom, I get them to audit their apps and to ask so what? questions of the apps.  I need for them to know the learning and formative assessment potential of each of their apps.  If the apps is unjustified busy work, it is scrapped.  I then introduce this concept I have developed called layering, where the best features of one app are used to create content that can be enhanced in another app.  I get the teachers to base the learning intention outputs around the workflow of several apps.

You can see what I mean in the video below.  If you are struggling to get the best out of your iPad or are having trouble creating a sustainable blended elearning environment in your school, please contact me for a free initial consultation meeting.

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Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor of a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum, and creator of technology training books for how to integrate technology in education. She is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is webmaster for six blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, presentation reviewer for CSTA, Cisco guest blogger, a monthly contributor to TeachHUB, columnist for Examiner.com, featured blogger for Technology in Education, and IMS tech expert. Currently, she’s editing a techno-thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

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Definition of ‘Teacher’

I got this from one of my Christian friends. Thought I’d share:

After being interviewed by the school administration, the prospective teacher said: 

‘Let me see if I’ve got this right. 

‘You want me to go into that room with all those kids, correct their disruptive behavior, observe them for signs of abuse, monitor their dress habits, censor their T-shirt messages, and instill in them a love for learning. 

‘You want me to check their backpacks for weapons, wage war on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases, and raise their sense of self esteem and personal pride. 

‘You want me to teach them patriotism and good citizenship, sportsmanship and fair play, and how to register to vote, balance a checkbook, and apply for a job. 

7 Common Core Ways to Assess Knowledge

This is always challenging, isn’t it? Finding evidence that students have learned what you taught, that they can apply their knowledge to complex problems. How do you do this? Rubrics? Group projects? Posters? None sound worthy of the Common Core educational environ–and too often, students have figured out how to deliver within these guidelines while on auto-pilot.

Where can we find authentic assessments that are measurable yet student-centered, promote risk-taking by student and teacher alike, inquiry-driven and encourage students to take responsibility for his/her own learning? How do we assess a lesson plan in a manner that insures students have learned what they need to apply to life, to new circumstances they will face when they don’t have a teacher at their elbow to nudge them the right direction?

Here are some of my favorite approaches:

Anecdotally

I observe their actions, their work, the way they are learning the skills I’m teaching. Are they engaged, making their best effort? Do they remember skills taught in prior weeks and apply them? Do they self-assess and make corrections as needed?

Transfer of knowledge

New Literacies Enable Smarter Researching

In my last post, we talked about “digital citizens”, the modern student who lives in two worlds. One he can touch with his hands, the other only with his mind. It’s this latter one that has revolutionized education, provided opportunities for students to talk to experts on astronomy, walk through the ancient ruins of Stonehenge, and dissect a frog without touching a scalpel. This world is scintillating, but challenging, demanding students be risk-takers and inquirers.

Inquiry and education

That last—inquiry—has changed the K-12 classroom from what many experienced just a decade ago, for students cannot be inquirers without being risk-takers. They take responsibility for their own learning by following practical strategies for uncovering information despite the billions (literally) of places to look. Consider this: If you Google ‘space’, you get over 4 billion hits. That much information is worthless. Digital citizens develop practical strategies for refining this list to a specific need.

Digital citizens also differentiate instruction so it works for themselves, not change their learning style to fit what the teacher delivers. They hear the big ideas, grasp the essential questions, and then develop a plan that delivers it in their own unique and personal way.

11 Resources to Blend Technology and Special Needs

My first take on ‘special needs’ is: Don’t all students have special needs? Aren’t we beyond the cookie cutter education that lines students up and feeds them from the same trough?

Yes and yes, but for the purposes of this article, I’m going to reign my pen in and discuss what we traditionally consider ‘special needs’ and technology’s affect on those students who function outside of the normal bell curve of pedagogic expectations.

