Tech Tip #54: How to Auto Forward a PowerPoint Slideshow

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:  My students are learning to use Powerpoint for presentations. They’ll stand in front of the class and the slideshow will play behind them. We want it to go automatically without requiring them to click the mouse or push the space bar. How do we do that?

A: Presentations are a great skill to teach students. I applaud you on this. Auto-forward isn’t difficult:

• go to Transition on the menu bar
• go to Timing on the right side
• Leave ‘on mouse click’ selected (in case you as the teacher need to move it forward automatically. I’ve had students mistakenly put five minutes on a slide instead of five seconds and we would sit waiting forever if I didn’t do the mouse click)
• set the timer to serve the needs of the slide. This will require students to practice before presenting so they can put the correct time in. A good default of 5-10 seconds.

Weekend Website #130: EngageNY

Every week, I share a website that inspired my students. Here’s one that I’ve found effective in supporting the pedagogic changes to Common Core

Weekend Website #126: BrainPop Game Up

Every week, I share a website that inspired my students. Here’s one that I’ve found effective in… Here’s a great website to answer that question.

Summer Keyboarding Class–How to Win FREE K-8 Keyboarding Curriculum

Every summer, I teach a keyboarding class to 2nd-8th graders. It’s sixty minutes a day, five days a week, for three weeks. This summer, I’m moving it online, through my Keyboard Wiki.

Ready? Don’t need any more information? Click here to join.

There will be two sessions:

• June 24th-July 12th (no class July 4th)
• July 15th-August 2nd

Class will be self-paced, self-managed, the sixty minutes arranged whenever the student can make it fit into summer schedules. Required materials include:

• The Essential Guide to Teaching K-8 Keyboarding–digital or print, as a guide to weekly activities–ebook free when you join class
• membership in the Keyboarding Wiki–also free with the class
• access to the internet and/or Skype
• a full-size keyboard (not an iPad)

Weekend Website 123: Google Gravity

Inquiring minds don’t always need a purpose. Fun is often inspiration enough. Check out this clever rendition of Google Search:

Weekend Website #121: Class Badges

Every week, I share a website that inspired, excited, and/or informed my classes. Here’s one on a popular trend in education–awarding badges:

How to Teach 3rd Graders About Digital Citizenship

Big Idea

It is important to be a good digital citizen

Time Required

8 lessons, 45 minutes per lesson

Essential Questions

• What should you do if you meet a cyberbully?
• How is ‘netiquette’ the same/different than etiquette?
• Why is it wrong to ‘plagiarize’ intellectual property?
• Why is an avatar a good idea?
• Is the internet a safe neighborhood?

Assessment Strategies

• Observation—students use the skills learned
• Completion of projects
• Transfer—evidence of student learning in classes/life
• Emailed quiz
• Track topics covered with graphic organizer at the end of 6-8^th Grade unit
  • Receipt of certificate in Welcome to the Web unit
  • Option: certificate in Common Sense’s Digital Passport  covering:
    • Multi-tasking with cell phones is a bad idea
    • Online messaging?
    • Cyberbullying
    • Effective searches
    • Digital laws with personal creative pieces.
• Option: Play Carnegie Cadets covering the internet, email, cyber threats, cybercrimes, chat rooms, instant messaging, netiquette, cyberbullying, online data, searching the internet, copyrights/plagiarism, cell phones, and online reputation.

More Information:

Free Lesson Plans–Visit My TeachersPayTeachers Store

Looking for something to spice up your classroom? Here are a variety of projects you can download for free. Just visit my TeacherPayTeachers store, click download, and they’re yours. If you enjoy them, please add a few stars to the recommendation list:

A Colonization Brochure in Publisher

A Publisher trifold on American colonies (or any
other topic you’re covering in your classroom). Includes step-by-step directions, standards addressed, time required, prior knowledge expected, vocabulary used, higher-order thinking skills addressed, samples, reproducibles, grading rubrics, and more.

His Words in Our Words

Students interpret the words of Dr Martin Luther King in their own words in a visual organizer. Great project that gets students thinking about impact of words on history. Common Core aligned

Weekend Website #118: Scale of the Universe

Wondering what’s out there, past our Earthly bounds? Here’s a great website to answer that question.

Weekend Website #120: Spelling Teacher App

Every week, I share a website or app that inspired my students. I have a great one this week that teaches spelling as you’ve always wanted it taught.

