Summer Session Week 6

B1-2 Technology:
After our keyboarding practice, we talked about how families help each other and watched this great video of a grownup squirrel trying to teach baby squirrel how to jump over a wall-lots of discussion about perserverence and sometimes needing help as the students related it to learning to walk, ride a bike, swing, etc.

The students used the program Kidspiration to create a "Helping Hands" project as they dragged pictures into the appropriate sections and resized them.

Any extra time was spent with our great math and language arts skill practice program, Education City

3-4 Technology:

We have talked about exploring on the internet this session and discussing avatars, safety rules, and procedures, we discussed how we also explore and go on adventures with books. We watched this short video clip called The Book Squad.

After the video, students used Storyjumper to start creating their own book of adventures. Students imported their own picture into the book and are working on adding props and text. We are excited! When we are done, parents will be able to view their child's book and even order it as a published book if they want.

Summer Session Week 5

B1-2 Technology:
After our keyboarding work, we reviewed and practiced the Word formatting skills we learned last week. Students changed the font size, color, and style of their name and learned how to add and resize clipart-all really "big kid" skills! They saved their document in their folders and listened to the tumblebook Pirates Don't Change Diapers!

3-4 Technology:
The "big kids" also practiced some Word skills by creating a document with their avatar name. After formatting size, color, and font they learned the extra skills of formatting the background (lots of fun!) and inserting a picture from a file-their avatar picture. Once that was done, they typed at least 3 internet safety rules that we have discussed. Any extra time at the end of class was spent on one of our favorite sites, Kerpoof.

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Our 3-4 Avatars!

Can you guess our avatars-team Caring

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Can you guess our avatars-team Courage

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Can you guess our avatars-team Effort

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Can you guess our avatars-Team integrity

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Can you guess our avatars-Team Pride

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Summer Session Week 4

B1-2 Technology:
While olders worked on Keyboard Climber, youngers got acquainted with their keyboarding program for this session-Keyseeker. It's hard to remember to use two hands on the keyboard, so we drew a purple smiley on our left hand and a green smiley on our right to help us! After keyboarding we watched the trailer from the film Babies, which shows four babies from different parts of the world. We talked about how the babies were basically alike even though they wore different clothes and played with different toys and pets. All babies change and grow and we had fun making our names change and grow in Microsoft word by formatting our font size and style-lots of skills involved here, from mouse control highlighting to following directions, but they did great!! We finished up by making a little book of computer parts to go home in Friday folders.

3-4 Technology:
After keyboarding Type to Learn, we reviewed copy/paste by copying our avatars from our student folders and pasting them into another to put together a "Guess the Avatar" presentation-look for those on the blog later in the week. After that we reviewed our Word formatting skills on an internet safety document and expanded our internet safety discussion by watching Captain Kara's internet safety adventures.

Summer Session Week 3

B1-2 Technology:
We started keyboarding this week! Olders reviewed their skills from last year with Keyboard Climber while the youngers met in the "clubhouse" to explore keyboards and learn about which hands do which letters. In the beginning, we focus on two hands on the keyboard and work up to homerow fingers later in the year. In keeping with our family/house theme, we watched the Tumblebook story "Miss Malarkey Doesn't Live in Room 10" and then did some click and drag mouse practice with Castle Creator. After a discussion of files and folders, students found their folder and opened up a My Family Paint document to complete. It's tough to draw with a mouse, but they did a great job!

3-4 Technology:
Type to Learn keyboarding to start gave me time to take everyone's picture-we reviewed input and output devices as the pictures were uploaded and renamed. This week we discussed avatars and cyberspace. We talked about how cyberspace isn't make believe like Pandora or Neverland. Even though you may explore virtural worlds, they are made up of real people communicating and bad things can really happen-we have to use our Netsmartz! The students had a great time using an avatar editor to make avatars which we will use for voicethreads and other projects on the internet. We saved them and also made an avatar world in Paint and uploaded the images. We also discussed how in the real world robots can act like avatars controlled by people at computers to do things that humans might not be able to do. We used a National Geographic Map game to control a robot and explore an Egyptian tomb to find a mummy!