Technology is the great equalizer between standard education and the 1:1 approach required by students with special circumstances. It’s an embarrassment to our profession that  learning disabilities such as dyscalculia, autism, ADHD are chronically under-served when the tools that can seamlessly supply personal attention–the iPads and netbooks and apps and software and widgets that can be the key to unlocking physical, mental, and psychological potential–if only they were used. With nominal training and the technology, teachers can differentiate instruction to serve students with a wide range of abilities and needs. Best practices include oral tools like Siri for those who have difficulty writing, audio tools to make teacher directions more available to the hearing-challenged, art programs that allow students to communicate ideas as their brains see them, widgets that facilitate sharing thoughts via other media than text (think art and music and poetry), translation programs that make material accessible quickly and easily to non-native speakers, and the differentiated instruction available through sites such as Khan Academy.

Technology in Schools: A Brief History

I have a special treat for you today–a bit of history, compliments of a dear efriend, Janet Abercrombie of Expat Educator. Janet teaches math, but in a refreshingly nontraditional manner. She has given me countless ideas for integrating tech into math (or ‘maths’ as they say outside the US).

She just finished up a teaching gig in Hong Kong and is moving to Australia. Through her, I gain insight into the worldwide educational world, something I could never do on my own. But Janet shares her experiences with everyone who visits her blog, including the differences in spelling around the planet, which I’ve left unchanged.

Today, it’s the history of tech. Most of you are too young to have used this equipment, but I can verify: It’s all true:

I recently worked in a school with a Tech Museum. Recognise any of the items in the pictures below?

When I look at this wall of old gadgets, I am taken back to my first practicum teaching assignment – the slightly damp, purple-blue ditto copies that emerged with a toxic smell second only to rubber cement.

Technology has changed tremendously since the ditto machine. As you read, ask yourself this: At what point in time did classroom instruction need to change with the emerging technology?

For a little New Year’s fun, this post includes early tech trivia questions that you can answer in the comment box.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Tech Integration Phase 1: Pre-90s

Turntables (record players): Record turntables were certainly not in every classroom, but you could check them out from the tech library to use in class. The use of the record player was dependent upon the variety of vinyls in the school library or the teacher’s ability to purchase classroom-appropriate materials. One of the major disadvantages of the turntable was the fear of album scratches or breaks. I suspect that few teachers allowed students to handle the records.

Cassette tapes and players: If you were lucky enough to get a cassette tape player in your classroom, young children could be trusted to touch the equipment. The cassette tapes were far more portable than vinyl records and they weren’t easily destroyed. Most classrooms had a cassette player like the model on the left – while teenagers from affluent families might be seen walking down the street with a large boom-box balanced on their shoulders.

For tech integration, students might present a report on a popular rock group and play a song from the collection. My report on Huey Lewis and the News earned a B because I spent time rewinding and fast-forwarding to find the correct song. Who knew I was expected to do that before the presentation??? We could also make audio-recordings of reading fluency or practice speaking skills.

Early Apple Computers: The Apple IIe was a big deal. A Middle School classroom might have one or two of these machines in the back corner of the classroom. Students worked through “Apple Presents Apple” and could make pictures by plugging in BASIC ‘plot’ and ‘hplot’ commands. Even more amazing, work could be saved provided a magnetised paper clip didn’t get too close to the floppy disks. The Appleworks word processing program allowed students to not have to remember all the Word Perfect Function Keys. Trivia Question 1: Can you name all Word Perfect function keys?

Take Tech into the Classroom

If you are the tech teacher and teach in a lab, there’s a fundamental truism about students and tech that you know: Students don’t make the connection that tech in the lab is the same as tech in the classroom–just smaller. Whether the classroom has a laptop cart or a pod of desktops, students think that they’ve never seen the programs and icons before and none of the rules they learned two doors down (or wherever your lab space is in relation to the student classroom) applies to tech use in the classroom.

It requires your physical presence in their classroom, speaking to them for the transfer of knowledge to take place.

