Computer Lab News: Weeks 12-13

KINDERGARTEN: Kindergarten didn’t have classes the week of Thanksgiving since they come to the lab on Wednesdays and Thursdays and we were off then. But, the week before, they completed their B page in their Adventures in Keyboarding book, watched and listened to the book Thanksgiving Is and created turkeys out of hand templates in KidPix. Did you see your Kindergartener’s turkey? If it didn’t make it home or if you want to see all of the turkeys created by Kindergarten, you can find them in a slideshow on Kindergarten’s Online Autumn page.

1ST GRADE: 1st Grade also completed their B page in their Adventures in Keyboarding book. They watched a video about Thanksgiving at BrainPop Jr. and created turkeys out of hand templates in KidPix. Did you see their turkey? A slideshow of all of the 1st Grade turkeys will be available in our Travel Scrapbook soon. 1st Grade also used the educational software program Jumpstart 1st Grade.

2ND GRADE: 2nd Grade watched a video about Thanksgiving at BrainPop Jr. and read the book Thanksgiving Is. They completed two Thanksgiving related projects in KidPix: What I Am Thankful For and a Turkey Glyph. Watch for slideshows of these coming soon to our Travel Scrapbook. When they completed their projects in KidPix, 2nd Grade played some online Thanksgiving games or used the educational software program Jumpstart 2nd Grade.

3RD GRADE: Some of 3rd Grade is still trying to finish up their Plant Life Cycle slideshows in KidPix. These will be shared online very soon! In addition to working on these, 3rd Grade watched a video about Thanksgiving at BrainPop Jr. and completed one or two Thanksgiving related projects in KidPix: What I Am Thankful For and a Turkey Glyph. Slideshows of these will be coming soon to our Travel Scrapbook. When they completed their projects in KidPix, 3rd Grade played some online Thanksgiving games.

4TH GRADE: 4th Grade completed the November activity for Voices of the World which involved illustrating and saying the phrase All For One and One For All. Unfortunately one of the group pictures was overwritten but this should be redone in the future. Check out the November Voices of the World activity on our Voices of the World page. For their Thanksgiving project, 4th Grade created Persuasive Turkeys in KidPix. What’s a persuasive turkey? It’s a turkey that is doing it’s best to convince you not to eat it. Watch our Travel Scrapbook for a slideshow of these in the near future.

5TH GRADE: 5th Grade watched a video about Thanksgiving from BrainPop. They then completed Persuasive Turkeys by creating a turkey in KidPix by either tracing their own hand or using a hand template. They then exported their turkeys out of KidPix and brought them in to PowerPoint where they added a speech or thought bubble which contained a paragraph explaining why their turkey shouldn’t be eaten on Thanksgiving. These will be shared very soon in our Travel Scrapbook. When their turkeys were complete, 5th Grade played some online Thanksgiving games or tried to draw Thanksgiving related cartoons using online tutorials.

6TH GRADE: 6th Grade worked on completing their Cyber-Bullying Comics in Microsoft Word and then wrote their reflections about November for the A Room With a View Project. One of the 6th Graders also took our photo for the month which will be uploaded to the project page next week. Visit our project page to see the photos and click on the discussions tab to read the reflections about each month. 6th Grade also completed Persuasive Turkeys by creating a turkey in KidPix by either tracing their own hand or using a hand template. They then exported their turkeys out of KidPix and brought them in to PowerPoint where they added a speech or thought bubble which contained a paragraph explaining why their turkey shouldn’t be eaten on Thanksgiving. Watch for these in our Travel Scrapbook. 6th Grade also did some keyboarding in Mavis Beacon.

7TH GRADE: 7th Grade continued to work on their Cyber-Bullying Glogs and published them to our wiki when they were completed. Check out our Travel Scrapbook to see the glogs that have been completed so far. This project required that they create a background main idea in PowerPoint and then upload this to their Glogster account and embelish it using the tools there and then save it and post it to our wiki. In addition, 7th Grade created Persuasive Turkeys by creating a turkey in KidPix by either tracing their own hand or using a hand template. They then exported their turkeys out of KidPix and brought them in to PowerPoint where they added a speech or thought bubble which contained a paragraph explaining why their turkey shouldn’t be eaten on Thanksgiving. Watch for these in our Travel Scrapbook.

8TH GRADE: 8th Grade continued to work on their Cyber-Bullying Public Service Announcements. These were created by using PowerPoint to create 8-12 slides about cyber-bulling and exporting the slides as images. The images were then uploaded to their Animoto account and they created a short video which they then posted to our Cyber-Bullying PSA page. We run into some bandwidth and speed issues when everyone is working on these at once so there are still a few not posted but they will be soon. Any 8th Grade student that did complete their PSA created Persuasive Turkeys by creating a turkey in KidPix by either tracing their own hand or using a hand template. They then exported their turkeys out of KidPix and brought them in to PowerPoint where they added a speech or thought bubble which contained a paragraph explaining why their turkey shouldn’t be eaten on Thanksgiving. Watch for these in our Travel Scrapbook.

Computer Lab News: Week 10

Welcome to the 2nd Quarter of the school year!

KINDERGARTEN: Kindergarten spent their time in the computer lab this week using Bailey’s Book House and Jumpstart Kindergarten.

