6th Grade

Tech class happenings.

The Great Depression, Recovery & WWII – a visual history

7th grade American History students worked together this past Spring to create a class-wide non-linear presentation that allowed visitors to immerse themselves in understanding, with the assistance of their teacher, Catherine.

Embed your head into this fascinating topic through the groups’ final deliverable:

Last 6th grade tech of the year :(

The last tech class of the year ended as we began – out of the lab in a group discussion.

We started by using emoticons to share our feelings about our tech journey coming to an end.  Some students felt :( and others 8) or :P

Students shared their favorite technology experiences this year:

They also offered suggestions for improvements next year, ranging from school-provided laptops to more time in the lab.

Finally, our conversation turned to summer plans.  We talked about healthy screen time, concerns over cell phone over-usage and non-tech related summer activities.  The 6th grade is planning on an amazing summer outdoors – some activities they’ll be engaged in include:

  • parkour summer camp
  • dog walking
  • swimming
  • playing checkers and other board games
  • tennis
  • ultimate frisbee camp
  • writing letters
  • learning a new language
  • basketball
  • cooking

Thanks everyone for a great year, 7th grade will be even more amazing!

Summer technology opportunities

Summer is fast approaching and students have been asking about technology and computing opportunities around town.  Of course summer is a time to get away from a screen and explore a world of sunshine…that said, here are some offerings to compliment fresh air and exercise:

Lego Robotics @ Billings: Billings Middle School has our very own Seattle Lego Robotics camp, presented in conjunction with the amazing educators at EdLab.  2 sessions – August 2-6 and 9-13.

iD Gaming Academy: Held at the University of Washington, this 2-week overnight game development camp is a great opportunity to learn about video game creation.  6th grade student Gray says “you get to make your own unique game and play it as well as play other peoples games.”

911 Media Arts: Classes in making movies, digital storytelling, website design, and more.

Reel Grrls: Get hands on with animation and video production day camps – girls only!

TechReach: SeaBots – Dive into science. This girls only one-week camp is a great intro to programming and Lego robotics.

Youth in Focus: Intro to digital photography classes are offered 2x a week. Applications are due end of May.

World changing technology

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 tidy classes:

  • communication – cell phone companies, email
  • entertainment -content producers, cable & satellite services
  • identity – social networking, photo storage sites
  • energy – fuel cells, alternate sources
  • transportation – airlines, car companies
  • productivity – software companies, hardware companies

In the next few weeks we’ll have visitors from a variety of industries come to the tech lab and talk about how they use technology in their every day work.  We’ll post photos and thoughts as we get underway.