Here’s how I do it:

Before going:

• Make sure the class computers work
  • CPU turns on
    
  • monitors work
  • headphones works

• Make sure class computers have all the links required for class work and that are used in the lab. Ask the class teacher what those are and make sure they are on both the lab computers and the classroom laptops/pod. These are some favorites:

• The school website
• Tech lab class internet start page
• Typing practice program
• Google Earth
• Starfall
• A math program

If it’s not possible, be ready to explain the differences to students so they can reach a comfort level

• Find out what the class teacher understands about the computers. Is she comfortable? How are students using them? Has she had problems? If there are reasons she doesn’t use them, what are they and can you solve them?

5 Tips to Keeping Your New Years Resolutions

Every year, millions of people worldwide create New Year’s resolutions. In my experience, keeping these goals will happen when Harvard wins the Super Bowl (I used to say when Notre Dame plays for the National Championship, but I had to revise my metrics). In fact, according to Randi Walsh at Empower Network:

• … 25% give up on their New Years Resolutions after just one week?
• … 80% give up on their New Years Resolutions after 20 days?
• … only 8% actually keep their New Years Resolutions all year?

Here’s an example: On a group blog I write with, we were all asked to share our resolutions with the Universe in January, then check in throughout the year on our progress. No one in the entire group–read that Zilch.–had achieved theirs (well, I did, which made our group 8%). The reasons were varied and lame and left me wondering why create resolutions if you so quickly brush them aside?

Why? It makes people feel good. They want to believe their lives will be better at the end of the year than they were at the beginning. Let’s look at the top four resolutions (according to Amber J. Tresca at About.com):

10 Top Click-throughs from Ask a Tech Teacher

I include lots of links for my readers to places that will help them integrate technology into their education. They cover websites on lesson plans, math, keyboarding, classroom management, cloud computer, digital books, teacher resources, free tech resources, and more. On any given day, I generate on average 810 of these ‘click throughs’. Which links my readers select tells me a lot about the type of information they’re looking for.

Here’s a list of the top ten sites visitors selected from my blog:

1. itunes.apple.com–last year the top click-through was a website. This year, teachers are looking for apps for iPads.
2. libraryspot.com–there’s a big uptick in using the internet for research this year over last year
3. Structuredlearning.net–lots of teachers are finding books/ebooks here for integrating tech into the classroom
4. abcya.com–a popular site with classroom edutainment
5. My internet start page for my classes--this is the page my K-5 students bring up when they open the internet. It includes the links they’ll use that day, as well as links they need for classroom inquiry, and lots more
6. factmonster.com–more research for class projects
7. kids.nationalgeographic.com–still more research. I’m seeing a trend
8. bigbrownbear.co.uk/keyboard/–One of my favorite sites to teach K/1 how to type
9. smaatechk-3.wikispaces.com–this collection of sites lets you follow along as an experienced tech teacher teaches each lesson
10. brainpop.com–great collection of videos and games on almost every topic

What do I conclude from this? Where last year, the top sites revolved around keyboarding, this year it’s research. Second, you want information on managing the classroom–that’s the wikis and the internet start pages. I hear you. Check back this new year and see what I come up with.

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Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor of a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-6 Digital Citizenship curriculum, and creator of technology training books for how to integrate technology in education. She is the author of Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is webmaster for six blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, Cisco guest blogger, a columnist for Examiner.com, Technology in Education featured blogger, IMS tech expert, and a monthly contributor to TeachHUB. Currently, she’s editing a techno-thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

10 Most Popular Tech Tips in 2012

As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday in 2012, I shared one of those with you. Here are the

Top Ten tech tips from 2012. Between these ten, they had 48,001 visitors during the year. They better be good or a lot of people were disappointed!

