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Before I started having children and before I went to school to become an educator, I worked with teenagers at my church. I wasn't much older than they were but I was their counselor, leader, listener, and controlled chaos maker. After countless heart to heart discussions with kids, I realized that down deep many insecurities came from a lack of feeling loved.  Hard parent-child relationships made youth wonder if their parents' love was conditional. Breakups during early dating years made them wonder if they were worthy of being loved. Not finding someone to date made them wonder if they would ..read more

Lady Lightning Fingers with some students that actually graduated high school this yearFor many years when I was an elementary technology teacher, my alter-ego "Lady Lightning Fingers" would show up to challenge students in their timed typing tests. The kids loved the persona and would look forward to her showing up occasionally. It has been a few years since I've had the opportunity to become this make-shift superhero due to moving out of the classroom and into more of an edtech coaching role. Every year I still go into the elementary classrooms and do lessons on the 9 elements of digital ci ..read more

This is a guest blog post by Elizabeth Lawrensen, who serves as the lower school music teacher at Chattanooga Christian School. Elizabeth is a tech-savvy teacher and I knew she would have good tools to share! Using digital technology in the music classroom can be very rewarding, giving students ownership over their own creativity with the vast array of free music technology that is currently available. In my music classroom, I use both education-specific technology as well as free online software and websites available publicly. Different websites or applications have different benefits as w ..read more

Global Collaborator: Students use digital tools to broaden their perspectives and enrich their learning by collaborating with others and working effectively in teams locally and globally. (ISTE Student Standard #7) This standard is my hill to die on. If a student graduates from our school and doesn't know how to collaborate well with the world, then we have failed to equip that student for their future. The universe gets smaller every day. When I graduated from college (the first time), there was no internet access to the masses. I was pretty much competing with people within a 50-mile radi ..read more

Creative Communicator: Students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats and digital media appropriate to their goals. (ISTE Standard for Students) So this may seem like a hard standard to pull off in a non-techie classroom but bear with me. This one is important! Some of the other standards are much more technical and forward thinking but the basic skill of communication is one that so many people face with emotional struggle. Adults often choose the wrong platform or format to share our grievances or we don ..read more

Help your students think like a robot? What is the value in that? Sequential, computational thinking allows students to understand the reasons computers do the things they do. Learning how to think computationally allows users to get the most of their tools. In a tech-rich environment, this looks like teaching students coding, or introducing them to spreadsheet functions to analyze data, or using 3D printers to create models for learning different components in order to answer a bigger problem. But what does a non-tech classroom look like that teaches computational thinking? I mean, the word ..read more

Innovative Designer: Students use a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful or imaginative solutions. (ISTE Standards for Students) I'll be honest, this is one of the standards I really struggled with from ISTE. An innovative designer seems less about technology and more about design thinking to me. It feels less about supporting technology integration and more about impacting pedagogical approaches to teaching and learning. I struggled with the fact that this was deemed a "tech" standard. Is it a good process for learning? Absol ..read more

"Knowledge Constructor: Students critically curate a variety of resources using digital tools to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts and make meaningful learning experiences for themselves and others." (ISTE Student Standard #3) We as educators have a responsibility to equip all students for success. Technology often alleviates so much of the burdens and angst in the education process. We have to show students how to look for good resources, where to look for good resources, and beyond that, how to cite them appropriately. The ease of closeness of information has opened the door ..read more

ISTE Student Standard #2 Digital Citizen: Students recognize the rights, responsibilities, and opportunities of living, learning and working in an interconnected digital world, and they act and model in ways that are safe, legal and ethical. Warning: I will get on my soapbox here a bit. Helping students to develop appropriate digital citizenship skills is an imperative part of the educational process not only for their own safety and legal obligations but for the care of others as well. I feel very strongly about the importance of all educators that have technology in their classroom spe ..read more