1ST GRADE: 1st Grade again worked on the How Tall is a First Grader project. We read the book Not So Tall for Six by Dianna Hutts Aston and talked about height. Then each 1st Grader was measured and they typed their height into an Excel Spreadsheet and watched the graph of their heights show on the screen. It will be interesting to see how our 1st Graders compare in height to the other 1st Graders participating in the project. 1st Grade also spent time using the educational software program Jumpstart 1st Grade.

2ND GRADE: 2nd Grade also used an educational software program, Jumpstart 2nd Grade, during the week. In addition, they recorded their comments about their Favorites of Fall for the Online Autumn Project.


3RD GRADE: 3rd Grade continued to work on their Life Cycle of Plants project in KidPix. As they finished these, they visited various web sites about the life cycle of plants. Most of the students have or will complete these next week and we will be sharing their slideshows online.

4TH GRADE: 4th Grade watched a short video on Presidential Elections, learned about the candidates for President and visited our Voting Booth and selected their choice for the next President/Vice President. They also completed their work on their All About Me projects and their Internet Safety posters. We will be sharing at least the Internet Safety posters online soon.

5TH GRADE: This was a catch up week for 5th Grade who spent their time working on their All About Me projects in KidPix and their Internet Safety videos, quizzes and posters. Most students have completed these and we will be sharing them very soon. Students that were finished with their work played math or spelling games at Tutpup.

6TH GRADE: 6th Grade practiced keyboarding and continued to work on the Cyber Bullying comics in Microsoft Word. Most students have finished these and we will be sharing them soon.

7TH & 8TH GRADE: This week was spent discussing the election and how the electoral college works. 7th and 8th Graders created an Excel Spreadsheet to count “electoral” votes from the school by assigning each class 1 electoral vote for each 5 students in the class. They discovered that while McCain had 50% of the popular vote at school using an electoral distribution he ended up with 60% of the electoral vote.

Computer Lab News: Week 5

KINDERGARTEN: Kindergarten only had computers once this week and spent their day in the lab exploring the educational software program, Jumpstart Kindergarten. They will be using this program throughout the year.

1ST GRADE: 1st Grade had an introduction to Microsoft Word this week in the lab. They first learned about some important keys on the keyboard using a paper keyboard: Space Bar, Caps Lock, Enter and Backspace. Did they bring the paper keyboard home to show you what they had learned? After learning where the important keys were, they went into Word and typed their name multiple times making it bold or italicised or underlined. During their second day in the lab, they once again used Word typing their name again but playing with making it multiple colors and changing the font and font sizes. Most of the students printed out what they had typed. Did you see your child’s rainbow name?

2ND GRADE: 2nd Grade finished their ABC Charts in KidPix. They were then introduced to the collaborative project they will be working on called Online Autumn. They then brainstormed ideas about Autumn using an online tool.

After the brainstorming session, the 2nd graders began creating pictures of the things they like best about Autumn using KidPix.

3RD GRADE: This week in the lab, 3rd Grade finished up their ABC Charts in KidPix and reviewed the parts of the desktop. They then began to work on and All About Me project in KidPix. KidPix is a very fun program with a lot of built in stickers and stamps and special effects but for this project they need to use the basic drawing tools to draw themselves and use the ABC Tool to list some facts about themselves too. When these are complete, your student will be bringing theirs home and we will be displaying them in the computer lab too!

4TH GRADE: This week in the lab, 4th Grade learned all about the collaborative project they will be working on all year called Voices of the World. They were introduced to some of the schools that will be participating using a Live Search Map and then we recorded the class saying “Hello, we are (name of school), from (location) and you are listening to Voices Of The World, Goodbye.” on a Voki:

You can listen to all of the Vokis created on the Voices of the World Wiki. 4th Grade also started creating their All About Me picture in KidPix. Like 3rd Grade they will be drawing a picture of themselves using the standard drawing tools in KidPix and adding at least 8 facts about themselves and decorating this with stamps and stickers as they wish.

5TH GRADE: 5th Grade only had computers once this week and they spent their time working on their All About me pictures in KidPix. Also, a few of the 5th Graders finished up their recording for the Summer Reading VoiceThread.

6TH GRADE: This week in the lab, 6th Grade practiced their keyboarding skills each day. They were introduced to their year-long collaborative project, A Room With a View and some of the classes that will be participating in the project using a Live Search Map. One of the 6th graders will be taking a photo from the same place in front of the Computer Lab each month and another will be recording information about weather, etc. and submitting the photo to the project as well as posting it online. All students in 6th grade also be reflecting on each month with a VoiceThread. We also reviewed the formatting of Science Labs and worked on this during class for anyone with questions. 6th Grade also worked on an All About Me project in Word.

7TH GRADE: 7th Grade only came to the computer lab on one day this week due to the Fall Fund Raiser Assembly on Friday. On that day, they were introduced to their collaborative project Human Genetics: A Worldwide Search for the Dominant Trait and taken on a virtual tour of where the participating schools are located. They also spent some time working on their keyboarding skills in Mavis Beacon.

8TH GRADE: 8th Grade continued to explore the Social Studies Wiki and create their profiles. They will be starting to update the content on the wiki in the 2nd quarter.