We watched “Odd Girl Out“, a movie based on Rachel Simmon’s book of the same title.  We analyzed the different ways in which the main character, Vanessa, was victimized using technology (cell phones, cameras, chat, website):

• posing – someone pretends to be you and says things to your friends that are hurtful or untrue
• excluding – creating online communities based on leaving someone out
• outing – sharing someones secrets…especially easy if those secrets are already typed up on caught on camera
• flaming – saying horrible things about someone or their work, with a disproportionate amount of hate involved. Often cloaked in anonymity
• bashing – a group of people ganging up on an individual, anonymous or not, to break down self-esteem

Students were divided on which of these types of cyberbullying would be most harmful, but we all agreed that when you add a few types together, it can really ruin someone’s life.

We agreed that the main character in “Odd Girl Out” would have had a tough time reporting bullying because it would have been embarrassing and would have made school difficult to face.  We decided that the pain an awkwardness of getting help would have been a better solution than the path she chose (hiding her pain and protecting the bullies).

Students ended by reminding each other that Facebook gives you the ability to block people and also to report bullying to the company.  With cell phones, you can block a phone number or forward a message to a parent or trusted adult.

iPhone updates:
iPod touch with camera shows up in Vietnam
Apple loses a second 4th gen iPhone, new insights discovered
iPhone Finder Regrets His ‘Mistake’
Police Raid Gizmodo Editor’s House, Confiscate Computers

Facebook updates:
Facebook Users Plan to Quit the Service on May 31
Senators’ letter to Facebook
Facebook and Others Caught Sending User Data to Advertisers

Google Street View troubles:
Google faces U.S., German probes on data collection

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.

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 research plasma guns. Forrest, Jamal and Augie discussed various methods of containment using energy or elements.  Reyna, Nova and Isaac shared their experiences or knowledge of mag-lev bullet trains in Japan.  Everyone participated in the hour long discussion.

There was a vigorous conversation about whether the technology in the movie was “good” or “bad.”  Rachel L. and Izzy were the two students to declare that “tech isn’t good OR bad, it’s how humans use it that caused Wall-E’s world to become what it was.”

• 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 camera to capture a light spectrum invisible to the human eye.
• Ella and Cillian have got the Arduino boards communicating with a couple of lab computers, and are writing basic programs (so far just output but soon we’ll tackle input as well).
• Rachel, Torri, Remy, Charlie and Griffyn are working on 3 different screenplays and will begin filming next week.
• Noah completed his first hand-coded website. Click here to view his iPad review and then click here to learn more about it.
• Lexi is recording a reharmonization of a Miley Cyrus song.
• Mike dismantled a laptop and is ordering a couple of kits from the MakerShed.
• Elijah has been working with a mixing board for turntables and an old Yamaha keyboard.

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 time-related search results, we mapped increasing share price and product announcements over the last 3 years.  We found a clear trend – stock prices rise between the announcement of a new product and it’s actual launch.

Also, we realized that much of the pre-launch marketing around Apple products is free – news outlets and bloggers share stories and compete to scoop each other with rumors and insider (mis)information.  This is great news for Apple, since they don’t have to spend all of their money to get the word out.

Now to the rumor of the week – an Apple employee supposedly left a prototype of the new iPhone (to be released this summer) in a California bar.  The device was sold to Gizmodo, which has dedicated an entire portion of their site to stories about this gadget.  This creates more buzz for Apple as other news outlets report on Gizmodo’s reporting.

Students used Google’s real-time “updates” to monitor how many stories are bouncing around the blogosphere and Twitter channels about this story.  While there is a bump in traffic, we don’t think that this story is enough to sustain interest through the summer.  What else will Apple tell us about the new product to keep news outlets interested?

Some students wondered if Apple had “lost” the iPhone on purpose to try and get free advertising from bloggers, newspapers, television and radio.  Some bloggers suggest that Gizmodo got punked by Apple.

One class had an unexpected find during class today, a webpage that simultaneously searches Google and Bing, displaying results side-by-side.  In Firefox, you can actaully set http://www.google-vs-bing.com/ as your default search engine if desired.

Jamal taught himself to use Garageband to create an original rap about his life and how it has shaped his identity.  Judge the results for yourself:

Just because 7th graders are in the field doesn’t mean they aren’t experiencing technology. Students are using cameras to document their experience, and we used a map to plot out our week-long journey. Click on an icon to learn more about each location:

Also, a few photos have been sent home via MMS (cell phone multi-media messaging service):

The girls at their Tuesday campsite.

