Thursday, July 29, 2010

3-4 Computer Challenge #2

Get ready to Mousercise! Practice your mousing skills and print out your certificate at the end of the lesson. Show me the certificate (or have your parents write a note saying you completed the activity) to add your name to the can!

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Summer Session Week 2


B1-2 Technology:

This week we reviewed parts of the computer, discussing the difference between hardware and software. We watched a Brainpop video about computer parts and enjoyed Moby's joke-What is an astronauts favorite computer part? The spacebar! We went to our Fort Craig homepage on the internet to learn about minimize, maximize, taskbar, and back arrow. We looked at our address in the address bar and talked about how every place we go in "cyberspace" has an address, just like the real places in our communities. We use bookmarks and the favorites list so we don't always have to type out site addresses. Places that we go to each week in the tech lab are kept at ikeepbookmarks. Students practiced finding ikeepbookmarks in our favorites list and then had fun with some mouse skill games. Students also had a chance to explore my hands on computer part station and check out some of the "innards."

3-4 Technology:

What a great response to our first "I Can Do It" challenge-I think I will need to get a bigger can! Stay tuned for the next challenge. This week we reviewed the parts of the computer, focusing on input and output devices. Students completed an excel labelling document (giving us a chance to review files, folders, drives, and how to find and save them on our school computers) and then played a fun computer part hangman type game called "Don't Squash the Monkey!" Students finished up with some mouse skill games and took turns exploring the hands on computer part station.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Summer Session Week 1

B1-2 Technology:
Our first week was spent mainly going over procedures-a review for the olders, but new to our younger classmates and new students to our school. We talked about the difference between a computer, monitor, mouse, and keyboard and watched the computer mouse song. After discussing the desktop and icons, we explored our Fort Craig homepage and used the Paint program to practice mouse control. Since our theme this session is "We Are Family," we used the Paint tools to make a picture of our house. The lifeskills of patience and flexibility, as well as the edit undo and file new commands, came in handy!

3-4 Technology:
After reviewing procedures (I clap, you clap, hands go in your lap) and assigning computer seats, students learned how to log in to Type to Learn and did the first lesson and game. Our classes almost always start with 10 minutes of keyboarding. We discussed the new "I Can Do It" can for completing optional computer challenges. The first challenge was to make sure the Fort Craig homepage is bookmarked at home and follow the links on the page to this blog and to ikeepbookmarks. We practiced in class, and then students added a "sticky" to the Summer fun wallwisher and drew a summer fun picture in Paint. While they were "painting" we did a Summer fun madlib together as a class.