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

Weekend Website 40: NORAD Santa

It’s the time of year when inquiring young minds want to know–Where’s Santa? Here’s a great website to answer that question.

Track Santa on Xmas Eve

Weekend Website #114: 55 Digital Citizenship Links

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. I’ve collected resources here so you can make your choices.

Here’s a list of 55 Digital citizenship links. They cover K-6. I’ve given the list a permanent address here.

How to Teach Digital Citizenship in 3rd 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 Third Grade:

Overview/Big Ideas

Why is it important to be a good digital citizen? How can students do this?

Essential Questions

• What is a ‘digital citizen’?
• What are my rights and responsibilities as Digital Citizens?
• How is being a citizen of the internet the same/different than my home town?
• What are the implications of digital citizenship in today’s world?

Weekend Website #113: Digital Passport

Every week, I share a website that inspired my students. Here’s one that I’ve found effective in covering the myriad branches of the question, How can I be a good digital citizen?

Weekend Website #112: Nanoogo

Are your students visual learners rather than linguistic? If you answered yes, you’ll want to visit this site.

Book Review: Sixth Grade Technology Textbook

Sixth Grade Technology: 32 Lessons Every Sixth Grader Can Accomplish on a Computer
by Structured Learning IT Teaching Team

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m often asked what books I’d recommend for teaching technology in the classroom. Each year about this time, I do a series of reviews on my favorite tech ed books. If you’re already looking ahead to next year’s technology curriculum and want to fix some of this year’s problems, I suggest you consider the seven-volume K-6 technology curriculum series that’s used in hundreds of school districts across the country (and a few internationally). It’s skills-based, project-based, aligned with NETS national standards and fully integratable into state core classroom standards.

The seventh in the series, the 170-page Sixth Grade Technology: 32 Lessons Every Sixth Grader Can Do (Structured Learning 2012), available in print or digital, and perfect for Smartscreens, iPads, laptops. It includes many age-appropriate samples, reproducibles, Web 2.0 connections, thematic websites, and how-to’s. Because I edited this book, I made sure it includes pieces that I as a teacher knew to be critical to the classroom:

Tech Tip #24: How to Open A New Word Doc Without the Program

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 can’t find the Word icon that opens MS Word. What do I do?

A:  Let’s say you looked on your desktop and the Word icon that usually opens MS Word has disappeared. These things happen and always at the worst time. You might have pinned it to the start menu (see Tech Tip #53: How to Pin Any Program to the Start Menu), but what if you didn’t?

No problem. All you have to do is right click on the desktop and pick New Word Doc. That’s what it does–opens a new Word doc for you without going through opening the program first.

Snazzy.

Book Review: Fifth Grade Technology Textbook

Fifth Grade Technology: 32 Lessons Every Fifth Grader Can Accomplish on a Computer

by Structured Learning IT Teaching Team

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m often asked what books I’d recommend for teaching technology in the classroom. Each year about this time, I do a series of reviews on my favorite tech ed books. If you’re already looking ahead to next year’s technology curriculum and want to fix some of this year’s problems, I suggest you consider the seven-volume K-6 technology curriculum series that’s used in hundreds of school districts across the country (and a few internationally). It’s skills-based, project-based, aligned with NETS national standards and fully integratable into state core classroom standards.

The sixth in the series, the 134-page Fifth Grade Technology: 32 Lessons Any Fifth Grader Can Do, is the Fourth Edition (Structured Learning 2011), updated to MS Office 2007/10, available in print or digital, and perfect for Smartscreens, iPads, laptops. It includes many age-appropriate samples, reproducibles, Web 2.0 connections, thematic websites, and how-to’s. Because I edited this book, I made sure it includes pieces that I as a teacher knew to be critical to the classroom:

Book Review: Fourth Grade Technology Textbook

Fourth Grade Technology: 32 Lessons Every Fourth  Grader Can Accomplish on a Computer

by Structured Learning IT Teaching Team

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m often asked what books I’d recommend for teaching technology in the classroom. Each year about this time, I do a series of reviews on my favorite tech ed books. If you’re already looking ahead to next year’s technology curriculum and want to fix some of this year’s problems, I suggest you consider the seven-volume K-6 technology curriculum series that’s used in hundreds of school districts across the country (and a few internationally). It’s skills-based, project-based, aligned with NETS national standards and fully integratable into state core classroom standards.

