March 11, 2016 - LAST CLASS 44 minutes*
Make-up Time & Checking Grades: Since this is our last full class all students had time to make up any work they may have missed. All projects were handed back and students could submit anything they missed or re-submit a project that they hadn't finished for full credit. All students were asked to log into the HAC and check their grades for this class. The few students who could not log in to check their grades were reminded, one more time, that they have to talk to their parents about getting their email address registered in the system. Technology Current Event Video: For our last current event this year we watched a TED Presentation by Gary Kovacs, the CEO of Mozilla, about how internet users are tracked. He demonstrated how many companies were following him and his daughter when they were online during a typical day. During the presentation he demonstrated how a free download for Firefox called Collusion (now called Lightbeam) can be used to find out who is tracking you online. (PA-BCIT Standards: 15.4.8.A, 15.5.8.J, 15.9.8.L, 15.9.8.M) March 9, 2016 44 minutes  FIRST AID PROJECT DIRECTIONS: Technology Current Event Video:  We finished class today with a short news video from NTDTV about the use of 3D printing technology to create living body parts at Wake Forest University on North Carolina.  (PA-BCIT Standard: 15.4.8.A) March 7, 2016 91 minutes Google Earth Tour Quiz: As a follow-up to our previous tour on Google Earth students were challenged to list everywhere they had gone and what they had seen on their tour of the 3 dimensional visual imagery in Google Earth last class. This activity helped to demonstrate the effectiveness of using 3D spatial references, such as the virtual environment of Google Earth, to augment memory. QUIZ: Where I went on Google Earth (PA-BCIT Standards: 15.4.8.A, 15.6.8.M)  Office Yoga Break: During long classes like this one students are always reminded to take breaks and get exercise. Students shouldn't spend more than 30-40 minutes in  front of a computer without taking a break. For our break today we practiced a simple office yoga stretch for your sides.Business Classes at the High School, WebQuest Project:  All students researched the computer class opportunities at our high school by completing an online webquest activity.  Follow this link to view the questions.  They used the Council Rock High School - North web site to find the answers. Technology Current Event Video: Unfortunately we ran out of time for a video today. March 3, 2016 91 minutes Internet Moment: Today we explored Google Earth and discussed how a three dimensional virtual environment can be used to augment human memory. We started by discussing what spatial memory is and how it is used to make modern video games so engaging. Students were then introduced to the memory palace or method of loci as an effective way to use 3 dimensional visual imagery to help a person remember large amounts of information. We then went to Google Earth and began a tour of the earth, the sky, Mars and the moon. The whole class followed a specific list of locations. Next class all students will take a quiz to see how much of the Google Earth tour they can recall. (PA-BCIT Standards: 15.4.8.A, 15.6.8.M)  Office Yoga Break: During long classes like this one students are always reminded to take breaks and get exercise. Students shouldn't spend more than 30-40 minutes in front of a computer without taking a break. For our break today we practiced a simple office yoga stretch for your calve muscles. Technology Current Event Video: We finished class today with a short video that highlights some of the features that are available to our students in Google Drive.  (PA-BCIT Standard: 15.4.8.A) March 1, 2016 Internet Moment: Students were shown GeoGuessr.com today and we spent about 5 minutes playing this geography game at the beginning class today. The highest score in our class today was Aniketh with over 14,800 points. Finish Basic HTML: Last class we started a computer coding activity by creating a website in basic HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). We finished typing the HTML into Notepad to create a simple webpage.   All students also had some time to experiment with adding JavaScript from DynamicDrive.com. Click here to enlarge the project description.(PA-BCIT Standards: 15.3.8.S, 15.4.8.H) Technology Current Event Video:  To finish class today we watched a TEDx presentation by Hadi Partovi from Code.org about the importance of computer science education.  (PA-BCIT Standard: 15.4.8.A) February 26, 2016 91 minutes Internet Moment:  Today we started class by exploring some games that Richboro Middle School Computer Class students had created using Scratch from MIT:  Tennis, Maze Flapper, Supernatural Game, Cat Jump & Bird-Catching Basket-Cat.     