Mr. Russell's Lab

A couple of years ago, I decided I wanted to teach Digital Citizenship in a new, more positive way. I was tired of telling kids not to talk to strangers when they clearly were talking to random people in their online video games. I decided to take the various lessons that I had and make them into a unit of Digital Citizenship, covering Self Care, Mental Health, Busting Trolls, Spotting Dodgy Websites and what information you can share online. It ends with a trusted adult letter, where the studen

This presentation is designed to explain in a 20-30 minute lessons about what a URL is and how it is usually formatted. It also contains a link to my Kahoot quiz on scam URLs. Enjoy!

So many teachers assume that students konw how to do a Google Search, but when they ask them to do it, they get the wrong results or just scroll through the images. This not only shows how to do a good search, but also how searches work and how they are tailored to the individual.

I wrote this to present to the students in the first few weeks of school, to show them how to use email and what Not To Do! I also added a little history to explain why some terms are that way.

This is a simple lesson on the different parts, or components, of a computer. It divides the components into Inputs, Outputs with a processor between. The video in the middle is about Ajay Bhatt who invented the USB connection, and decided to not earn commission on it, so that it could be used by everyone cheaply.

This is a pretty basic, bare bones presentation for introducing keyboard shortcuts to kids. I have printed up a bunch of the last slide and laminated them for kids to slide in their chromebook covers. Feel free to add your own flair to make it less industrial.

This is a presentation that encourages students to take an interest in coding at any level, as it is due to be an invaluable part of our future. It's designed to take 20-30 minutes with discussions and a few video brain breaks. Hope you like it!

I came up with this idea while thinking of something that wasn't a normal STEM lesson. I'm a huge music nerd so I wanted to talk about the math behind time signatures, while listening to some cool tunes. Hence, this lesson! The penultimate slide has the cover art of 65daysofstatic's album which is a couple kissing, please feel free to skip if that's too gross. Let me know what you think - thanks!

Hey, do you need a 10-15 minute intro to trying tests to try and sell the idea of being good at typing to your kids? Do you enjoy sarcasm? Are you a bit of a ham? Here, take this.

I have made a quick tutorial on basics in MS Word for my upper Elementary kids. It covers CTRL shortcuts, how to save into a personal file and a shared file (which you will want to change for your school), what the main functions on the ribbon mean and how to avoid accidentally deleting your work. I have specifically made it for my classes but you could and should easily make a few changes to make it relevant to your classes.