1. Tech Tip #18: Ten Best MS Word Tips–How Did You Survive Without Them
2. Tech Tip #18: 10 Best MS Word Tips
3. Ten Best Keyboarding Hints You’ll Ever See
4. Twenty-one Techie Problems Every Student Can Fix
5. Tech Tip #2: The PrintScreen Key
6. Tech Tip #19: How to Activate a Link in Word
7. Tech Tip #12: Wrap Text Around an Image
8. Tech Tip #2: The PrintScreen Key
9. Tech Tip #57: How to Create a Chart Really Fast
10. Tech Tip #1: the Insert Key

Subscribers: Your Special is Available

Every month, subscribers to Ask a Tech Teacher get a free/discounted resource to help their tech teaching.

This month:

18 More Posters

Need something to spark up the classroom post-holiday? Feeling a little down because parties and presents and favorite guests are gone like your holiday bonus? I can help.

These 18 posters (plus one bonus) are creative additions to decorate for the new year. Don’t take my word for it. It includes topics like:

1. Plug in–A reminder to students to plug in their flash drives when they sit down at the computer. If this is your primary form of back-up, this poster could be the most important of the group
2. 10 Steps to become a BETTER GEEK–Humorous steps to becoming the essential geek
3. 15 ways to get Your Geek On–Already a geek? These 15 activities will confirm that.
4. Want to use this image?–Artistic work is copyrighted. Think before using.
5. The Virtual Neighborhood–Rules for the digital neighborhood
6. Evidence Wall–An important part of learning technology is using it outside of class. Collect evidence of this and post it on a class Evidence Wall using these paper tropies
7. Portrait Orientation–A visual reminder of what ‘portrait’ means
8. Landscape Orientation–A visual reminder of what ‘landscape’ means
9. Learn like a Champion–Notre Dame fan? You’ll like this encouragement to learn learn learn!
10. Learn on!–USC fan? This one’s for you.
11. 10 Netiquette rules–Follow these important rules to thrive in the digital world
12. 13 Rules for Email Etiquette–Using email? Here’s what you need to know about that.
13. Save early, save often–How often should students save their work? Early and often. Every time they think of it.
14. Select-do–To do anything on the computer, first you must ‘select’ what you’re doing to, then implement. This is a quick reminder of that process.
15. Copyright law–All artistic work is copyrighted. This is a quick summary of the national law to post on the wall and review with students.
16. Digital Citizenship To Do List–18 subjects to learn about in digital citizenship. This chart lets you mark each as each class/grade accomplishes it. I use circles and stick them on the provided line.
17. Shortkey list for computers–Once students get used to using shortkeys, they provide one more tool in their techie toolkit to problem solve. Remind them by taping this list of the most oft used onto the tower.
18. Use shortcuts. Get done faster–Remind students of the geek joy of using shortkeys. Often, a shortkey can be remembered faster than the key combination.
19. What’s a Mulligan? (Bonus)–Sometimes, I let students redo quizzes/projects for a better grade. I let them know when that’s available by telling them the ‘Mulligan Rule’ is in effect (from the sport of golf)

How to Thrive as a Digital Citizen

Citizen of the internet

Thanks to the pervasiveness of easy-to-use technology and the accessibility of the internet, teachers are no longer lecturing from a dais as the purveyor of knowledge. Now, students are expected to take ownership of their education, participate actively in the learning process, and transfer knowledge learned in the classroom to their lives.

In days past, technology was used to find information (via the internet) and display it (often via PowerPoint). No longer.  Now, if you ask a fifth grade student to write a report on space exploration, here’s how s/he will proceed:

Understand ‘Digital Citizenship’

Before the engines of research can start, every student must understand what it means to be a citizen of the world wide web. Why? Most inquiry includes a foray into the unknown vastness of the www. Students learn early (I start kindergartners with an age-appropriate introduction) how to thrive in that virtual world. It is a pleasant surprise that digital citizenship has much the same rules as their home town:

Don’t talk to bad guys, look both ways before crossing the (virtual) street, don’t go places you know nothing about, play fair, pick carefully who you trust, don’t get distracted by bling, and sometimes stop everything and take a nap.

