Every year, the United Nations recognizes April 22nd as International Mother Earth Day. It is a day we can all participate in making our air clean, our water fresh and our land unlittered rather than accepting the trash-filled oceans, the smoggy skies, and the debris-laden land that is becoming the norm. Despite the questionable health of our world, we have made progress. Back in 1970, when Earth Day was first celebrated, trucks spewed black smoke as they drove down the highways, toxic waste was dumped into oceans with no repercussions, and the general opinion was that the Earth took care of ..read more

Generative AI is an exploding influence in education with lots of potential but unknown outcomes. Most people focus on its impact on school research, lesson plans–that sort–but another piece isn’t considered often enough: its impact on student mental health. This next article from but we’ll do in this article from Education Week does Educators, teens differ on AI’s mental health effects Teens and educators hold divergent views on its mental health effects of AI, with educators expressing more concern about negative impacts, including cyberbullying and the ability of algorithms to create addic ..read more

Cybersecurity threats in K-12 schools are a growing concern as educational institutions increasingly rely on technology for teaching, learning, and administrative purposes. Some common cybersecurity threats faced by K-12 schools include data breaches, BYOD policies, unsecured WiFi networks, insider threats, and lack of security awareness training. It’s this last that’s addressed by this article from Smartbrief: Program teaches cybersecurity to K-12 administrators Ohio’s Sinclair Community College, in collaboration with D2L, a learning technology company, has introduced a free cybersecurity co ..read more

The Cambridge Dictionary defines ‘essay’ as” a short piece of writing on a particular subject Most students write their first essay by third grade, probably enjoy the process because of its non-threatening narrative exploration of their thoughts, but by Middle School, the rules and requirements that made essay writing fun change: In a school test, an essay is a written answer that includes information and discussion, usually to test how well the student understands the subject. The Ask a Tech Tea ..read more

I–like many teachers–do a lot of prep for my teaching, often requiring digital desktop publishing platforms. Between newsletters for parents, announcements on social media, communications for students and parents, and more, it became a challenge to demonstrate the excitement and engagement of learning through what could be boring tools. Then I got an email from the folks at Creative Fabrica. My norm with these sorts of solicitations (I get about a dozen a week) is give the website ten seconds to grab me or lose me. With Creative Fabrica–I was sold faster. How had I never seen this amazing web ..read more

A lot of teacher-authors read my WordDreams blog. In this monthly column, I share the most popular post from previous months:  I’ve been blogging for about sixteen years, some professionally (for my tech ed career) and others on topics of interest to me (writing, USNA, and science). That first post– The Edit Block (don’t bother to click through. It’s boring) putting myself on the line, ignoring that I had no hits, wanting to approve comments from spammers because that would look like someone loved me–I thought that was the hard part. The second post was easier and so it went. But somewh ..read more

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 week, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy! Q: Some kids are hard workers, but they just don’t get computers. Their effort deserves a good grade, but their product is nowhere near class requirements. What can I do? A: Don’t be afraid to give students a Mulligan–a do-over for you non-golfers. Some students don’t perform well under the pressure of a deadline. Some are so sure they’re no good at technology ..read more

I’m excited about this post from the Ask a Tech Teacher crew–AI Tools for reading comprehension. There are so many directions this could go! 4 Innovative Ways to Enhance Reading Comprehension with AI Tools Struggling to grasp the essence of a dense PDF or wishing students could wrestle more effectively with complex texts? The key may reside in AI-powered reading assistants, a broad category encompassing everything from summarizers to intelligent note-taking platforms. Let’s explore five innovative strategies that make the most of these AI capabilities, tailored not only to keep pace with rapi ..read more

High School collects a diverse group of students into a large learning community, but it also prepares teenagers for a future as variable as any we can imagine. How is it possible to accomplish that? The Ask a Tech Teacher team has some ideas on balancing varied learning styles with needs to provide students their best chance at success in college or career–whichever they choose: Engaging All Learners: Expanding High School Options for Success Think about Albert Einstein, who, despite his genius, struggled in traditional school settings. Today, as education leaders, you’re faced with an incre ..read more

Life often interferes with work. Vacations, conferences, PD–all these take us away from our primary functions and the environment where we are most comfortable delivering our best work. I thought about this when I read an article by a technical subject teacher (math, I think) pulled away from his class for a conference. Often in science/math/IT/foreign languages, subs aren’t as capable (not their fault; I’d capitulate if you stuck me in a Latin language class). He set up a video with links for classwork and a realtime feed where he could be available and check in on the class. As a result, st ..read more