Both the 7th and 8th grade have been spending time thinking, writing, and researching about Cyberbullying and Cyber-rights. In line with their work in  American History, 7th Graders are working on presentations on Cyber-rights and the constitution. Primarily, they are focusing their work on a court case that involves a student and a perceived violation of rights. 8th graders are using their knowledge of cyberbullying to create presentations for younger students on different types of cyberbullying and harassment. Central to their presentations is how to prevent harassment from occurring and how to stand up for others who are experiencing harassment.

We had about 40 parents attend and we had some great conversations about digital communication and teenagers. These parents are enthusiastic and ready to learn. I left feeling energized!

This led us to a discussion of how popular culture portrays the “ideal” male and female figure. Students had many ideas about what characteristics the media deems beautiful for both men and women including having a “fit” body, having tan skin, and blond hair. We got into more detail describing specific physical features of men and women, but also what personality traits are portrayed as positive by popular culture.

Catherine, our 7th grade Geography teacher has been using the Chromebooks a lot in her classes. She comments, “the Chromebooks have put geography tools at my students’ fingertips and allow them to work simultaneously, but at their own speed.  Doing so means kids can form a deeper understanding.  For instance, while taking a Google Maps “tour” of Washington State, kids were able to develop the important navigating skills at their own pace, insuring the mastery of those skills.  As I moved around the room, I could show more advanced tools to those who had already achieved the objectives of the lessons.”

Linda, 6th and 8th grade Language Arts teachers is excited about the mobility the Chromebooks provide. This allows students to work in comfortable spaces. The Chromebooks also allow for quick and easy research or other online activity (they log on in seconds).

But, in the interest of being fair, we have had some (minor) challenges with the Chromebooks. The touch pads are a little finicky at times and some kids have difficulty navigating sites like Google Maps. We’ve also found that at times the kids are tempted to play around online more with the Chromebooks because of their mobility (maybe they feel like no one is watching them work?) Now, these are not problems that don’t have relatively easy solutions. USB or Bluetooth mice are pretty inexpensive these days, and classroom management and boundaries are a reality with any tool.

Overall, it seems like the Chromebooks are a great tool for many classes so far. We’ll see how things go, but hopefully, we’ll continue to move forward. I’ll check in again as the school year continues.

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.

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.

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.

After discovering that Rachel, Nevada draws science fiction enthusiasts, that the half-life of cesium-137 is shorter (30 years) than uranium-238 (4.5 billion years), and how to say good morning in Romanian (bună dimineaţa) the students came together and discussed how to conduct a Google search that provides you with the information you need.

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.

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!

7^th 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.

6^th grade has been spending time reviewing Internet use expectations and understanding passwords. In what has become a Billings tradition, 6^th 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.

8^th 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.