In internet-speak, students learn to follow good netiquette, not to plagiarize the work of others, avoid scams, stay on the website they choose, not to be a cyber-bully, and avoid the virtual ‘bad guys’. Current best practices are not to hide students from any of these, but to teach them how to manage these experiences.

10 Steps to Become a Better Geek

If you teach technology, it’s likely you’re a geek. Even if you didn’t start out that way–say, you used to be a first grade teacher and suddenly your Admin in their infinite wisdom, moved you to the tech lab. Overnight, you became a geek. You morphed into the go-to person for tech problems, computer quirks, crashes and freezes. Overnight, your colleagues assumed you received an upload of data that allowed you to Know the answers to their every techie question. It didn’t matter that yesterday, you were one of them. Now, you are on a pedestal, their necks craned upward as they ask you, How do I get the Smartscreen to work? or We need the microphones working for a lesson I’m starting in three minutes. Can you please-please-please fix them?

Celebrate your cheeky geekiness. Flaunt it for students and colleagues. Play Minecraft. That’s you now–you are sharp, quick-thinking. You tingle when you see an iPad and the first thing you do when you get to school is check your email

It’s OK. Here at Ask a Tech Teacher, we understand. The readers understand. You’re at home. To honor you, I’ve created this poster. It gives ten more ways to get your geek fully on as you go through your day:

For more tech ed posters, click here and here and here

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Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor of a K-6 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, creator of two technology training books for middle school and six ebooks on technology in education. She is the author of Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is webmaster for six blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, Cisco guest blogger, a columnist for Examiner.com and TeacherHUB, Technology in Education featured blogger, IMS tech expert, and a bi-weekly contributor to TeachHUB and Write Anything. Currently, she’s editing a thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

Subscribers: Your Special is Available

Every month, subscribers to Ask a Tech Teacher get a free/discounted something to help them with their tech teaching.

This month:

760 Websites Integrated with K-5 Classes

This 36-page list includes over 760 K-5 tech ed websites organized by grade level and subject that will connect tech to every subject in your school. They’re sites that the Ask a Tech Teacher crew uses every year in every class they teach. If you’re the IT coordinator or tech ed specialist or the technology teacher, you’ll want this.

Regular price:   $14.95 (+p&h)

Your price:         $7.95 (+p&h)

That’s a (almost) 50% savings.

It includes topics like:

Dear Otto: PowerPoint or Publisher?

Do you have a tech question?

Dear Otto is an occasional column where I answer questions I get from readers about teaching tech. If you have a question, please complete the form below and I’ll answer it here. For your privacy, I use only first names.

Here’s a great question I got from Alex:

Hi! I know the difference between Power Point and Publisher. I focus on teaching Power Point, but maybe I should teach more of Publisher.  My question is should I stop teaching Power Point and only focus on Publisher?

Publisher and PowerPoint have two different focuses for student learning. Publisher teaches desktop publishing where PowerPoint focuses on presentations. Publisher enables students to provide evidence that they have thoroughly learned a topic (using text, images, graphic organizers) but doesn’t include the distractions (or enrichments) of sound, movement, audio. PowerPoint can include these to enhance a message, but risks obfuscating the true meaning by the multitude of media. This can distract from the authenticity of learning, enabling students to hide behind the bling, wow viewers with their artistry rather than their knowledge. You as teacher must decide which course is best for your purposes.

I get 2nd graders on Publisher with greeting cards, 3rd graders with a simple magazine, 4th graders with a trifold, and 5th graders with a newsletter. PowerPoint is a crowd please, one I teach only in 2nd and 3rd grade, at which point students know the basics and I turn the skill over to the class teacher with the knowledge they can expect students to create an effective slideshow.

