Tag Archives: wordle

Computer Lab News 2nd Grade: Weeks 30 – End of Year

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For Earth Day, 2nd Grade discussed why they love the earth and things that we can do to help the earth. Each student then created original artwork using KidPix and these were added to the PlanetFesto ribbon along with their ideas of what they could do to help the earth. After this was completed, 2nd Grade used the PBS site, Eeko World which is designed to help children between the ages of 6 and 9 learn about the important role they can play in taking care of the earth.

The students continued to work on their typing skills using the Dance Mat Typing site. They will continue to use this site in 3rd Grade. 2nd Grade also practiced their Money Skills on various web sites, created a Mother’s Day Wordle which I hope made it home, practiced writing paragraphs in Word and played a variety of educational games to end the year including trying out Jumpstart 3rd Grade!

Next year, these students will participate in the Monster Project as well as continuing to learn about Internet Safety, Microsoft Office Products and Keyboarding.

Computer Lab News 8th Grade: Weeks 30-End of Year

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It was a pleasure teaching this year’s graduating 8th Grade class. They are all creative, wonderful students who will do great things in high school and beyond. They were very busy at the end of the school year with their End of Year project which resulted in the DVD they all received at the Graduation Breakfast. I hope that each of you has had a chance to watch this beyond the excerpts shown at the breakfast.

Prior to the End of Year Project, all 8th graders spent one day taking a series of timed typing tests and creating Excel spreadsheet to calculate their average typing speed. Many of this year’s 8th grade class loved Mavis Beacon and would spend time working in it every chance they got and this showed in some of the average speeds. For any 8th grader who isn’t already typing at least 40 wpm, I would highly encourage some keyboarding practice before they begin high school.

Each 8th grade student also viewed all of the Think Before You Post presentations and voted for their favorites in 3 different categories. The awards for these were given out at the Graduation Breakfast and congratulations again to the winners!

8th Grade also spent some time correcting errors in three poems about Spell Checkers. Often we all rely too much on the spell check feature in Microsoft Word and these poems point out that this tool will not catch every error you make in something you write. Try these yourself? Can you find all the errors?

For Earth Day, 8th Grade watched the discussed the presentation, The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard. As a follow-up to this presentation, each 8th Grade student created a ribbon piece on the PlanetFesto ribbon to celebrate the reasons they love the earth and to commit to doing something to help perserve the earth. Some of the 8th Grade students created original artwork for their ribbon piece while others used one of the stock photos available for this project.

Last but not least, 8th Grade added to the Social Studies wiki with their Wordles and analyses of Presidential Inaugural Speeches.

Computer Lab News: Weeks 21-29 – 8th Grade

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The first 8th Grade Social Studies podcast was completed. Unfortunately, one group’s recordings got corrupted somehow so this group is not included in the podcast. As I listened to the completed podcast, I discovered a few errors in the information included in the podcast that were not caught before the recording. Can you find them? I will be reviewing these with the class after Easter break. You can subscribe to all St. Martin’s Podcasts from iTunes at http://www.itunes.com/podcast?id=309479240.

As teenagers and soon to be high schoolers, 8th Graders tend to have more access to social networking and other sharing sites on the Internet. 8th Grade spent some time creating interactive PowerPoint presentations about thinking before you post online. When these were done, they uploaded them to St. Martin’s Computer Lab SlideBoom account and then embedded them on our wiki where you can see their presentations. 8th Grade will be viewing all of these and voting for their favorites after Easter break.

8th Grade also participated in World Math Day in the Computer Lab on March 3rd. World Math Day is an International event with students from around the world competing against one another in mental math games to try to set a world record for the most correct math answers in a 2 day period – 2 days because the event ran during the time that it was March 4, 2009 anywhere in the world. 8th Grade answered 2,983 questions correctly during World Math Day and each 8th Grader received a participation certificate from this event. Here are just a few statistics from World Math Day:

  • 204 Countries represented
  • 12,647 Cities/Towns participating
  • 38,058 Schools participating
  • 1,952,879 Students participating
  • 452,682,682 Questions correctly answered

Did you know that 3/14 is Pi Day? It is and in celebration, 8th Grade completed an extra credit Pi Day Trivia Hunt.

8th Grade has also begun a new Social Studies related project. They were each assigned a President and read that President’s Inaugural Address. They then posted their analysis of the address. After the Easter break, they will use Wordle to create a pictorial representation of the Inaugural Address and then re-analyze the speech. Both analyses (see the discussions tab) and the pictorial representations will be available on the 8th Grade Social Studies wiki.

Computer Lab News: Weeks 21-29 – 1st Grade

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1st Grade began their work in the lab in February by finishing their Penguin Math Books. These and the completed Penguin Glyphs will be shared on their page on the Winter Wonderland Wiki very soon. For Valentine’s Day, 2nd Grade did some graphing of Valentine’s hearts in Excel. We visited the Necco web site to learn how Conversation Hearts are made. Each student then got a box of Conversation Hearts which they grouped by color and counted. Then each student entered their numbers in the Excel spreadsheet found on the Activities page to create their graph. All of the results were combined on to a single spreadsheet and you can see the results on the 1st Grade Winter Wonderland Wiki page.

Much of the rest of February and March concentrated on keyboarding with the continued Adventures in Keyboarding focusing on letters “H” through “P”. In addition to this, 1st Grade also played the following keyboarding games which they can play online at home too:

March also brought World Math Day which is an International event with students from around the world competing against one another in mental math games to try to set a world record for the most correct math answers in a 2 day period – 2 days because the event ran during the time that it was March 4, 2009 anywhere in the world. 1st Grade participated in this event on March 5th and helped add 953 correct math answers to the world record. Here are just a few statistics from World Math Day:

  • 204 Countries represented
  • 12,647 Cities/Towns participating
  • 38,058 Schools participating
  • 1,952,879 Students participating
  • 452,682,682 Questions correctly answered

In celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, 1st Grade did a project about rainbows. They first watched an online book about how rainbows are formed and then each 1st Grader created Rainbow Alphabets in Microsoft Excel. This helped them to learn about rows, columns and cells and a little bit about formatting in Excel. The Rainbow Alphabets have been printed and sent home.

To celebrate Easter, 1st Grade first brainstormed ideas about Easter and we used an online tool called Wordle to create a picture of their ideas:

Wordle: 1st Grade Easter

After creating the Wordle, each 1st grader then drew an Easter picture in KidPix. These will be shared online soon.

In addition to everything else, 1st Grade also worked in Jumpstart 1st Grade this month.