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5 Technology Tips for the Not-so-Tech-Savvy Teacher

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The popularity of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, coupled with high-tech video games and 21 st century entertainment for our students outside of school is necessitating a change in the way we as educators prepare and present information to our students.  Gone are the days where we can get away with 50 minutes of lecturing.  Our students are watching engaging Youtube videos and reading Facebook statuses to get their information instead of reading magazines and waiting for their favorite shows to come on TV.  Today’s students want their classroom experience to be as engaging as their lives outside of school.  The only problem is that most of us did not grow up in the same technological age as our students.  Integrating technology into your daily plans can be a very daunting task for an educator who is not familiar with Web 2.0 tools.  Here are 5 tips that will help you start using technology in your classes.  1- Get comf...
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Low-tech methods to teach 21st Century Learners

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One of my favorite type of activities to do with students in my 9th and 10th grade language arts classes is to incorproate social media into lessons.  I like to have students make Facebook pages for characters in stories, create Twitter feeds for characters and write blog posts that allow them to compare issues in a text with issues that are faced in our society today.  While this all sounds great in practice, I quickly learned that making my dream of seamless socian media integreation  into a reality was a little harder than I thought it would be. To combat the lack of technology and firewall issues that  have stopped me from incorporating Twitter, Facebook and blogging into my classes, I have come up with low-tech paper-and-pencil replacements.  Below are three sample low-tech activities I do with my students in place of their web-based counterparts.  Click on the name of each project to view the handout for each project. R+J 140 http://goo.gl/Q...
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Google Forms Updates: Create Quizzes in Google Forms

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This afternoon, while preparing to deliver some PD on Google Forms tomorrow, I was reviewing Google Forms and noticed something new pop up in the top of the screen: a create quiz section.  This excited me for several reasons, including the possibility of being able to skip Flubaroo when grading quizzes in Google Forms. In this post, I will break down some of the new features of Google Forms and share how they can be used to increase communication in the classroom and increase teacher efficiency. Collect Email Addresses  One of my biggest complaints with previous versions of Google Forms was that teachers could not collect the usernames of people filling out  a form without giving them the ability to get a copy of the questions and their responses.  This could be problematic if a teacher were to assign a test early in the day. By the end of the class period, all students could potentially have access to the test questions (let's hold off on the conversation a...
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