Tech Tip #33: My Desktop Icons are Messed Up

As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: I have several kids/students who share the same computer. Kids being kids loving moving the icons around on the desktop. Sometimes they create the first letter of their name in icons. It’s cute, but makes it difficult for the next student to find the shortcut they need. What’s the best way to handle this?

A:  I’ve tried everything. Refusing to allow them to play doesn’t work and asking them to undo their play at the end of their time doesn’t either. The best solution is to teach all students how to organize their desktop:

• Right click on the desktop
• Select ‘arrange icons’
• If you’re in Win &, pick ‘sort by’ and ‘type

This can be part of their start-up maintenance when they sit down to begin their class. They’ve learned a new skill. They feel empowered to solve their own problems. Life is good.

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This month:

K-6 Technology Curriculum S&S

This 14-page K-6 technology curriculum Scope and Sequence itemizes over 250 tech ed skills taught to complete a technology curriculum based on ISTE National Standards. It’s organized by standard and grade level, showing for each grade level what is introduced, worked on, mastered, and completed. It’s in a convenient Word format so users can edit and format as needed for their unique school needs. Additionally, it:

• Aligns with ISTE National Standards
• Shows you what skill and standard is addressed at which grade level
• Denotes each grade level as Introduced, Working on, Mastered, Completed
• Includes a variety of tools, from software to iPads

Price: $6.95 (+p&h)

Digital delivery within 24 hours.

• Click the PayPal button.
• Let us know in the message box what your subscriber email is

How to Teach Digital Citizenship in 6th Grade

How can I teach my students about digital citizenship

Understanding how to use the internet has become a cornerstone issue for students. No longer do they complete their research on projects solely in the library. Now, there is a vast landscape of resources available on the internet.

But with wealth comes responsibility. As soon as children begin to visit the online world, they need the knowledge to do that safely, securely, responsibly. There are several great programs available to guide students through this process (Common Sense’s Digital Passport, Carnegie CyberAcademy, Netsmart Kids). I’ve collected them as resources and developed a path to follow that includes the best of everything.

Here’s Sixth Grade:

How to Teach Digital Citizenship in 5th Grade

How can I teach my students about digital citizenship

Understanding how to use the internet has become a cornerstone issue for students. No longer do they complete their research on projects solely in the library. Now, there is a vast landscape of resources available on the internet.

But with wealth comes responsibility. As soon as children begin to visit the online world, they need the knowledge to do that safely, securely, responsibly. There are several great programs available to guide students through this process (Common Sense’s Digital Passport, Carnegie CyberAcademy, Netsmart Kids). I’ve collected them as resources and developed a path to follow that includes the best of everything.

Here’s Fifth Grade:

Overview/Big Ideas

How do fifth graders work safely in a digital world they don’t wholly understand?

Essential Questions

Yes, I’m Resilient, but I Wish Computers Were More Dependable

I read a post by Bill Ferriter on Education Week Teacher (which I read in ISTE’s Learning and Leading with Technology) where he says in his article, “Our never-ending reliance on digital resilience” that yes, he’s resilient, but he’s tired of it. He thinks that because tech teachers are so quick to adapt to problems (computers don’t work so we pair up students–that sort of thing), that we’ve enabled the chronic problem.

It made me think about the many times I’ve had to adapt because things didn’t work–despite the efforts of my excellent tech people:

• a website doesn’t work so I try it in a different browser
• a website doesn’t load correctly so I go in with my admin log-in and download fixes to get the computer running, but in class, that’s an eternity
• class computers won’t print despite that my lab printer is loaded to their list. I’ve learned to load the IP address of my printer as a more reliable connection, but why don’t they print? And a bigger question: Why periodically–with regularity–do the printers I’ve loaded disappear from the computer?

Is Keyboarding Dead?