Passover Seder meal.

As an example, we took a look at a beautiful new visual representation of the top 100 websites, organized by popularity and category.  How many can you guess before visiting the BBC News site to check out the results?

Today we added a new service to the Google suite: Aviary.  Aviary is an online editing suite for sound recording, graphics and vectors.  7th grade students spent Tech this week playing with the new tools – creating custom t-shirt designs, remixing beats and mocking up album covers for an iCLAST identity project.

Our mission: to figure out if these tools are intuitive enough and robust enough to use regularly. While these online offerings aren’t as powerful as their software counterparts (Photoshop, Garageband, Illustrator), they are free and accessible from home/school/library/anywhere with an internet connection.

So far so good, we’ll keep testing and report our findings in future posts.

Billings students: to access Aviary, log in to Google Apps.  In the top left corner you’ll see “Documents Calendar Sites more.”  Select “more” and then “Aviary” from the dropdown list.  Enjoy.

]]> http://www.billingsmiddleschool.org/beta/2010/03/12/aviary-addition-to-google-apps-for-edu/feed/ 0 http://www.billingsmiddleschool.org/beta/2010/03/02/ok-go-followup/ http://www.billingsmiddleschool.org/beta/2010/03/02/ok-go-followup/#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:11:56 +0000 Jac de Haan http://www.billingsmiddleschool.org/beta/?p=881 On Monday, the 7th grade talked about the band OK GO and their inability to post embeddable videos due to the record contract they have in place.  State Farm Insurance stepped in and gave the band money to make a new video that falls beyond the EMI agreement.  Enjoy this massive Rube Goldberg machine:

1. OK GO is a band that became popular through some awesome YouTube videos.  Instead of signing a recording contract and spending millions on advertising, they made a couple of low-budget, hilarious films and posted them online.  The videos were so popular that they got signed by EMI.  You can see the famous “treadmill” video (more than 49 million views) at YouTube because embedding has been disabled at the request of the record label.

The band recently made a new video  and posted it on their website for all their fans, but EMI (the record label) was not happy and made them remove it.  This is bizarre because the internet made them famous but now their bosses asked them not to use this tool to connect with fans.  To watch this video, you have to go to YouTube so that EMI can get paid by the advertisers.

OK GO has a great online presence, using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and their own website to promote their brand (band).  We took a look at their Facebook page and found out that they are performing at the Sasquatch! music festival in Washington in May.  That took us to the second part of our class…

2. We opened Google Earth and searched for the The Columbia Gorge, where the music festival takes place every year.  From there, we prepped for the upcoming Washington State History quiz on notable locations around the state.  We used Google Earth to locate the Coulee Dam (pictured below), Adams and other mountains, major freeways, lakes, tribes and more.

Searching our own names online (Bing, Google, Ask, Yahoo, Pipl.com, Spock.com), we found that unless you know someone in the real world, it can be impossible to figure out what results are accurate and which are about someone completely different.  This can become important when it is time to apply for high school, college or jobs, as well as with friends and parents.

A few students, like Aranza and Deividas, have unique enough names that there wasn’t any misinformation associated with their searches.  Others, like Forrest, learned that there are thousands of results that have little to do with their own lives.

Some highlights of the class:

• Aaron is an all conference 2nd baseman who hit .351
• Sophie S. went to The Giddens School (true fact)
• Veronica lives down in Grenada Hills, CA
• Toby died during the war of 1812
• Isabel stars in 2 teenage novels
• Dani is a broadway star-quality singer and dancer
• Amanda works at Parliament
• Rachel L. has 2 children
• Augie’s dad’s name is Chris (true fact)
• Aselya has her own radio station
• Sophie L. is a honey farmer
• Curtis won the 2008 stock market game (true fact)
• Nicholas has a 5-star film
• Alex is a DJ
• Nicole has a boyfriend named Steve
• Twig is a florist
• Halley is a 43 year old Englishman
• Abbey is a 70 year old Australian
• Nova volunteered to feed kids (true fact)
• Forrest is a 3 out of 4 star doctor
• Rachel R is a supervisor at Netflix
• Isaac is a black male who died in South Carolina
• Drew is an actor
• Ronan is a Facebook friend with someone named Ilya (true fact)
• Reyna is a business analyst from Toronto
• Nick is a realtor in Mount Vernon
• Sophia gets her hair cut in Queen Anne (true fact)
• Aranza is mentioned in a webpage about brain research (true fact)