Tech Tuesday Archive 7

Hello all -

So while I was mumbling under my breath yesterday afternoon in frustration over the state of our internet connection, I was really unsure of what to offer all of my colleagues in terms of any technology tips today.  By its very nature, technology is utterly, often mind-numbingly, frustrating.  Murphy's Law reigns supreme, especially when you have a perfect lesson planned that is dependent on technology.  But this is not new - My first years teaching saw many times in which the bulb went out on the overhead projector at just the wrong time.  Mr Gillespie has told me of all the times his hammer and chisel went missing and he couldn't give his students their notes.  But he just kept at it, having his kids put their slates away for the day and doing his best to keep them engaged.  I heard Mr. Eboch talking about how many carrier pigeons he went through his first year to try to get his report cards delivered - it sounded maddening!

So the best advice I can offer you today is to keep the faith.  Take it from a Red Sox fan from the Pre-"Red Sox Nation" era, things will get better (Hopefully in less than 86 years).  It will improve.  Things always do.

-A relevant tip that I thought should be reiterated: Chromebooks work offline!  If your class needs to type something or create a presentation, they can still do so without being online.  Just tell the kids to go to the wifi icon on the bottom right of the screen, hit "connected to colls-wireless" and then hit the blank wifi icon that pops up.  This takes their Chromebook offline and they can open google docs to complete work, uploading later when they have a stronger connection.  This has the side benefit of improving the wifi for you because they are no longer using it!

- I've been reminded over the last week that while our kids are "digital natives" they are not yet fully "digital citizens".  What I mean is that a common misconception is that because our kids are constantly glued to their phones, people think that they know how to properly use them for productive purposes.  Alas, snapchatting and tweeting that "I'm so bored #bored" is not the most productive use of their globally connected digital devices.  All kidding aside, even if you think you don't know very much about technology, you still have skills to help our kids become more proficient in their use of tech.  Writing a proper email, not copying things directly off the internet, using scrutiny in what they believe... these are skills we as adults take for granted, but that kids today need as much help as ever to improve at.  

-Shout out to Ms. Maguire for teaching a lesson on proper email etiquette with her students.  This is a perfect example of what I'm referring to in the above point.

So - I'm not throwing any new offerings out there for Tech Tuesday today - I know people are struggling just to keep up right now.  I will be here after school in room 121 to help with: Google docs, Classroom, Twitter, or anything you need help with.  As a reminder I have preps during E, F and H and when I'm not doing student council stuff (emails to follow...) I'm more than happy to help you, even if it is to tell you to breath deeply and count to 10.  My cell number is below if you don't have it and you want to send a quick question.

Have an awesome rest of the day everybody,

Dan

P.S. To my middle school colleagues - I should have clarified last week why I was including you.  Also, for those that don't know me, I'm Dan, I teach science and I'd love to help you use more technology.  While Matt is still running tech tuesdays for you guys at some point that will stop and I wanted to make sure that there was still a forum for you to try to get help and tips for more tech use.  In addition, we as the high school often keep to ourselves and vice versa and I thought it would be good to cross those imaginary lines in the library once in a while.  Hopefully you find my tips useful and I welcome any feedback you may have.