Should it be dead? Credit: Beeki

I was on one of my tech teacher forums–where I keep up to date on changes in education and technology–and stumbled into a heated discussion about what grade level is best to begin the focus on typing (is fifth grade too old–or too young?). Several teachers shared that keyboarding was the cornerstone of their elementary-age technology program. Others confessed their Admin wanted it eliminated as unnecessary. Still others dismissed the discussion as moot: Tools like Dragon Speak (the standard in speech recognition software) and iPhone’s wildly-popular  Siri mean keyboarding will soon be as useful as cursive and floppy discs.

My knee jerk reaction was That’s years off, but it got me thinking. Is it really? Or are the fires of change about to sweep through our schools? Already, families are succumbing to the overwhelming popularity of touch screens in the guise of iPads. No typing required–just a finger poke, a sweep, and the command is executed. Those clumsy, losable styluses of your parent’s era are so last generation. The day kids discover how easy it is to tell their phones what they need done (think iPhone 4S)–stick a fork in it; keyboarding will be done.

Truthfully, as someone who carefully watches ed tech trends, a discussion about the importance of keyboarding says as much about national education expectations as typing. Schools are moving away from reports and essays as methods of assessing understanding. Teachers want plays that act out a topic, student-created videos that demonstrate authentic understanding, multi-media magazines that convey a deeper message. Web-based communication tools like Voki, Animoto, and Glogster–all of which have limited typing–are de rigeur in every academic program that purports to be tech-savvy. Students are encouraged to use audio, visual, taped vignettes, recorded snippets–everything that ISN’T the traditional MS Word document with a bullet list of comprehensive points to convey the message. For much of what students want out of life–to call a friend, find their location on GPS, arrange a get-together, create a reminder–writing is passe. Email to your middle school and high school children is as anachronistic as snail mail. Even texting is being shunted aside by vlogs and Skype, and note-taking–with the popularity of apps like Evernote–has become something best accomplished with swipes and clicks.

Do You Make These 9 Mistakes

…with your child’s computer education?

• Show your child how to do something rather than allowing him to discover
• Do for them rather than let them do it
• Say ‘no’ too often (or the other enthusiasm-killer, Don’t touch!)
• Don’t take them seriously
• Take technology too seriously. It’s a tool, meant to make life easier. Nothing more.
• Underestimate their abilities
• Over-estimate their abilities
• Give up too quickly
• Think there’s only one way to do stuff on the computer

What’s a Digital Portfolio and Why Should You Use it?

Safety and accessibility

The feedback on Otto’s answer to Mary’s question about which digital portfolio to use with her students was tremendous. Clearly, it’s a topic on people’s minds. Here’s a thorough discussion of this including what ‘digital portfolios’ are and why you should be using them:

By fifth grade, students have lots of school work that needs to be 1) saved for future use, 2) accessed from home and school, 3) shared with multiple students for collaborations, 4) linked to other pieces of work or online sites. For example, a student can create a project summary at school, access it at home and link key words to websites found by a classmate that supports the project discussion.  As an educator, you might have goals for your class that aren’t adequately fulfilled by network file folders or binders on a shelf in the classroom. You might be looking for ways to 1) help students become more reflective about themselves as learners, 2) demonstrate evidence of student growth and achievement, 3) inform instruction, influence practice, and set goals, 4) learn about your students, and 5) help students see technology as a tool rather than an end to itself.

This can all be accomplished with Digital Portfolios—also known as digital lockers or e-portfolios—electronic collections of student work that provide evidence that the student is meeting a set of goals.

The concept of digital portfolios is supported by national and international education pedagogy: 1) ISTE makes it important to “interact, collaborate, and publish with peers…” and “contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems”, 2) the International Baccalaureate PYP program requires a digital portfolio be maintained throughout the student PYP school years, and 3)  Common Core State Standards considers collaboration and publishing fundamental to accomplishing educational goals.

If you’re new to digital portfolios, here are some Guidelines for Developing a Digital Portfolio Program from Todd Bergman, an educator who’s helped hundreds of students create portfolios

Will Texting Destroy Writing Skills?

