Jac de Haan
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Homepage: http://www.billingsmiddleschool.org/beta
Posts by Jac de Haan
Guest speaker: Emily from Cheezburger Network
6th grade students got to spend Thursday afternoon in a Q & A session with Emily Huh, co-owner of the Cheezburger Network. Her company runs 50 blogs dedicated to making people all over the world laugh. The most popular sites are FailBlog (2M+ pageviews per day) and ICanHazCheezburger (1M+ pageviews per day). Emily shared stories [...]
The Symphony of Science
John Boswell heads a group of digitally-literate musicians using their craft to teach science. Their auto-tuned YouTube videos are incredible – take a moment to watch and then head over to the Symphony of Science website to learn more about our world.
Wall-E technology
May 1, 2010 - 12:56 pm
Tags: iCLAST
Posted in 7th Grade | 2 comments
iCLAST (integrated class of language arts, science and technology) students watched Wall-E this week, as we transitioned from our identity unit the globalism & sustainability. In our post-film debrief, students focused on the technology present in the film: what was based in reality and what is already available today. Sophie L. used the iPad to [...]
Digital Arts updates
April 30, 2010 - 12:07 pm
Tags: Digital Arts
Posted in 7th Grade, 8th grade, Projects | Comments Off
The tech lab is the place to be on Monday and Wednesdays afternoons. 2 weeks into DigiArts, students are knee-deep in a variety of excellent projects: Jake successfully installed Linux on a donated computer and also harvested motors from a DVD/VCR combo unit. Alex is trying to change the infrared filter on an old video [...]
Big ideas turn into big companies
The 6th grade has been learning about world-changing companies for a couple of weeks now. We’ve got in depth with the history of Seattle native Bill Gates and learned about how he hacked his way from middle-school mischief maker to Harvard and then beyond. We followed his empire as it moved from the early days [...]
Art: showing vs. telling
April 26, 2010 - 8:40 pm
Posted in Projects | Comments Off
When Annie, the Billings visual arts teacher, wants to get students excited about a new journaling elective, she uses Google’s online Presentation tool to show instead of just tell. The idea worked – the class is full and students are excited!
Important Facebook privacy changes
April 23, 2010 - 12:07 pm
Posted in Digital Identity, Reference | 3 comments
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled plans to connect Facebook accounts with other companies all over the internet, from CNN to Levi’s and further. The changes to how other companies can use YOUR Facebook information are a big deal – please take a few minutes to follow this step-by-step guide to protecting your digital identity.
Apple in the news – iPhone 4G (HD?) & profits
April 22, 2010 - 11:34 am
Tags: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Tech in the News
Posted in 7th Grade | Comments Off
Spirited 7th grade conversation today, as students tracked the latest developments in the case of the iPhone 4G. We started by tracking Apple’s stock price this year, beginning with the iPad announcement and following through until yesterday’s report that Apple made over 3 billion dollars in the last quarter. Using Bing’s finance charts and Google’s [...]
World changing technology
April 20, 2010 - 7:59 pm
Posted in 6th Grade | Comments Off
The 6th grade has shifted from our unit of independent projects to a new focus on technology companies that are shaping the world. We started by naming all the companies we could think of that deal with technology and then started grouping them into like industries. We found that these companies fall into some fairly [...]
Community class sets their sight on a site
8th grade students have begun their final rotations this year, meaning 14 soon-to-be graduates have cycled up to the tech lab for Community Class. Students already had a strong understanding of the definitions and complexity of community, having recently spent a week studying the subject with a variety of teachers and team-based activities. Past groups [...]