Office Yoga Break: During long classes like this one students are always reminded to take breaks and get exercise. Students shouldn't spend more than 30-40 minutes in front of a computer without taking a break. As part of our break today we practiced a simple office yoga stretch for the deltoid muscles. Technology Current Event Video: We finished class today with a short video from How Stuff Works about Tim Berners-Lee and the invention of the World Wide Web. February 24, 2016 104  minutes   Full Page Ads:  All students had time to finish this project in class today.  Completed projects were printed in full color using the color printer at the back of the room.  Click here to enlarge the project description. (PA-BCIT Standards: 15.3.8.A, 15.3.8.B, 15.3.8.E, 15.4.8.D, 15.4.8.G, 15.9.8.A) Office Yoga Break:  Students are always reminded to not spend too much time sitting in front of computers.  Breaks should be taken at least every 30-40 minutes.  For our break today we practiced a simple yoga stretch for your back and then everyone had a chance to get up and move around the room some.  Hour of Code:  Today our class participated in the Hour of Code. We started by viewing the source code for this webpage.  Students were told that this code, a mixture of HTML and JavaScript, was the list of specific instructions that tell your web browser how to display the webpage.  We then watched the tutorial video below to introduce the online coding activity.  Students then went to the online Blockly Star Wars Tutorial to write JavaScript.  Technology Current Event Video:  We finished class today with a video from Code.org about why schools should teach coding. February 22, 2016 44 minutes Internet Moment: Today we explored NewsMap.jp which is a graphical interpretation of the top news stories on Google News. It was created by Marcos Weskamp, a self described software architect. He was also part of the team that founded Flipboard which seeks to bring the design experience of magazines to web and tablet technology. As part of this activity we discussed the important relationship between internet technology and design. (PA BCIT Standards: 15.2.8.B, 15.2.8.C, 15.2.8.D, 15.2.8.E) Full Page Ads:  All students had time to work on this project today. Some completed projects will be printed in full color using the color printer in the back of the room.  Click here to enlarge the project description. (PA-BCIT Standards: 15.3.8.A, 15.3.8.B, 15.3.8.E, 15.4.8.D, 15.4.8.G, 15.9.8.A) Technology Current Event Video:  We finished class today with a short video about flexible OLED TV screens that were demonstrated by LG at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month.  (PA-BCIT Standard: 15.4.8.A) February 18, 2016 91 minutes   International Online Collaboration Project: Today we did an online collaboration project with Ms. Papakalousi's advanced English language students at the Winners Education English Language School in Athens, Greece. Her students prepared persuasive essays in English using a shared Google Doc last week.  We then asked our students to work in small groups and edit the essays for grammar, style, readability and spelling. While our students were working here in Newtown, the students in Greece were able to watch the editing in real time in their classroom on their personal cell phones.  We also had a Skype connection between our classrooms so the students could interact with one another directly. Each of our students had an opportunity to meet and greet the student in Greece that they were working with. This was a great opportunity to introduce our students to international online collaboration using free resources such as Google Drive and Skype. It also gave us an opportunity to discuss cultural and language differences. Below you can see a sample of what the editing process looked like as well as the video chat.  Click here to view the edited documents. (PA-BCIT Standards: 15.3.8.U, 15.3.8.Q, 15.3.8.M, 15.3.12.W, 15.3.8.X, 15.4.8.A, 15.4.8.B, 15.4.8.D, 15.3.12.W)  (ISTE Standards: 1c, 2a, 2b, 2c, 2d, 5b, 5c, 5d, 6a, 6d)  Office Yoga Break:  Students are always reminded to not spend too much time sitting in front of computers.  Breaks should be taken at least every 30-40 minutes.  For our break today we practiced a simple yoga stretch for your ankles and then everyone had a chance to get up and move around the room some.  Technology Current Event Video:  We finished class today with a video from the BBC in which Hans Rosling describes how Gapminder.org can be used to identify trends and misconceptions by looking at the data.  (PA-BCIT Standards:  15.7.8.A, 15.7.8.F, 15.7.8.H, 15.7.8.L) February 16, 2016 100 minutes*   Office Yoga Break: Students are always reminded to not spend too much time in front of computers and to take breaks every 30-40 minutes. Today we practiced a simple yoga stretch that helps prevent carpal tunnel syndrome. Before the stretch the causes and symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome were explained to the class. After the stretch all students had an opportunity to take a short break and move around. (PA-BCIT Standard: 15.4.5.D,) Google Drive Experiment:  In class we experimented with accessing our Google Drives which have recently been supplied to all student in the Council Rock School District. All but two students could log into their Google Drives and everyone had a chance to create and share a Google Slide show.  As a class we then made a shared slide show about what we each did over the Presidents Day Weekend. Technology Current Event Video:  We finished class today with a TED presentation by Margaret Stewart about how copyright laws are handled on YouTube.  (PA-BCIT Standards: 15.1.5.B, 15.3.8.D, 15.3.8.E, 15.3.8.X, 15.4.8.A, 15.4.8.B, 15.6.8.M ) * Class time was shorter today due to the two hour delay schedule February 10, 2016 94 minutes Internet Moment: Today we looked at two online resources for fonts. DaFont.com offers over 29,000 fonts that are either freeware, shareware, demo versions or in the public domain. These fonts can be downloaded and installed but students were also shown how they can use the Snipping Tool to get images of the fonts they might like. Students were also shown how they could make their own font using a website like YourFonts.com. (PA-BCIT Standards: 15.3.8.E, 15.6.5.M, 15.4.5.A) Finish Font Guide Project:  Changing the line spacing was demonstrated and all students had time to finish and print this project today.  Click here to view the project description.  (PA-BCIT Standards: 15.3.8.E, 15.4.8.G, 15.4.2.K, 15.3.8.X) Office Yoga Break: During long classes like this one students are always reminded to take breaks and get exercise. Students shouldn't spend more than 30-40 minutes in front of a computer without taking a break. As part of our break today we practiced a simple office yoga stretch for your thigh. Technology Current Event Video: We watched part of a TED Presentation by John Maeda, the President of the Rhode Island School of Design. In the video he talked about how he became a graphic designer and how he used technology. He also did a presentation about content & form that demonstrated the use different of different fonts to convey meaning. Students were encouraged to watched the rest of the video on their own. (PA BCIT Standard: 15.4.8.A, 15.8.8.K, 15.9.8.A) February 8, 2016 91 minutes Internet Moment: Students explored PhotoSynth.net today which is an online service from Microsoft that used their Silverlight technology. It allows you to "knit" digital photos together to make large 360 degree images that you can pan and zoom into. We also looked at the NMS Mosaic Project as an example of this technology from (PA BCIT Standards: 15.6.8.M)   Office Yoga Break: During long classes like this one students are always reminded to take breaks and get exercise. Students shouldn't spend more than 30-40 minutes in front of a computer without taking a break. As part of our break today we practiced a simple office yoga stretch for your sides.   Font Conference Video:  As a follow-up to the Font Presentation we watched a short video from College Humor about a fictitious "Font Conference": February 4, 2016 104 minutes Class Blog: Students were shown TodayInComputerClass.com and told that they can check here anytime to review what work was done in class. We also discussed what a web log or blog was, how blogs developed into microblogs like Twitter and now mobile phone based apps like Instagram. This website is the blog or web log for our class. Students were also told that their parents will be sent an email with a link to this website so they can also review what we are doing in computer class each day. Office 365 Mobile Apps: Students were reminded that they could download mobile versions of the Microsoft Office 365 Apps for their phones and tablet computers.         Assigned Seats: All students have an assigned seat/computer in the lab. Students have a responsibility to report any problems with the machine they have been assigned. In this way we all participate in maintaining our school computers. Everyone should use the same computer every time they come to the lab. Students were also reminded to adjust the keyboard, mouse, chair and monitor to meet their ergonomic needs when they come to class. We then visited the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) website and searched for their recommendations concerning computer use. We also discussed employment laws in the workplace. (PA-BCIT Standard: 15.2.8.I, 15.4.5.D, 15.4.2.B, 15.4.8.F)  Typing Test: All students took a typing test using TypingTest.com. Each student had 10 minutes to take the 1 minute test multiple times. Their best adjusted speed was recorded and graphed in an Excel spreadsheet. The average typing speed for this class was: 43.1 WPM. Click here for more information about typing speeds at Newtown Middle School. We also reviewed the graph below:   Online Typing Activities: As a follow up to the typing test we looked at the typing speeds for the whole 8th grade in Excel and looked at graphs of past speeds for NMS students. Students were then given some time to find at least 3 online typing activities (tutorials or games) that they enjoyed. They were to then add these typing activities to their favorites or bookmarks list so they could go back and practice their typing skills in class when they finished their projects.   