Back To School Night

Heather Wolpert-Gawron posted an article to Edutopia about how to prepare for Back to School Night.  The post is titled:

A Checklist for Back to School Night

This could be a great resource for new teachers, but as she said, it took her 15 years to come up with some of these strategies.  It's tough to remember exactly what you did for one night a year ago, so this checklist could be helpful for any teacher.  Anything you would add to this list?

Advanced Coding with Scratch

Edutopia released advanced coding lessons using the excellent website, Scratch, created by MIT students.  The blog post it titled:

Advanced Level Projects with Scratch

I use Scratch at the end of the year (and during Week of Coding) and will definitely be referencing this blog post.

Teacher Discounts!

Edudemic recently posted about businesses that provide discounted services and products to teachers.  Many of these places I shop regularly and had no idea they offered teacher discounts. Here's their complete list of businesses.

Free Resources

Who doesn't love Edutopia?!?!  They're running an 8 week column titled, "8 Weeks of Free Teacher Resources for Back to School."  It's perfect for new teachers or for teachers wanting to fill up their toolkit.  Check back with Edutopia each week as they release new free resources.

EdShlef

I recently stumbled upon EdShelf.  It's a great way for educators, parents, and students to find educational websites, apps, programs, or products.  You can create a free account, view "collections" created by other educators/parents, and create your own "collections" of your favorite websites and tools. 

Internet Safety Websites

I found this post on iLearn Technology.  They provide 16 websites to teach students about internet safety.  I'll definitely use some of these during my beginning-of-the-year tech boot camp.  Any sites you would add to this list?

Anxious about the new school year?

I just posted how parents can ease anxiety, so Edudemic posted how teachers can alleviate anxiety over the impending new school.

"7 Tips for Anxious New Teachers"

Back to School for Parents

I know parents have anxiety about their kids going back to school.  Edutopia provided resources for parents in their post:

"Back to School Resources for Parents"

Writing Prompts

I just found an older post from last March on Classroom 2.0 entitled:

"Common Core Writing Prompts for Students"

The site's writing prompts include a picture and the standard:

Questions to Ask Parents

Edutopia posted an article about the questions to ask parents at the beginning of the school year.  The article, "7 Questions to Ask Parents at the Beginning of the School Year," provides teachers with strategies to create partnerships with their parents.  Do you have questions you already ask parents?  Do parents have questions they would like to add to the list?

Google Docs

I found this post, "10 Things Every Teacher Should Know How to do With Google Docs,"on the Edudemic blog.  These are just some tips and tricks for Google Docs, and with DPS using Google Apps more and more, it's important we understand how to use them.

Summer Updates to Google Apps

Richard Byrne (author of Free Tech 4 Teachers) created a PDF document to show the updates Google made this summer to Apps, Drive, Maps, Google+.

As DPS moves to using Google more often, I thought Byrne's post was extremely helpful for our work. Anyone else notice anything different about Google Apps?

Do you have a child who shows interests in computers/technology?

Edutopia (an educational blog everyone should follow) recently posted an article titled, "Teaching Your Kids to Code."

It shares 6 resources for introducing kids to the world of computer programming.  I personally use Scratch in my technology classroom.  Which resources do you use?

Tips for New Teachers

It's that time of year, again!  Back to school!

Free Technology for Teachers (if you don't regularly follow Richard Byrne, he publishes a fantastic educational technology blog) shared 100+ Tips for New Teachers.

This could be extremely helpful during those New Teacher Orientations or for a mentor to share with his/her mentee.