Across the education landscape, student text messaging is a bone of contention among teachers.  It’s not an issue in the lower grades because most K-5 schools successfully ban cell phones during school hours. Where it’s a problem is grades 6-12, when teachers realize it’s a losing battle to separate students from their phones for eight hours.

The overarching discussion among educators is texting’s utility in providing authentic experiences to students, the type that transfer learning from the classroom to real life. Today, I’ll focus on a piece of that: Does text messaging contribute to shortening student attention span or destroying their nascent writing ability

Let’s start with attention span. TV, music, over-busy daily schedules, and frenetic family life are likely causes of a student’s short attention span. To fault text messaging is like blaming the weather for sinking the Titanic. Texting has less to do with their inability to spit out a full sentence than their 1) need for quickness of communication, 2) love for secrecy, and 3) joy of knowing a language adults don’t.

What about writing? In the thirty years I’ve been teaching everyone from kindergarteners to college, I can tell you with my hand on a Bible that children are flexible, masters at adjusting actions to circumstances (like the clothes they wear for varying events and the conversations they have with varying groups of people). There is no evidence to support that these elastic, malleable creatures are suddenly rigid in their writing style, unable to toggle between a casual texting shorthand with friends and a professional writing structure in class.

In general, I’m a fan of anything that gets students writing, and there are real benefits to giving students the gift of textual brevity rather than the stomach-churning fear of a five-paragraph structured essay. I’ve done quite a few articles on the benefits of Twitter’s 140-character approach to writing and my teacher’s gut says the same applies to text messaging. Truth, studies on this topic are inconclusive. Some suggest that because young students do not yet have a full grasp of basic writing skills, they have difficulty shifting between texting’s abbreviated spelling-doesn’t-matter language and Standard English. But a British study suggested students classify ‘texting’ as ‘word play’, separate from the serious writing done for class and results in no deterioration in writing skills. Yet another study found that perception of danger from texting is greater than the reality: 70% of the professionals at one college believed texting had harmful effects on student writing skills. However, when analyzed, the opposite was true: Texting was actually beneficial.

How to Use iPads in Your Classroom

How to use iPads in school

What is an iPad?

It’s a brand name—not a product—for a tablet computer designed, developed and marketed by Apple and used primarily for audio-visual media such as books, games, periodicals, movies, music, and web content. It has a keyboard, but most people maneuver with finger taps and swipes.

It does less than laptops and computers, but what it does is spectacular. Such as it’s instantly on—no booting up. If you use your computer’s boot-up time to take a break, that’s over. And unlike smartphones, it’s big enough to check email, watch videos, read a book. It isn’t a phone, but can make addicting video phone calls through Skype. It isn’t a camera, but takes quick and easy great pictures.

What it doesn’t do well is run software—MS Office, Apple software (though it can with the right apps).

Software isn’t the purpose of an iPad. Don’t mistake this new device for a laptop-light. If you’re planning to introduce iPads to your Lower School/Elementary-age students, here’s a lesson plan for you:

Dear Otto: What are Options on Digital Portfolios

Do you have a tech question?

Dear Otto is an occasional column where I answer questions I get from readers about teaching tech. If you have a question, please complete the form below and I’ll answer it here. For your privacy, I use only first names.

I received this question from Mary.

I teach Media Production, where my year 9 students get creative with Adobe Photoshop, Audition, Premier Pro and Stop Motion Pro. They have a wonderful time, but I would love to be able to provide them with a way of keeping a digital portfolio of their work. Our school runs Blackboard, but the digital portfolio add-in is very expensive, too much for our small school.

Are there any free web-based options I should know about, or less expensive ones?

Thanks!

Hi Mary

Have you considered getting students signed up for wikispaces? You can create a free wiki, add each student as a member and let them create their own page, then they can embed each project right onto their wiki page. I did this with 5th graders last year and got some beautiful results (albeit mixed because of the age. Some got it; some glazed over).