As school starts to gear up for a lot of the country, you may be faced with a new (or existing) technology policy for your class. This can be overwhelming.

There's no doubt that you will encounter things you NEVER anticipated when it comes to students and technology, just like your first years as a teacher. "You put WHAT in the pencil sharpener?!"

Over the years I've found a few things that have worked for me in helping curb some of the issues that can occur with having tech in the classroom.

Here are some tips that have been helpful to me:

• Have a charging station - even if you have a cart of laptops in your room, have a few power strips in different parts of the room so kids can charge easily while continuing to work.

• If you encounter class-wide issues, give it 5 minutes to troubleshoot, then move onto Plan B - Maybe the website you were planning on using is down for maintenance, or perhaps the network isn't working. If it's something you feel comfortable tackling, give it 5 minutes. I have wasted entire class periods trying to address an issue. Maybe you can get to the website and you pull it up on the projector and do the activity as a class. Whatever it is, do what teachers do best: think on your feet.

• See the screens - If students are working independently, have them turn their desks (if possible) so you can see their screens. Perhaps they can't adjust their seating, consider working from a place where you can see the screen. If students are working in groups, use Google Docs so you can monitor their progress. 

• Post login information - Are you tired of reminding students how to login into Google or SIS or whatever common website they are using? Consider posting those naming conventions to cue their memory on what their login is. If your district/school doesn't use a naming convention, then help students by offering one to use. 

• "Procedures Proceed Content" - Post rules & procedures, or at the very least discuss these with your class. I found these posters, plus you can check out what I've done. 

 July 29th - 31st
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Most schools today are having some kind of technology in the classroom initiative. If you were like me, I suddenly had 30 devices in my classroom with not much training on how to manage it all. 

The infographic below are 7 steps to help you manage technology in the classroom. If you have other ideas or questions, leave them in the comments. 

Here's an infographic showing some research tools that could help your students (and you) with researching and gathering information. Most of them aren't focused on research itself, but workflow and organizing. 

To download the image, click on it, then right click on the full-size, choosing "Save Image As."
To download a 2-sided PDF, click the file below.

Are there any you would add to the list?

These 8 simple questions can help guide any student to whether what they're looking at is worthwhile. You could also create a digital literacy lesson by adding some sample websites to this and have student analyze them using these questions. 

Are there any questions you would add? Leave a comment below!

To download a PDF version, click the link at the bottom.

First off, I just have to say that I <3 MindShift. If you don't already follow them on every social media site possible, you need to now! Their stuff is so thought-provoking and challenging. I could spend hours reading what's on their website. 

I saw a wonderful article by MindShift pop up in my Feedly feed (another great tool). This article, entitled "When Kids Have Structure for Thinking, Better Learning Emerges" by Katrina Schwartz, shows how teachers can get students to think more deeply about what they are thinking by making it visual. 

Like me, you have probably had training on "metacognition". And you were probably taught that it means "thinking about thinking". Schwartz points out that there is more to metacognition than simply "thinking about thinking"--there is monitoring thinking and directing thinking.

I recently created a professional twitter account (find me @creathsclass) from my personal account. You can find anything and everything on my personal account and decided to separate them in order to have deeper connections with my fellow educators. It's been so great to find others that are like-minded and passionate about education and making every classroom a place where every child can succeed! I encourage you to get connected! 

Need help getting started? This is a great resource that can help you get started. 

I came across the TED talk this week (even though it's been around for about a year and a half). I love the concept of "yet". In this TED talk she says, "Just the words "yet" or "not yet," we're finding, give kids greater confidence, give them a path into the future that creates greater persistence. And we can actually change students' mindsets."

So, maybe Gathering Grids are something you've been using for awhile, but I just learned about them this year! Teachers in my school have seen a lot of success with them as students research. I love how it helps students narrow down their sources and allows them to only put a certain amount of information in each box, which prevents copying straight from a website. If you use a Symbaloo site, or simply put links on a Google Doc or on your blog, students can choose what source they want to use and put that on the top row.