The fifth in the series, the 127-page Fourth Grade Technology: 32 Lessons Any Fourth Grader Can Do (Structured Learning 2011), updated to MS Office 2007/10, available in print or digital, and perfect for Smartscreens, iPads, laptops. It includes many age-appropriate samples, reproducibles, Web 2.0 connections, thematic websites, and how-to’s. Because I edited this book, I made sure it includes pieces that I as a teacher knew to be critical to the classroom:

• PDF version is in full color
• PDF version has active links so you can click through to enrichments when required for student-centered learning
• each lesson summarizes a 45-minute class period–usually 2-3 activities, arranged temporally throughout the year for ease of understanding by students. For example, a lesson is likely to include 2-3 activities from among typing practice, student presentations, project that ties into core class activity, problem-solving that assists with 1:1 initiatives
• each lesson is aligned with NETS standards
• each lesson includes required vocabulary
• each lesson provides integrations to core classroom units and topics
• each lesson includes trouble-shooting solutions to the problems most likely to come up in the classroom
• each lesson includes enrichments for those precocious students who finish the lesson and want more
• includes a list of websites (PDF has active links, print version goes to Ask a Tech Teacher Great Websites). Both print and PDF can access a webpage on Ask a Tech Teacher that is updated yearly with new websites by grade level and category
• there’s a help link (to this blog) to a teacher using the curriculum who will help you through the prickly parts of a lesson plan. This is FREE–no charge.
• Where lessons center around purchased software, the authors made an effort to offer free alternatives. For example, instead of KidPix, teachers can use TuxPaint. Instead of Type to Learn, teachers can use a list of online keyboarding websites like Dance Mat Typing and Typing Web
• If you buy the print book, the PDF is discounted
• includes pedagogy articles to help think through critical issues like keyboarding, use of the internet, how to use wikis in classrooms, and more
• includes wall posters covering critical technology issues (like mouse skills)

Book Review: Third Grade Technology Textbook

Third grade technology curriculum textbook

Third Grade Technology: 32 Lessons Every Third Grader Can Accomplish on a Computer

by Structured Learning IT Teaching Team

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m often asked what books I’d recommend for teaching technology in the classroom. Each year about this time, I do a series of reviews on my favorite tech ed books. If you’re already looking ahead to next year’s technology curriculum and want to fix some of this year’s problems, I suggest you consider the seven-volume K-6 technology curriculum series that’s used in hundreds of school districts across the country (and a few internationally). It’s skills-based, project-based, aligned with NETS national standards and fully integratable into state core classroom standards.

The fourth in the series, the 119-page Third Grade Technology: 32 Lessons Any Third Grader Can Do, is the Fourth Edition (Structured Learning 2011), updated to MS Office 2007/10, available in print or digital, and perfect for Smartscreens, iPads, laptops. It includes many age-appropriate samples, reproducibles, Web 2.0 connections, thematic websites, and how-to’s. Because I edited this book, I made sure it includes pieces that I as a teacher knew to be critical to the classroom:

Summer Keyboarding Class–Here are the Details

Photo credit: Public domain pictures

Keyboarding is one of my most-requested topics. I get lots of questions about when to start, how to do it, what makes it fun, and more. If you’re struggling with teaching keyboarding to students, check these posts out and then keep reading:

1. How Fast Should Kids Type
2. 18 Online Keyboard Sites for Kids
3. Ten Best Keyboarding Hints You’ll Ever See
4. What are Your Favorite Summer School Keyboard Activities
5. #55: Keyboarding in the Classroom
6. 6 Kindergarten Keyboard Basics
7. How to Teach Keyboarding in Lower School
8. 20 Best Keyboarding Websites
9. Weekend Website #47: Online Keyboarding
10. Weekend Website #21: Test Your Typing Speed
11. #57: Yes, You Should Assign Keyboarding Homework

Every summer, I teach a keyboarding class to 3rd-6th graders. It’s fifty minutes a day, five days a week, for three weeks. To keep myself organized and make the class as student-centered as possible for a rote sort of subject, I created a Keyboarding Wiki. There, I collected what we did each day, keyboard websites, finger exercises, teaching strategies and more. This enabled those precocious souls who didn’t get enough keyboarding during the class to get more at home, though that was never required.

Weekend Website #94: 9 Websites to Teach Writing

Here’s a quick list of websites I use to teach 3rd graders how to write:

1. Adventure Island
2. Character Trading Cards
3. Context Clues Game
4. Context Clues Millionaire
5. Friendly Letter Maker
6. Identify the Main Idea
7. Main Idea Battleship
8. Using a table of contents
9. Words in Context

This isn’t robust enough. Please add a comment with websites you’ve found valuable in teaching the techniques of writing to third graders.

