Computer Class F.Y. I. for “The Crazy Quilts” and "Bald Eagles"
October, 2007

We’ve had quite a good time in computer class so far. This year the children come to the lab on Wednesday for 45 minutes.

After reading and signing the school’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), we started the year off by learning the names of parts of the computer.  The children viewed a slideshow made up of pictures of a computer part followed by a slide with its name in big, bold letters.  Later, they opened a copy of this presentation which I had scrambled and they unscrambled it by placing the slides of pictures with their correct names.

Our next PowerPoint adventure was creating a class presentation on aquatic life. The students viewed a great website about aquatic life that Gretchen found and then each student selected a life form and created one PowerPoint slide about it. To create the slide, each student used “Pixie” to draw an example of their aquatic life form. Then they saved the picture in their folder and exported it in a format that PowerPoint could use. Next they created a blank PowerPoint slide, inserted their graphic and keyed in some information about the life form.  The slides were accumulated into one presentation which may be viewed at http://www.communityschool.net/student_work.htm 

We will continue to work on our computer and software skill throughout the year.  As often as is practical, I will post their work on the school website.

Computer Class F.Y. I. for “The C.S. Express”

We’ve had quite a good time in computer class so far this year. This year the children come to the lab on Monday afternoons in groups of six.  Katie accompanies them and they spend 30 minutes in the lab. The children have done great work!

We started off the year playing some games online to give them practice in using a mouse while helping them with the concepts of clicking, double clicking and clicking and dragging. The links to these games are at http://www.communityschool.net/K_Computer_Class.htm

Lately we have been using “Pixie”, which is a great paint program, to combine their original art with photos. They drew a steam engine and inserted their photo into the cab of the engine.  Most recently we started a MaxShow presentation about their trip to the O. Winston Link Museum.  MaxShow is a piece of software that overlays M.S. PowerPoint and makes it more kid-friendly. 

We will continue to work on our computer and software skills throughout the year, keeping, as much as possible, to the train theme.  Although there is none there yet, whenever practical I will post their work on the Student Work page of the school website.

Computer Class F.Y. I. for “History Kids”

These first weeks have flown by! This class meets with me on Tuesday and Thursday for 45 minutes.

We began the year reading the school’s Acceptable Use Policy. Each student signed their copy.  Next, we worked on learning the parts of a computer.  The students viewed a PowerPoint slideshow made up of a series of slides with pictures of computer parts followed by a slide with each part’s name in big, bold letters.  Later, they opened a copy of this presentation which I had scrambled and they unscrambled it by placing the slides of pictures with their correct names. Finally, they created their own PowerPoint presentation of computer parts.  Some of the parts were illustrations that the children drew using “Pixie” and some were clipart. The children recorded themselves describing each part.

As Halloween approached, we wrote a letter to the Great Pumpkin.  It seemed an appropriate time of the year for “wizards”, so the children were introduced to the wizard feature in Word to help them create their letter in block format.  Then they keyed in the text for the body of the letter, inserted clip art and printed the letter to take home.

We have just begun to take photos with digital cameras.  I think this will be a great deal of fun and I look forward to seeing what the kids can create with their photos and a few good software programs! 

Computer Class F.Y. I. for “The American Pies”

 Theses classes meet with me once a week and the time races by!

We began the year reading the school’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). Each student signed their copy. This year each student also re-wrote the AUP in their own words. This simultaneously provided them with a refresher in using the basic features of MS Word and reinforced their understanding of the AUP.

Next, the students took a Technology Survey. In addition to providing me with an insight on the level of their technology knowledge, they got more practice with basic Word functions. As a follow-up to the survey, they watched a video entitled “Inside the Computer” and then we looked at computer components. If time allows later in the year, I hope to explore this area more as well as offering at least one Friday Group in computer refurbishing and maintenance.

Middle School students often use a computer to complete homework assignments. Kids quite often have problems getting their document from home to school in a timely fashion because of printer problems and/or software incompatibility. In hopes of minimizing this problem as well as introducing them to new Web 2.0 tech tools, we have been involved in setting up email addresses and Google Docs accounts.  At this time there are three components of the Google Docs “suite”: “Docs”, “Spreadsheet” and “Presentation”. These three tools can be used to replace “Write”, “Excel” and “PowerPoint” for most applications and they work basically the same way. The most difficult aspect of this has been having them remember their passwords! Please ask your child to write down their password and leave it at home, or perhaps you might like to ask them to email it to you at your personal email address. Whenever they work on homework at home, please remind them to do it using their Google account.

As soon as the students are comfortable using the Google Docs suite, we will begin using the digital cameras for various projects.  I look forward to unleashing their creativity in this arena. I hope to also incorporate some web page design into the year, if time allows.