Billings Beta » Projects

Spreadsheets and Snowshoeing and Scratch, Oh MY!

Jessie — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:36:43 +0000

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.

What is “PLAY”?

Jac de Haan — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:41:27 +0000

What happens when you give 67 middle school students access to a camera, a question and no adult supervision?

Billings students receive an Eco-code award!

Jac de Haan — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 04:27:14 +0000

A few weeks ago, Ronan, Rebecca and Peter got together to reflect on the ways we are trying to be environmentally responsible as a school. This conversation turned into a rap, and other students contributed their voices. The result was sent off to the wonderful people at the National Wildlife Federation as an entry for their annual Eco-Schools USA celebration.

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.

Billings Middle School Eco-School Eco-Code

Jac de Haan — Sat, 21 May 2011 03:47:42 +0000

As a proud member of the National Wildlife Foundation’s Eco-School partnership, Billings students took some time to reflect on some of the ways we try to be environmentally conscious as a school. From recycling to switching off lights to spending time outside, all of our actions fall into the 8 pathways to sustainability.

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.

Lego Mindstorm NXT 2.0 inventory checklist

Jac de Haan — Fri, 20 May 2011 15:41:10 +0000

Students love Lego Mindstorm NXT 2.0 kits but trying to put the kits away is no easy task. We couldn’t find an inventory checklist online so created our own, adapted from http://peeron.com/inv/sets/9797-1.

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

Students celebrate Media Arts

Jac de Haan — Fri, 13 May 2011 22:32:46 +0000

Rory, Jake, Cooper, Ben C, Enzo, and Milo headed over to Seattle Country Day School today for the first Northwest Middle School Media Festival. It was standing room only in the screening room.

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!

Googlers tinker too

Jac de Haan — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 18:06:27 +0000

Seattle middle school student explores a circuit board designed by the incredible Joe Grand as part of a trip to the Maker Faire.

One of the most exciting places to be at our school is the BricLab – a kinesthetic learning center where students take apart electronics and repurpose them for art projects. The work done in the BricLab is a nice deviation from class and also compliments many of the projects from other subjects.

Turns out Google thinks that hands-on time is important too. The Official Google Blog just posted an article about their Workshop: a place employees go to play with miter saws and plasma cutters.

In the spirit of our BricLab, this year teachers Sarah and Rachel are taking a group of students to San Francisco for the Maker Faire…a 60,000 person celebration of tinkering and do-it-yourself exploration! Click here to read about our 2009 trip to this amazing destination.

Design week: alphabet improv

Jac de Haan — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 17:31:29 +0000

This Design Week, one group looked at our theme of PLAY through the lens of musical and dramatic improv. They documented their experience with Flip video cameras and then edited the footage in iMovie. The soundtrack was recorded in Garageband and used only real instruments played by members of the group.

The prompt was simple: Sing the alphabet song in any style you like. Enjoy!

Blog for iPad

Jac de Haan — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 05:26:16 +0000

Just for fun we installed the onSwipe plug-in on our WordPress blog. This snippet of code re-formats content into a magazine-style layout for the iPad. Screenshots of the results are below:

Design Week 2011

Jac de Haan — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:02:20 +0000

6th and 8th grade students are busily engaged in the Billings tradition of “Design Week” in the days before Spring Break. How excited does everyone get about a week’s worth of exploration around this years topic of PLAY? 106.8 decibels worth of excited, according to our sound level meter! That is louder than a motorcycle or subway train.

To learn more about this year’s Design Week, check out the daily postings on our main website. If you are logged in as a school community member, you’ll have access to each day’s complete photo albums from the right sidebar.

The Battle of Fredericksburg

Jac de Haan — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 20:54:02 +0000

7th grade students are studying the Civil War in American History class. They decided to film recreations of some of the battles that occurred. Below is one example by Ben and Cooper with the rest of the class acting:

8th grade students’ art show open to public

Jac de Haan — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 18:31:06 +0000

Deividas and Isaac, two 8th grade students, have been playing with iPhone photography for almost a year now. Their first public art exhibit will open April 1st at Fremont Coffee. The show runs through April 30th and also features the work of students from John Hay, Coe and Lowell.

This opening coincides with the Fremont First Friday Art Walk. Congrats to all participants!

Tech Tuesday kicks off

Jac de Haan — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 20:42:29 +0000

Declan and Ben C. Have been looking for extra time to engage in independent programming. Their solution was to start a Tech Tuesday lunch club – and today was the first meeting!

11 students showed up and worked on projects that ranged from HTML, JavaScript, Alice, FLStudio and Scratch. Next meeting is scheduled for March 1st.

Independent Projects: Spreadsheets

Jac de Haan — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:42:06 +0000

7th grade has studied Spreadsheet functionality for a couple of months now. Finally we get a chance for some free exploration and to follow our personal interests. For 4 classes, students choose one path and try to bring an idea from concept to completion. The choices for these independent projects are:

find a data set and use formulas and graphs to make the data interesting and easy to understand
- example – figure out how many basketball courts there are in each zip code in Seattle
write some custom javascript to make the spreadsheet do something it doesn’t already do.
- example – a prime number tester that asks for a number and then tells you if it is prime or not
create a game in a spreadsheet that uses formulas and/or scripts to make it cool.
- example – battleship that is automatically set up when you click a button.
- example – battleship that keeps score and tells you when you win.
build a survey that dumps results into a spreadsheet and then analyze the results
- example – find out what the most popular cell phone service is and what kind of texting plan most students have.

And here is a breakdown of what students actually chose. It seems like option #1 didn’t enough creativity to capture attention. The majority of students chose to create surveys – what a great way to use technology to interact with other people and learn more about your world.

Samples of work will be posted on the blog as projects are completed.