The Six Traits of Writing Published in Powerpoint or Word

Seventh Grade Language Arts students used one of these two applications to publish a piece of writing that was developed in the classroom according to the Six Traits of Writing guidelines. The assignment took one class period, and if students needed more time, they emailed themselves the document and finished at home.

Essay Writing with Six Traits and Garage Band

Some of the 6th Grade Language Arts students used Garage Band to record their written essays, so they could be evaluated from a different perspective. After the students recorded their essays, they exported a copy in mp3 format to their public folder. At that point, another student accessed the public folder, opened up the essay, did peer editing, and recorded suggestions on a new track in Garage Band. The peer editor exported the copy with suggestions as another mp3 file to their own public folder. Finally, the author listened to the comments, made any necessary adjustments in a new audio version of the essay and added appropriate sound effects before exporting again and dropping the final work into the teacher's drop box. This assignment took four class periods to complete.

Essay Writing and Google Docs

The 8th Grade Language Arts students worked on thesis statements by applying what they learned from a teacher-made Powerpoint to their drafts in Google Docs. Students took three classes to finish this assignment. The students took two class periods to finish this assignment. They also worked at home.

Fractions and Excel

The 6th Grade Math class used Excel to examine concrete graphical representations of the abstract concept of fractions that they were studying in class. Students made two worksheets: in the first sheet, they constructed a calculator that could add fractions (as long as the sum was less than one) and display the addends and the sum with pie charts. On the second sheet, the students made a slider that showed the difference between pairs of fractions which added up to 50/50. The students took one class to finish this lesson.

Carbon Footprints

The 6th Grade Science classes used the web site called Carbon Footprint to calculate the greenhouse gases produced from air and car travel. The air travel figures are all calculated from Santiago (SCL) and the students could choose whatever make of cars that they wanted. The students used an Excel worksheet to gather their data. Once they made the corresponding graphs, the students dropped the assignment into their teacher's drop box. Most students needed three days to complete the assignment.

Exploring Isosceles Trapezoids in Geogebra

8th Grade Geometry students used an open source program called Geogebra to explore tech integration possibilities with their geometry lessons. The students constructed points, lines and angles. After studying the relationships between the length of the lines and the measures of the angles (as Point D varied along line b), they attempted to formulate rules about the diagonals of the isosceles trapezoids. The students needed one class to complete the assignment.

Battle of the Books and Filemaker Pro

Some of the 6th Grade Language Arts students remotely accessed a Filemaker Pro database that was designed to store information for a contest. Once the students had logged on, they created records that were basically questions about the different Jerry Spinelli books they had read over the semester. Once this question database was compiled, the teacher was able to evaluate the individual students on how well they each completed the assignment, as well as conduct the Battle of the Books contest with 100% student made questions.

Sales Analysis with Excel

The 8th Grade Algebra 1 students used Excel to analyze the factors of cost, sales and profit in one of their assignments. Once they input the formulas, they used the fill down tool to discover at what point the business would become profitable. Then they graphed their results, saved their work and dropped the document into their teacher's drop box.

A Vocabulary Lesson with Excel

Students in some of the 6th Grade Language Arts classes created a crossword puzzle in Excel with their vocabulary words of the week. Clues were added as comments and students used conditional formatting with the first letter of each word. They programmed Excel to make the first letter display green if the word entered was correct and red if the word was incorrect. Once they finished with the formatting, they saved a copy as lastname_key.xls and dropped it into their teacher's drop box. Then they saved the document under a new name: lastname_puzzle.xls, and proceeded to erase the answers so that another classmate could actually work out the puzzle. The students took three classes to finish this assignment.

Bullying Projects

For the first two weeks of November (during the 6th grade trips) the 6th grade students who were not in Lagunillas worked on a seven day project that addressed the issue of bullying. During the first two days of the project, they did collaborative research in Google Docs, gathering information from teacher-approved web sites. Once they had information that addressed their research question, the students had three different choices for presenting their solutions: a poster made in Photoshop, a slideshow presentation made in Google Docs, or a podcast made in Garageband.

One of the research templates that students worked on collaboratively when preparing for their presentations.

One of the Bullying posters made in Photoshop.


This is a slide from a presentation prepared collaboratively by one of the student groups in Google Docs, and then downloaded as a ppt document.

A sample podcast about bullying made in Garageband.

Improving Your Academic Performance

During the week that the 8th Grade students were not in Los Pellines, they worked on a project from the Advisory curriculum. This project examined a survey that the students took and asked them to research an area that they needed to improve in order to do better in school. Once the students had gathered enough information, they created a Powerpoint presentation which they later shared with their classmates.

Greek Gods and Goddesses

The 7th Grade Spanish classes used Photoshop Elements to create a poster of one Greek god or goddess. They included information about the deity's physical description, supernatural powers and a brief summary of one myth in which he or she played a role. As for tech skills, the students became more familiar with layers, feathering images and formatting text.

Physical Fitness and Filemaker Pro

The PE department is working on a pilot project where the students keep track of their physical fitness goals by means of an online database that they access from on or off campus. At the moment, the database has been tested successfully by a class of 8th Grade PE students while in the computer lab.

Save the Planet, Ecology Project

When the 6th Grade students were not on their outdoor education trip in Lagunillas, they were working on two tech projects and one was the iMovie ecology project. The students spent seven days researching in the EBSCO online data base for an environmental problem and some possible solutions. The movie that they created was supposed to show the problem, and promote the solution. The students used still images, transitions, text, background music, and recorded their voices on a second audio track to fulfill the tech requirements for this project.

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Ear Anatomy in Flash

This project was made by 7th grade Science students. It is an animation that shows what happens when sound waves enter the human ear. Students used motion tweens to animate all the different parts of the ear. To represent the transfer of impulses along the auditory nerve, the students changed the brightness of the auditory nerve graphic.

Hottest Color Lab and Excel

The 7th Grade Science students did a lab that explored how different colored paper absorbed heat. In the Excel document they created, the students had to use formulas such as average, minimum and maximum to analyze their data.