Congratulations go out to all the schools that entered – it is heartening to think that there are so many students in the world that are taking responsibility for the future and present of our planet.

Learn more about the contest on the National Wildlife Federation’s blog.

Ronan, Peter and Rebecca took the time to organize our thoughts into a song, and they were joined by Eli, Abe, Mason, Tati, Kyri, Rowan, Isabelle M, Isabelle B, Ben C and Ben B to record.

Here is our result: Eco-Code

And the lyrics:

Hey it’s Billings,
School environmental,
Earth day all year round,
Now roll the instrumental…

Perfect lawn, our school don’t need it,
Catch roof run-off and reuse it,
In the lunchroom we compost,
reduce the waste, recycle the most.

Energy is what comes when you recycle
Don’t waste this world, it’s just a cycle.

Playing at the park,
Watering the rain garden,
Having some fun too,
These are all the things we do.

Take a ride, on the Spud,
a bio-diesel bus that we all love,
Takes us places we can’t walk,
Trucking graceful, like a hawk.

Get on a bike reinvent your life,
Save the world, fight the good fight,
Feeling good on your commute,
Do the math, it all computes.

Green hour, gain some power,
Play outside for one or two hours,
Get unplugged and have some fun,
Feel the rain, soak up the sun.

All our actions are connected,
The Earth is precious, help protect it.
Take a moment to reflect
On your life, please show respect.

Playing at the park,
Watering the rain garden,
Having some fun too,
These are all the things we do.

Posting here for any other educators to download & print: pdf | doc

• View manipulation
  • Zoom
  • Zoom to extent
  • Pan
  • Orbit
• Draw
  • Line
  • Rectangle
  • Circle
  • Arc
  • Erase
  • Paint
• Manipulate
  • Push/Pull
  • Move
  • Rotate
  • Offset
• Advanced features
  • Section Plane
  • Scale
  • Keyboard Shortcuts

There were entries by students from Eton, Whitman, McClure, Vista, Woodinville Monessori and Catlin Gabel. Billings students represented the interactive category, with websites and games. Ben and Cooper entered their Battle of Fredricksburg film, which was well received.

We were honored to be joined on our journey by Noah, a Billings alum who helped found our DigiArts program and one of the organizers of the first Maker Faire trip that we took 2 years ago. Thank you Noah!

In tech class we’ve been using Google Earth to examine trail conditions, weather and tide charts. We’ve been learning to create custom maps and embed video and photos as well as taking advantage of the databases of info already available through the software.

The Pacific Science Center and Science Fiction Museum worked together to create an exhibit that looks at the science and technology behind Star Wars and connections between the film series’ science fiction and real-world robotics. Students got to design their own mag-lev trains and explored similarities between the programming in R2-D2 and a robotic vacuum cleaner.

Story 1: Two tweens charged with cyberstalking in Facebook incident

An 11-year old and 12-year old are accused of using an ex-friend’s Facebook account to post mean and sexual images and messages. This is a clear instance of posing, which we’ve previously studied as a form of cyberbullying. The 12-year-old student went before a judge today and pled not guilty.

Story 2: A superstar teen loses chance to be featured by the Seattle Times because of distateful tweets

A Seattle journalist was writing an article about a teen who is heading to college after beating the odds and moving to the US from a refugee camp.  As part of his research, he took a look at the teen’s Twitter account, which contained lewd language and drug related posts. As a direct result of the tweets, the journalist has decided not to write the story.

8th graders spent time debating the conflict between the teen’s positive actions and negative digital identity. Which is a more accurate depiction of the teen? Do we all have negative aspects of our life that aren’t meant to be recorded forever? What are healthy ways to explore identity without putting everything online?

1. Convince your robot to stay within a path outlined by masking tape against a black floor. The path weaves around the classroom. So far, students have figured out how to have their robots stop at the tape and change direction, but no solutions yet on how to the the robot to decide which way to turn.
2. Create a whisper bot, a robot that will only move when it is quiet in the room. If noise reaches a certain threshold, the robot will stop until it is quiet again. As an added challenge, if the robot receives an extremely loud noice (“STOP!”) then it will cancel it’s program and remain stopped forever.
3. Send your robot directly at a wall and have it stop without bumping into anything and then react using sound or movement.

As a result of the hack, there is a class-action lawsuit filed against Sony and the U.S. government wants answers too.

Sony’s stock price has dropped as a result of the intrusion, and on Monday they announced that another 25 million older accounts have been hacked as well.

While some students felt this story didn’t pertain to them personally because they don’t have a Playstation Network account, we quickly realized that there are many online locations that have similar databases of customer information.

Here is a list of places that students shop online, places that keep records of our address, name, birthday, credit card numbers, phone numbers, etc:

• iTunes music store
• Amazon.com
• XBOX Live
• Facebook
• eBay
• anywhere online that we shop!

Every time we buy from an online location, we are trading the convenience of instant gratification for the risk of losing control of our personal information. Sony is an incredibly unfortunate example.

Since the database breach occurred, Sony had to switch off their Playstation Network until they can fix the security issues. This means that millions of people can’t play games online with friends or buy new games. This results in millions of lost revenue dollars for the company and many angry customers.

Will this problem cause Playstation to lose the console battle with Microsoft? Will people be able to trust Sony with their personal information after such a news story?

iTunes' media organizer actually looks just like a spreadsheet, complete with a header row.

7th grade took a look at two popular programs that store information in a database and then drew similarities between spreadsheets and databases.

This work follows our previous learning about Spreadsheets and Excel.

Google Earth's databases don't look like a spreadsheet, but it is clear that every entry must include a photo, text, links, supporting organization, latitude and longitude. These are essentially columns in a giant spreadsheet.

While in Google Earth, students realized that the program includes references to the primary sources for photographs, just as we do when writing a research paper.