Weekend Website #93: 24 Third Grade Websites on Landforms

3rd grade and landforms

Every year, third graders in my school study landforms. Here’s a pithy list of websites I’ve collected to

complement this study.

1. About Rivers
2. Deserts
3. Earth alerts
4. Explore the Colorado
5. Extreme Organisms on Earth
6. Geography Games
7. Geography Quiz Game
8. Geography Reading Problems
9. Google Earth—free download site
10. GeoNet Game
11. Labeling Maps
12. Landform Detectives—cool gam
13. Landforms make a greeting
14. Landforms
15. Landforms—matching games, etc.
16. Learn the states
17. Los Angeles River Tour
18. Map skills
19. Mapping Game
20. Rivers Seen from Space
21. The Colorado River
22. Virtual tour–undersea  
23. What’s on a Map
24. Zambezi River Tour

Weekend Website #93: 18 Natural Disasters Websites

Natural disasters

Every Friday, I’ll send you a wonderful website (or more) that my classes and my

parents love. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of your students as they are of mine.

My fourth graders just went through a unit of inquiry on natural disasters and we came up with a pretty good list of resources. I want to share them with you. Please add your own to the comment section:

1. Avalanches
2. Earthquake simulations
3. Earthquakes
4. Earthquakes for Kids
5. Earthquakes–USGS
6. Hurricanes
7. Natural disaster videos
8. Natural disasters—National Geographic
9. Natural disasters–resources
10. Savage Earth
11. Storm Chasing
12. Tornadoes
13. Tornadoes II
14. Tsunamis
15. Volcano Adventure
16. Volcano Underwater
17. Volcano videos
18. Volcanoes

Weekend Website #92: 43 Language Arts Websites for 3rd Grade

Every Friday, I’ll send you a wonderful website (or more) that my classes and my parents love. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of your students as they are of mine.

Here’s a long list of Language Arts and Word Study websites for 3rd grade. I’m sure they’re fine for 4th and 5th, also. You decide, depending upon what your students are working on.

1. BBC Phonics
2. BiteSize—Reading, Writing, Grammar
3. Blends
4. Common/Proper Noun Basketball
5. Contraction Games
6. Contraction Crossword
7. Contraction Practice
8. Create a picture with words
9. Feast of Homonyms
10. Flamingo Suffixes
11. Funny Poetry
12. Glossary of Poetry Terms
13. Grammar Gorillas
14. Grammaropolis
15. Instant Poetry—fill in the blanks
16. Jelly Fish
17. Katie’s Clubhouse
18. Opposites Train Game
19. Parts of speech poetry
20. The Patchworker
21. Pick a Word
22. Plural Nouns
23. Poetry with a Porpoise
24. Poetry Engine
25. Prefix Catch
26. Prefix Match
27. Prefix Suffix Balloon Game
28. Punctuation and Capitalization
29. Punctuation Games
30. Sam’s Lab
31. Shaped Poems–fun
32. Short Vowels
33. Suffix Match
34. Synonym or Antonym?
35. Third Grade Poems
36. Vocabulary Flood
37. Vocabulary Pinball
38. Web-based Mad Libs
39. Word Balloons
40. Word Family Sort
41. Word Magnets
42. Word Play
43. Word Pond

Monday Freebies #39: Google Earth Board

This year more than any before, classroom budgets have been cut making it more difficult than ever to equip the education of our children with quality teaching materials. I understand that. I teach K-8. Because of that, I’ve decided to give the lesson plans my publisher sells in the Technology Toolkit (110 Lesson Plans that I use in my classroom to integrate technology into core units of inquiry while insuring a fun, age-appropriate, developmentally-appropriate experience for students) for FREE. To be sure you don’t miss any of these:

• Subscribe to Ask a Tech Teacher by Email
• Sign up to the RSS feed

…and start the week off with a fully-adaptable K-8 lesson that includes step-by-step directions as well as relevant ISTE national standards, tie-ins, extensions, troubleshooting and more. Eventually, you’ll get the entire Technology Toolkit book. If you can’t wait, you can purchase the curriculum here.

I love giving my material away for free. Thankfully, I have a publisher who supports that. If everyone did, we would reach true equity in international education.

