The 8th Grade National Spanish students spent two weeks in the computer lab, composing an original online newspaper with fictitious news stories. They used Dreamweaver to organize the different sections and concentrated on efficient networking between team members in order to meet the deadlines. One person in the team acted as the webmaster, receiving and linking the html documents from the reporters/writers/graphic artists who produced the material.
Welcome to the MS Computer Lab Blog!
The objective of our blog is to share information about how we integrate our technology curriculum into the subject area curriculum. The foundation of this effort is the methodology of team teaching the lessons with the Middle School subject area teachers. Each post describes a particular lesson, the software used, some of the skills that were targeted, and the number of days that were spent in the lab.
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Friday, September 26, 2008
Excel and Frequencies
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Mean, Median and Mode
Radio Theater Script and Google Docs
The 8th Grade Social Studies students were divided into groups in order to present a play in "radio theater" format which explained different historical events that surrounded the beginnings of the Chilean or the American governments. During the first stage of this unit, the students researched their questions and wrote the script treatment and the actual script collaboratively in Google Docs. Once they finished, they downloaded their scripts as Word documents to photocopy for hard copy scripts. The students took six class periods in the lab to complete this stage of the process.
Spanish Literature and Google Earth
The 6th Grade National Spanish students read a novel about a boy who lived in a small town in Guatemala. Later they located Panajachel, Guatemala in Google Earth and added a screen shot to their Powerpoint portfolio. They used various tools in Powerpoint to create comments about the setting of the story.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Black Death Journal
The 7th Grade Social Studies classes created a medieval diary that described the life of Europeans during the time of the Black Death. Each of the three journal entries had specific formatting requirements that needed to be met.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Sketchup and the Garden
The 6th Grade Science students used Google Sketchup 6 to create a 3D model of the vegetable garden that is located behind the 6th Grade Wing. The students learned to change the settings for their mouse, so they could take advantage of the third button functionality that Sketchup offers. For example, pressing and holding the third button while moving the mouse allowed them to orbit around their garden. The students also learned how to pan, zoom and use the zoom extents tool, which made it much easier for them to control the 3D space in which they were constructing their garden model. Some students who finished the assignment early, were given the option to construct the greenhouse, that stands behind the garden.
Fossils and Google Docs
The 8th Grade Science students accessed a PBS interactive website to do a lesson on fossils. Their teacher shared the study guide via her shared folder on the student server and the students proceeded to upload the document to their Google Docs account. From there, they renamed the document with their lastname and shared the document back to their teacher. From that point on, the teacher could monitor the assignment from start to finish, and the student could work on the assignment whenever they had internet access. Another advantage for using Google Docs at the Middle School level, is that there are no more physically misplaced papers.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Filemaker and Tree Tracking
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Ordered Pairs. Linear Functions and Excel
Excel and Percent Change
The 8th Grade Math students examined constant percent changes for different environmental situations and graphed those changes in Excel.
A Problem Solving Exercise with Google Docs
Teams of students from all grade levels put their problem solving skills to the test while attempting to complete different activities in the Middle School House Program. During the afternoon, the five House Groups - Orcas, Pumas, Ñandus, Vizcachas and Condors divided themselves into teams and some of those teams came to the computer lab. The tech-based problem was the following: find out what problems were being tackled outside the lab, document them with text and graphics and publish it all in newsletter format by means of Google Docs. To prove that the problem was finished, the final step was to share the newsletter with the teachers who organized the activity. Google Docs fit this activity well, because it allows several authors to work on the same document simultaneously.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Advertisements in Photoshop Elements
The 8th Grade National Spanish students spent three class periods creating ads for their online newspapers. Each student was required to make three different documents. Each document had a background, one or more images taken from other sources and text. Once finished with these psd files, the students had to export them as jpegs or gifs and make them available to be ultimately inserted into the online newspaper.
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