4 Digital Safeguards For Modern Teachers Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - August 6, 2017August 6, 20171 I started my teaching career in 2002. Our world and the digital landscape have changed dramatically since then. Navigating this new landscape can be challenging for teachers who want to engage students with the latest technology, but also protect themselves from some of the pitfalls that this always-connected world brings with it. Here are four digital safeguards you can easily get started on this week that could help your teaching life. 1. Create a free "school-only" Google account "But my school provides me with an email address, why would I do that?" That's a great question. Why should we even bother doing this? Once upon a time, this was a non-issue. Now, the idea of opening a browser window on a projector in
10 Mistakes New Teachers Make (And How To Avoid Them) New Teachers by Joel Wagner - August 8, 2016February 6, 202025 If you're anything like me, you gained a great deal of academic knowledge about your content area in college and very little actual knowledge about getting students to stay quiet long enough to learn from your abundant knowledge base. Over the years, I have observed young teachers enter the profession and make many of the same mistakes. I have compiled a list of 10 mistakes new teachers make. Nobody makes all of the mistakes, but invariably we all go through a few of them within our first few years of teaching. Mistake 1: Many new teachers try to be "the cool teacher" and end up being "the pushover" I get it. We all want to be liked by our students. The mistake many teachers make is that they
5 Steps That Took Me From “I Hate Teaching” To “I Love Teaching” New Teachers by Joel Wagner - June 5, 2016June 15, 20160 See if you can relate "I regret choosing this profession! I wish I was still back in college! I just want to go live at home and never have to work again! Oh wait, teaching provides insurance benefits, so I guess I'll just stick it out." Ever been there? It doesn't have to be that way. This can all change TODAY. It did for me. Here's how. An introduction Without a question, one of the top search results that sends people to my blog is "I Hate Teaching." It was #2 over the past 12 months. #1 was "Classroom Management Skills", which is essentially "Help! Want To Love Teaching, But I Hate Teaching." So, since I actually do not hate teaching at this point, I used to. For this reason, and
Work from Anywhere, And Touch Other Lives by Teaching English Online General by Aileen Pablo - September 29, 2012August 2, 20160 People get into teaching for a variety of reasons, but two of the biggest are the ability it gives you to personally connect with students and continue learning and growing yourself. At first glance, becoming an online ESL teacher might seem like an odd way to do this. How can you connect with people when you’re not even in the same room? Are you really going to learn anything new when you’re teaching your native language? But people who think this way don’t understand how online teaching works. Unlike 15 or even 10 years ago, lessons aren’t conducted just using email and written tests, or even recorded video where you lecture students using a static script and lesson plan. Online English language
What To Do When You Hate Teaching Why Teachers Quit by Joel Wagner - September 3, 2012August 4, 20166 Disillusionment is common to most of us involved in the teaching profession. We all deal with it at one point or another. But what do you do when you hate teaching? From dream to reality Here's the general path many of us take: You major in education because you want to change the world You realize that in order to teach, you need a find a job You go through disappointing interview after disappointing interview and are told if you had more experience, you would be perfect for the job You get frustrated that the only way to get experience is to get the job they won't give you because you don't have experience Some school district that was not your first
10 Years of Teaching: How Do I Keep My Students Engaged? General by Joel Wagner - June 8, 2012July 1, 20161 Five years ago, I wrote a series of seven articles called “Questions That Will Save Your Career†that still remain among the most visited articles on this site. When I wrote those, I had successfully completed my 5th year in education. This summer, after 10 years, I am revisiting some of these older concepts. Today, I revisit How Do I Keep My Students Engaged? How Do I Keep My Students Quiet? How Do I Keep My Students Engaged? How Do I Keep My Students Interested? How Do I Keep My Students Learning? How Do I Keep My Students Away From Me? How Do I Keep My School Administration Happy? How Do I Keep My Sanity? 10 Years of Teaching: How
10 Design Changes I Did To My WordPress Blog This Month Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - June 28, 2010June 30, 20100 If you haven't stopped by the actual website for So You Want To Teach? in a few months, er weeks, er days, er hours, you may not recognize it. I have used my summertime to really put in some solid effort into adjusting the layout of the blog. I haven't done a full-on redesign since March of 2009. Since that time, I've added a few widgets here and something else over there, but never really spent a lot of concentrated time really thinking about the layout of the blog. Until recently. How it all began Quite frankly, I got bored of looking at the blog each day. I had some stuff there that just really didn't make sense. It was more cluttered
Three Years of So You Want To Teach? Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - February 9, 2010June 30, 20100 I am leaving tomorrow after school to go to the annual Texas Music Educators Association clinic/convention in San Antonio. I'm not taking my laptop with me and won't be accessing a computer besides my iPhone, so I will be away from blogging for the rest of the week. I don't want to spend a long time here, but I thought I would note that Thursday marks the third anniversary of So You Want To Teach? This has been a fun project. I've learned a whole lot about web development, myself, teaching, and the art of blogging through the building and maintaining of this site. It has become more of a burden than I ever imagined, but I do enjoy the