Learn Google Earth with the Google Earth Board

Students select from a list of Wonders of the World (or locations put together in conjunction with the classroom teacher). They do brief research on it, locate it using Google Earth and make a short presentation to the class about it.

Weekend Websites #90: Free Audio Books

Every Friday, I’ll send you a wonderful website (or more) that my classes and my parents love. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of your students as they are of mine.

Weekend Website #89: Rubrics for Web 2.0 Tools

Drop by every Friday to discover what wonderful website my classes and parents loved this week. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of yours as they are of mine.

Weekend Website #88: Drive a Ship

Every Friday, I’ll send you a wonderful website (or more) that my classes and my parents love. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of your students as they are of mine.

Use Google Earth to drive a ship

Weekend Website #87: Volcano Explorer

Every Friday, I’ll send you a wonderful website (or more) that my classes and my parents love. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of your students as they are of mine.

Experience the power of volcanoes

Address:

Krakatoa: Volcano of Destruction

Monday Freebies #37: Use Oregon Trail to Teach Westward Expansion

This year more than any before, classroom budgets have been cut making it more difficult than ever to equip the education of our children with quality teaching materials. I understand that. I teach K-8. Because of that, I’ve decided to give the lesson plans my publisher sells in the Technology Toolkit (110 Lesson Plans that I use in my classroom to integrate technology into core units of inquiry while insuring a fun, age-appropriate, developmentally-appropriate experience for students) for FREE. To be sure you don’t miss any of these:

• Subscribe to Ask a Tech Teacher by Email
• Sign up to the RSS feed

…and start each week off with a fully-adaptable K-8 lesson that includes step-by-step directions as well as relevant ISTE national standards, tie-ins, extensions, troubleshooting and more. Eventually, you’ll get the entire Technology Toolkit book. If you can’t wait, you can purchase the curriculum here.

I love giving my material away for free. Thankfully, I have a publisher who supports that. If everyone did, we would reach true equity in international education.

Oregon Trail to Teach Problem Solving Skills

Show students how to get the most out of Oregon trail by reading the headings on each screen, thinking about problem solving skills and applying the simulation to their classroom discussion on westward expansion. I include a worksheet of questions they can answer as well as additional websites to extend their education.

Monday Freebie #31: A Title Page in Word

This year more than any before, classroom budgets have been cut making it more difficult than ever to equip the education of our children with quality teaching materials. I understand that. I teach K-8. Because of that, I’ve decided to give the lesson plans my publisher sells in the Technology Toolkit (110 Lesson Plans that I use in my classroom to integrate technology into core units of inquiry while insuring a fun, age-appropriate, developmentally-appropriate experience for students) for FREE. To be sure you don’t miss any of these:

• Subscribe to Ask a Tech Teacher by Email
• Sign up to the RSS feed

…and start each week off with a fully-adaptable K-8 lesson that includes step-by-step directions as well as relevant ISTE national standards, tie-ins, extensions, troubleshooting and more. Eventually, you’ll get the entire Technology Toolkit book. If you can’t wait, you can purchase the curriculum here.

I love giving my material away for free. Thankfully, I have a publisher who supports that. If everyone did, we would reach true equity in international education.

 A Title Page in Word

Create a title or cover page using MS Word. This is more difficult than #30 (cover page using Publisher) so allow more time. Have students include text and picture as well as a border

10 Most Popular Tech Tips in 2011

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 2011, I shared one of those with you. Here are the

Top Tech Tips of 2011

Top Ten tech tips from 2011. Between these ten, they had 40,510 visitors during the year. They better be good or a lot of people were disappointed!

1. Ten Best Keyboarding Hints You’ll Ever See
2. Twenty-one Techie Problems Every Student Can Fix
3. What Do You Think is the Hardest Techie Problem?
4. Tech Tip #18: Ten Best MS Word Tips–How Did You Survive Without Them
5. 25 Tips for Not-so-Techy Folk
6. Tech Tip #1: the Insert Key
7. Tech Tip #2: The PrintScreen Key
8. Tech Tip #19: How to Activate a Link in Word
9. Tech Tip #12: Wrap Text Around a Picture
10. Tech Tip #57: How to Create a Chart Really Fast

Monday Freebies #28: My Storybook

This year more than any before, classroom budgets have been cut making it more difficult than ever to equip the education of our children with quality teaching materials. I understand that. I teach K-8. Because of that, I’ve decided to give the lesson plans my publisher sells in the Technology Toolkit (110 Lesson Plans that I use in my classroom to integrate technology into core units of inquiry while insuring a fun, age-appropriate, developmentally-appropriate experience for students) for FREE. To be sure you don’t miss any of these:

• Subscribe to Ask a Tech Teacher by Email
• Sign up to the RSS feed

…and start each week off with a fully-adaptable K-8 lesson that includes step-by-step directions as well as relevant ISTE national standards, tie-ins, extensions, troubleshooting and more. Eventually, you’ll get the entire Technology Toolkit book. If you can’t wait, you can purchase the curriculum here.

