Tech Time Teacher

Last week, as I was dealing with the "fun" of my students not being able to save anything to their computers, I did what any normal teacher would do-I improvised!  So, instead of the students saving their practice Word docs, I walked around and had them show me their work, then I'd immediately grade it and put it into Infinite Campus.  As I trekked over backpacks while trying not to fall flat on my face, I realized that my eyes are even worse than I thought. I couldn't see the formatting details I needed to see, so I clearly needed my students to make their Word docs bigger.  Apparently 100% magnification has an expiration date, and being in my 30's, I've passed that point.  So, I cleared my throat and used my best teacher voice (and self deprecating sense of humor) to let my students know that I needed them to "blow up" the size of their documents to at least 150% so that I can actually see their work.  It was all sorts of "mission accomplished...

Five years ago, as a fresh-faced, second year teacher I sat attentively at our pre-service PD at the start of the school year.  Our topic for the day was "technology" and our building/district paid a consultant to come and teach us about various educational technology apps/programs/websites/etc. that were guaranteed to level the technological playing field between us and our 9-12th grade students.  The consultant had us create a new bookmark folder and started demonstrating the sites and tech that would change our lives as teachers!  By the end of the day, I had 20+ bookmarks in that folder and roughly that many new user names/accounts/passwords to remember.  Everything from Edmodo  and  Poll Everywhere to Today's Meet and Wolfram Alpha were covered in this session and my mind was spinning thinking about using all of that in my classes.  Other than the reminder emails from Edmodo and the few times I ventured into setting up a Poll Everywhere po...