Thank You For A Great Year! Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - December 31, 2009June 30, 20103 Over 10,000 of the visits to SYWTT this year came from nine sources. The top three alone actually sent me over 6,200 visitors. This is incredible, and I need to thank all of you for the help you've provided me. Top referring blogsThese are the blogs that have sent the most visitors my way in 2009. I cannot thank these people enough for taking the time out of their schedule in one way or another and finding something on my site that resonated enough with them to send their readers my way. You people rock! It's Not All Flowers And Sausages TutorFi.com with the post 50 Reasons Why I Enjoy Being A Teacher Guy Kawasaki with the post 20
The Best of SYWTT 2009 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - December 31, 2009June 30, 20100 Over the past (almost) three years of blogging, I have learned a lot more about myself, teaching, blogging, WordPress, CSS, HTML, and social media than I ever really thought I would. Most of it has been good, or at least fun. Some of it hasn't been all that great, but I keep on keeping on. As we close out each year, I like to take a sort of retrospective on the past year and look at some of the most popular articles from the year. I've traditionally broken this retrospective into three individual posts (2007 Loneliest/Busiest/Overlooked, 2008 Loneliest/Busiest/Overlooked), but this year I'll do things a little differently and pack everything into one huge year-end blowout. The busiest articles of 20092009 really
85+ Cool Sites I Found In October Via Twitter Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - November 8, 2009June 30, 20102 I have been getting more and more into sharing information via Twitter recently. With 1,300 RSS subscribers, and only 850 Twitter followers, I know that not all of my readers are getting all of the links that I share. I thought it might be fun to share with you some of the links that I came across last month and shared on Twitter. If you aren't following me on Twitter yet, you should start: @sywtt Also, if you're on Google Wave and would like to add me, feel free! My address is soyouwanttoteach.com@googlewave.com 5 great resources to find out about Google Wave 5 Reasons Google Wave Is Not Ready 5 Step Change Strategy Five Technology Lessons Every Teacher Can
10 Free Ed-Tech Resources to Implement in the Classroom Blogging & Technology by Karen Schweitzer - October 21, 2009July 3, 20160 This article is by Karen Schweitzer, the About.com Guide to Business School. Since it was published in 2009, 5 of the original 15 sites have gone away. It's now 10 Free Ed-Tech Resources to Implement in the Classroom. Enjoy. Teachers who are looking for technology to implement in their classroom can find many different resources online. From presentation apps to educational microblogs, the Internet has everything teachers need to improve learning experiences and productivity in the classroom. Here are 10 free ed-tech resources worth exploring: Mindomo – Mindomo is a versatile mind mapping tool that makes it easy to create, organize, and share your ideas. It is a great brainstorming tool for the classroom. SlideShare – SlideShare is the world’s largest presentation sharing community. It can be
The Power of Potential: 19 Educational Uses for Google Wave Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - October 15, 2009June 30, 20101 I got my Google Wave invitation the day the first set of invites came out. Today on Twitter, a friend asked me if Google Wave was as amazing as he's heard it is. My response was something along the lines of: The potential of Google Wave is still pretty amazing, but the implementation of it so far is not there. That being said, I have to keep in mind that it is still in alpha testing phases right now, and thought it has been unresponsive at times, it has not yet crashed on me. These two facts are pretty solid for the infrastructure so far! What is the potential? Well, clearly it has some pretty far-reaching possibilities in the use
Google Wave Will Revolutionize Online Classroom Instruction Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - September 30, 2009June 30, 20105 Today is the day. Thousands of new users will be presented with the opportunity to get their hands on Google Wave. What is Google Wave? Google Wave is a brand new technology that positions itself as the way Email would have been made if it were invented today. (Watch the 1:20:12 long video clip) Imagine a combination between Email, IM, Twitter, Facebook, and Skype all bundled into one. Now imagine it being drag-and-drop easy, live-updated, and being constantly improved. Then throw on top of that an eager community of developers seeking ways to make it even easier to use and more powerful. Cool, but what does it look like? I haven't gotten my invitation yet, but am eagerly awaiting
20 Ways I Really Use My iPhone To Teach Band Class Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - September 12, 2009October 3, 20104 On the day that the iPhone 3G was released, I rushed out to the local AT&T Store to pick up my very own. I was excited, so I rushed home and wrote 10 Awesome iPhone Apps (Band Director Style) and listed all of the cool things that I was going to download and use in class. Well, a year has passed and things have changed somewhat. So I thought I'd go back and look at the list. I was somewhat surprised to see how it has changed and how some of those apps never panned out to be what I thought they would be. Even so, I am thrilled at the purchase of my iPhone and continue to find it extremely