I love giving my material away for free. Thankfully, I have a publisher who supports that. If everyone did, we would reach true equity in international education.

My Storybook

Create a ten-sentence story, using characters, setting, plot, rising action, climax and resolution. One sentence per page with a picture to communicate the idea. Include a cover, About the Author. Use this lesson to teach students how to use Publisher’s design gallery

Click on lessons for a full size alternative.

Weekend Website 40: NORAD Santa

It’s the time of year when inquiring young minds want to know–Where’s Santa? Here’s a great website to answer that question.

Track Santa on Xmas Eve

Monday Freebie #12: Create Simple Shapes in Excel

This year more than any before, classroom budgets have been cut making it more difficult than ever to equip the education of our children with quality teaching materials. I understand that. I teach K-8. Because of that, I’ve decided to give the lesson plans my publisher sells in the Technology Toolkit (110 Lesson Plans that I use in my classroom to integrate technology into core units of inquiry while insuring a fun, age-appropriate, developmentally-appropriate experience for students) for FREE. To be sure you don’t miss any of these:

• Subscribe to Ask a Tech Teacher by Email
• Sign up to the RSS feed

…and start each week off with a fully-adaptable K-8 lesson that includes step-by-step directions as well as relevant ISTE national standards, tie-ins, extensions, troubleshooting and more. Eventually, you’ll get the entire Technology Toolkit book. If you can’t wait, you can purchase the curriculum here.

I love giving my material away for free. Thankfully, I have a publisher who supports that. If everyone did, we would reach true equity in international education.

Create Simple Shapes in Excel
What’s the first thing you think of when I say, Excel. Numbers, right–turning data into information. That is Excel’s ‘killer app’, but the ingenious human brain has come up with another striking use for Excel: Drawing. I spent a long time trying to find a lesson that taught drawing in Excel and/or offered example. I finally gave up and created my own.

Monday Freebies #20: How to Make Wallpaper

Today, I start a new program here on Ask a Tech Teacher. This year more than any before, classroom budgets have been cut making it more difficult than ever to equip the education of our children with quality teaching materials. I understand that. I teach K-8. To be sure you don’t miss any of these free lesson plans:

• Subscribe to Ask a Tech Teacher by Email
• Sign up to the RSS feed

…and start each week off with a fully-adaptable K-8 lesson that integrates technology into core classroom subjects. Each has been tested on hundreds of students and includes step-by-step directions, as well as relevant ISTE national standards, tie-ins, extensions, troubleshooting and more. They’re all from the two-volume Technology Toolkit that integrates technology into classroom units of inquiry while insuring a fun, age-appropriate, developmentally–appropriate experience for students.

Eventually, you’ll get the entire book. If you can’t wait, you can purchase the curriculum here.

I love giving my material away for free. If everyone did, we would reach true equity in international education.

We’ll start with

#20: A Holiday Card for Halloween, Thanksgiving or Christmas

Kids love personalizing their computer stations. Show them how to create their own wallpaper using internet pictures, pictures on the computer or their own photos or drawings

Classroom Management 101: Use Wikis

This is the fourth in a series on classroom management through wikis. Here are links for grades K-5.

• Kindergarten wiki
• First grade wiki
• Second grade wiki
• Fourth Grade Wiki
• Fifth Grade Wiki

This one is Third Grade:

Click here to visit my third grade class wiki

Weekend Website #67: 20 Websites to Learn Everything About Landforms

Every Friday I’ll send you a wonderful website that my classes and my parents love. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of your students as they are of mine.

Age:

3rd grade

Topic:

Landforms

Review:

If your third grader has to write a report about landforms, try these websites:

1. About Rivers www.42explore.com/rivers.htm
2. Biomes/Habitats http://www.allaboutnature.com/biomes/
3. Deserts http://www.42explore.com/deserts.htm
4. Explore the Colorado http://www.desertusa.com/colorado/explorriver/du_explorrv.html