technology with intention
6th Grade
Tech class happenings from the 6th grade, including STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math).
My Digital Life…
219 days
In tech this week students have been reflecting on their digital lives. We had a good conversation about what the differences are between “media” and “digital media”. Based on these reflections, students created an illustrated simile that represents their digital media lives. Below are examples from two 6th grade students.
Welcome Back!
It has been an exciting first month at school! 6th grade has been introduced to the lab and designed a code of conduct for the lab. 8th grade has been learning about the basics of digital identity in preparation to design a survey for the school community.
There has been real excitement in 7th grade where students have a “flipped” classroom model this term. For a quick overview of the “flipped’ classroom, please see http://www.thedailyriff.com/articles/the-flipped-class-conversation-689.php. Students are working on different projects, using Scratch, Gimp, Pivot Stickfigure, Code Academy and TypingWeb.
Fun with Images!
For the past two weeks, 6th Graders have been experimenting with a program called Paint.NET. For their introduction, they were given an image of the Space Needle to manipulate in any way they chose. Here are two examples of their work.
While we had a ton of fun playing with these images, we used our new knowledge of the program to transition into a discussion of copyright and the Advanced Image Search in Google. We learned that there are no images of “Katniss Everdeen” from The Hunger Games that can be used, shared or modified but if we searched a more general term like “elephant” there were more than 4000.
Social Media and Civil Rights
Seventh Graders have spent the past two weeks using their knowledge of the US Constitution to discuss what rights they have when it comes to digital media. We read two articles to give us an idea of the current state of rights and social media today.
First, we read about a student who was suspended from school after she posted about another student on Facebook. Next, we read about the introduction of a bill in the House of Representatives preventing companies from requiring employees to give up their social media passwords. Students used information from their American History class, as well as the knowledge they gained from playing “Do I Have a Right?” at icivics.org to support their own views.
Spreadsheets and Snowshoeing and Scratch, Oh MY!
Wow, sorry it’s been so long between posts. Between the Winter program, snow days, and Christmas break, we’ve been extremely busy!
The 6th graders have been working hard on learning the program Scratch, developed by MIT Media Lab. This is their first classroom experience with programming, and many of them are taking off and really enjoying it! So far, they have completed two of the four sets of challenges, and by the end of the unit, they will be able to use the program to create video games, animations and more!
7th grade has been working to develop their skills with spreadsheets, and are currently making their own “battleship” game with Microsoft Excel. This week we worked on using the “if” function with numbers and text. Pretty soon, we’ll be able to match up and play our games.
8th Grade has taken a little bit of a hiatus from the tech lab since they snowshoe on their day of tech class, but pretty soon we will be working to develop a survey for the entire school on uses of different technologies both in and out of the classroom. They started by thinking about how they effectively use technology at school and the different ways teachers at Billings use tech in the classroom to enhance learning.
R.I.P Steve Jobs
The Tech world was struck last week by the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Both the 6th grade and the 8th grade took the opportunity to reflect on the development of the company, what the company is known for, and how products have changed over time.
Members of the classes included these products in a list of what Apple is known for:
- iPad
- iPod Classic/Touch/Nano/Mini/Shuffle
- iPhone
- Macbook Pro/Air
- iMac
- Pixar
- iTunes
- App Store
We researched different Apple products, including the original Macintosh from 1984, the first iMac, the Apple II series, and discovered a lesser known Apple product the Bandai Pippin. We also played around on the way back machine and looked at what apple.com looked like in 1998!
Welcome Back!
A lot has been happening in the tech lab since school started! We’ve been busy reviewing lab expectations and getting back into the swing of the school year.
7th graders worked in groups to define technology terms in their own words. Definitions included “a network of information that most computers can access” and “the giant digital information superhighway” for Internet; and “a program that lets you connect to the Internet” with examples of Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox for Web Browser. Other terms we defined included WWW/Web, Cloud, Web Address/URL, Program, Search Engine and Address bar.
6th grade has been spending time reviewing Internet use expectations and understanding passwords. In what has become a Billings tradition, 6th grade heard the story of Linkin Park lead singer Chester Bennington and his experience when many of his online accounts were hacked as a result of poor password choice. The class worked together to come up with different passwords based on everyday words. Kangaroo became k@N6aro0, computer became c0Mpu+3r and technology became T3cHn0\o6Y. We decided that good passwords include lower and UPPER case letters, numbers and symbols.
8th graders were introduced to the Hurt Square and were presented with various scenarios to rank on the square. We decided that sometimes actions online are less hurtful and more annoying, but they still have an impact in our lives.
What is “PLAY”?
657 days
What happens when you give 67 middle school students access to a camera, a question and no adult supervision?
STEM memories
716 days
by Jac de Haan
in 6th Grade
6th grade students completed an evaluation survey of our STEM experiences this year. Before we got to work, we took a look back at some memories of the year:
Up to speed with SketchUp
732 days
by Jac de Haan
in 6th Grade
6th grade students are deep in the study of SketchUp. Skills practiced so far:
- 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