Favorite Links Project: Students started this project today. Each student used Word Online to make a list of six favorite websites. They then turned the names of the websites into hyperlinks.  They hyperlinks were then laid out on a table and we talked about using and formatting tables.  We also discussed appropriate websites for school.  Everyone had time to finish and turn in this project today using a shared Word Online document.  Click here to enlarge the project description. (PA-BCIT Standards: 15.3.8.E, 15.4.5.G) Technology Current Event Video: We finished class today with a short video from The Verge about the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge. (PA-BCIT Standard: 15.4.8.A) February 2, 2016 44 minutes Internet Moment: Students were asked to compare three popular news aggregator websites: Google News, Bing News and Yahoo. We looked at their home pages, their features and their overall appearance. Though the results were split, a plurality of our students said they preferred Google News when looking for current events online. (PA BCIT Standards: 15.3.8.E, 15.6.5.L)  Using OneDrive in Office 365: Students started organizing their OneDrive by creating folders for all their subjects.  They were also shown how to upload and download files from their OneDrive.  (PA-BCIT Standards 15.3.8.E, 15.4.8.A, 15.4.8.D, 15.4.8.F) Office 365 Mobile Apps: Students were reminded that they could download mobile versions of the Microsoft Office 365 Apps for their phones and tablet computers.     Technology Current Event Video:  We finished class today with a short video about what life might be like in the year 2020.   (PA-BCIT Standard: 15.4.8.A) January 29, 2016 Introduction to Basic Computer Skills Class: Basic rules and classroom procedures were explained. Students were specifically reminded that because technology is constantly changing they should get into the habit of helping each other out and demonstrating the ability to learn new computer skills through experimentation. All students reported that they had helped an adult with computer skills but they were reminded that it's important to also get used to helping each other.  Pixlr.com Project: Students were shown how to use the online photo editor pixlr.com to edit a photograph. We also discussed professional digital photo editing with Adobe PhotoShop.  All students had time to create a unique image and we used various network resources to share their modifies photos. Basic skills such as drag & drop were demonstrated and the best use of the H:, S: & X: drives was also explained.  (PA BCIT Standards: 15.4.8.F, 15.4.5.G)  Break: Students are always reminded to not spend too much time working on computers and to take breaks every 30-40 minutes. For our break today we conducted a probability experiment about matching birthdays.  You can read about it here.  Everyone was asked to get up and find the other person in the room who shares their birthday. Using Outlook Email in Office 365: All students logged into their Microsoft Office 365 accounts and had some time to explore it. Students then opened their Outlook email accounts.  As part of the set-up process we discussed how time zones work.  We  then practiced sending to emails to other students in the room. We discussed what CC: means (carbon copy) and what should go in the Subject line.  All students were also reminded that their school email account was not private.  We also discussed the Each student then finished the activity by sending a thank you email to a teacher.  The directions for this project can be viewed here.  (PA-BCIT Standards 15.3.8.E, 15.3.8.M, 15.3.8.O, 15.3.8.Q, 15.3.8.R, 15.3.8.S, 15.3.8.U, 15.3.8.X, 15.4.8.D, 15.3.8.M, 15.4.8.F) Technology Current Event Video: At then end of most computer classes we watch a current event video about emerging trends in technology. Today's video was inspired by a presentation that was created by a high school teacher in Colorado, Mr. Karl Fisch. This 2014 revision of the presentation was created by Jose Esteves, a professor of Information Systems at the IE Business School in Spain. (PA-BCIT Standard: 15.4.8.A) |
