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.

Click to enlarge
_________________________________________________________

Friday, November 27, 2009

Healthy Choices and Photoshop

During the Middle School Health Week, the 7th Grade Science students used Photoshop to create an advertisement for healthy life choices. Students researched healthy and unhealthy choices that they might make, and then followed a model in making their own advertisement concerning the options researched. The lesson took three class periods to complete.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Solving Linear Inequalities and Grapher

The 8th Grade Algebra students used Grapher to graph the solution region for a set of linear inequalities. The lesson took one class period to complete.

Isosceles Trapezoids and Geometer's Sketchpad

The 8th Grade Geometry students used Geometer's Sketchpad to to study different kinds of trapezoids. The lesson took one class period to finish.

Special Parallelograms and Geometer's Sketchpad

The 8th Grade Geometry students used Geometer's Sketchpad to study the relationships between the angles and the sides of different parallelograms. The students took one class period to finish the assignment.

Egyptian Obituary and Inspiration

The 6th Grade Language Arts classes used Inspiration to outline an obituary that they were going to write in class later in the week. The lesson took one class period to complete.

The Outsiders and Photoshop

The 8th Grade Language Arts class used Photoshop to create a collage that explained the personality traits of one of the characters from the novel. The students took three class periods to complete the task.



Optics and Flash

The 7th Grade Science students used Flash to create a model that showed how light rays behave when they are reflected and when they are refracted. This project took four days to complete.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Egyptian Webquest

The 6th Grade Social Studies students accessed a webquest that was made available to them via their teacher's shared folder, and they researched the questions on the internet. Later, the students dropped the completed document into their teacher's drop box. One of the classes shared the webquest via Google Docs. The lesson took two class periods to complete.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Congruent Triangles and Geometer's Sketchpad

The 8th Grade Geometry students used Geometer's Sketchpad to study the relationships between congruent triangles. The lesson took one class period.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Constantinople, Google Docs, Fireworks and Dreamweaver

The 7th Grade Social Studies students did research on the ancient city of Constantinople and kept their notes in their Google Docs account. These notes became the text for the different pages in their website. Later they created graphics in Fireworks, which they added to the website that they constructed in Dreamweaver. The students also used Google Earth to capture views of the area from different altitudes. The lesson took four class periods to complete.

Click on the image below to see an example of the web site that the students had to build.



Click on the play button below to see a high speed version of the last tutorial movie for this lesson.

DVD Sales and Excel

The 8th Grade Algebra students used Excel to examine the relationship between cost, sales price and profit. They entered the corresponding formulas in Excel and then used the fill tool to project how many DVD players a business would have to sell to make a profit. The lesson took one class period to finish.

Sentence Structure and Excel

The 7th Grade Spanish students used Excel to analyze the different parts of a sentence. The students took one class period to complete the assignment.

Meiosis and Flash

The 8th Grade Science students used Flash to create a model that illustrated how the cells and chromosomes regroup and divide to create the sex cells. The students worked with symbol creation, motion tweens and shape tweens to construct the four different scenes of the animation. The project took three class periods to create.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Electromagnetic Waves and Filemaker Pro 9

The 7th Grade Science students created a data base that organized all the different waves in the electromagnetic spectrum. The students had text and container fields, which they laid out to display the data researched. The lesson took four days to complete.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Chilean Environmental Issues and Powepoint

The 6th Grade Science students did research on a topic related to the Chilean environment. They used a variety of sources, including Wikipedia, Google, and the EBSCO online databases to find information. Once they had information, the students built a powerpoint presentation, according to the teachers' rubric. Students who researched a native Chilean animal like the pudĂș or the vizcacha, were able to include a simple food web exported from Inspiration.