Word Count and Excel

The 8th Grade Social Studies students used Excel to analyze how they were progressing with their short essay answers. They related word count to fluency and evaluated whether they were answering their Think and Write questions more completely, as time went on.

Medieval Fair with Google Docs, Photoshop and Sketchup

The 7th Grade Social Studies students began this project by spending two days in the lab doing research. Team leaders from each group received guidelines from their teachers by accessing the teachers' shared folders. From there, the team leaders used Google Docs to share the documents with their team members and then proceeded to complete the research.



Once they finished, students used Photoshop or Sketchup to create graphics that would serve two purposes: decorate their booth, and explain to visitors how their medieval group lived during that time. This part of the project took three days.

Band Progress and iMovie

The Middle School Band students used iMovie to record their music and their playing technique in class one day. The purpose was to see where each student had progressed by the end of the semester and to set goals for the next semester. The students made use of the laptop cart and finished their movie in one class period.

Menu Masters

The House Program presented a technology problem as part of its end of semester activity. The problem focused on different aspects of communication. A team of students from each house had to prepare two menus, one in poster form and another in brochure form, informing potential customers about the food for sale. Additionally, the team had to send one of its members to observe all the other activities occurring that day and publish a report in a movie format.

Persuasive Essays and Google Docs

The 8th Grade Language Arts students used Google Docs to prepare their persuasive essays this quarter. Once the students created the document and shared it with their teacher, the teacher was able to follow the writing process from start to finish, providing comments along the way. The students also had the possibility to share the essay with a classmate, which facilitated peer editing. Finally, the students realized that when they were using Google Docs, they had access to their essay wherever they could access the internet.

The Evil Deceiver and Powerpoint

The 8th Grade Social Studies students continued their study of the Scientific Revolution by examining the work of Rene Descartes. The students did research on how we perceive the world about us and what limitations do we have in gathering information. Once students had a notion of Descartes' famous quote, "I think, therefore I exist," they prepared a Powerpoint presentation that analyzed a picture that might lend itself to more than one interpretation. The students took four classes to finish this assignment.

Climate Change and Excel

The 6th Grade Pre-Algebra 6 class did a project in Excel that examined temperature change in certain cities over the span of the last 50 years. They used a formula to convert the Fahrenheit readings to Centigrade and then applied several other formulas, such as mode, median and average (to arrive at the mean). The students graphed the temperature change and then added a trendline. Later on they inserted a histogram from the Data Analysis Tools. Finally, they went to Google Earth, found the city that they were researching, showed the latitude and longitude grid, and took a screenshot, which they inserted into their Excel worksheet. The lesson took four class periods.

Meiosis and Flash

The 8th Grade Science students expanded their understanding of meiosis by creating a model of the main stages of the process. Students had to use motion tweens to create the movement of the chromosomes and chromatids and shape tweens to simulate the deformation of the cell. They also created symbols to represent the chromosomes and chromatids, which they reused in different scenes of the animation. Students who finished early had the option of adding navigation buttons for extra credit. Four visits to the lab were necessary to complete the lesson.

Theories of the Universe and iMovie

The 8th Grade Social Studies students used iMovie'08 to create a video that explained the differences between the theories of Ptolmey, Copernicus and Kepler. In the video they were required to use still clips, video clips, background music, text, as well as record their own voice narration of the video's content. Upon completing the lesson, the students had to export the movie to a more portable format and then drop a copy into their teacher's drop box. The students took four days to complete this assignment.