Billings Beta
technology with intention
Up to speed with SketchUp
262 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
Students celebrate Media Arts
267 days
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!
Google Earth and the Olympic Coast
268 days
by Jac de Haan
in 7th Grade
7th grade students have spent weeks in preparation for a 5-day hike in the remote North end of the Olympic Coast. We’ve learned about the biome and marine life, measured out hiking trails, practiced knots and tarp techniques, become familiar with backpacking stoves and packing techniques, played kickball while wearing hiking boots, and more in prep for the trip.
In tech class we’ve been using Google Earth to examine trail conditions, weather and tide charts. We’ve been learning to create custom maps and embed video and photos as well as taking advantage of the databases of info already available through the software.
STEM: In a galaxy far far away
268 days
by Jac de Haan
in 6th Grade
6th grade STEM students took a break from their recent study of programming and robotics to look at some more practical use of technology and engineering…Star Wars!
The Pacific Science Center and Science Fiction Museum worked together to create an exhibit that looks at the science and technology behind Star Wars and connections between the film series’ science fiction and real-world robotics. Students got to design their own mag-lev trains and explored similarities between the programming in R2-D2 and a robotic vacuum cleaner.
Digital identity close to home
270 days
8th grade students examined two stories of digital identity occurring this week in Washington state:
Story 1: Two tweens charged with cyberstalking in Facebook incident
An 11-year old and 12-year old are accused of using an ex-friend’s Facebook account to post mean and sexual images and messages. This is a clear instance of posing, which we’ve previously studied as a form of cyberbullying. The 12-year-old student went before a judge today and pled not guilty.
Story 2: A superstar teen loses chance to be featured by the Seattle Times because of distateful tweets
A Seattle journalist was writing an article about a teen who is heading to college after beating the odds and moving to the US from a refugee camp. As part of his research, he took a look at the teen’s Twitter account, which contained lewd language and drug related posts. As a direct result of the tweets, the journalist has decided not to write the story.
8th graders spent time debating the conflict between the teen’s positive actions and negative digital identity. Which is a more accurate depiction of the teen? Do we all have negative aspects of our life that aren’t meant to be recorded forever? What are healthy ways to explore identity without putting everything online?
STEM: Lego Mindstorm Sensors
275 days
by Jac de Haan
in 6th Grade
6th grade students are continuing their study of programming and creative problem solving with Lego Mindstorms. Building on our study of robot movement last week, we were presented with 3 new challenges this week, all requiring sensors!
- Convince your robot to stay within a path outlined by masking tape against a black floor. The path weaves around the classroom. So far, students have figured out how to have their robots stop at the tape and change direction, but no solutions yet on how to the the robot to decide which way to turn.
- Create a whisper bot, a robot that will only move when it is quiet in the room. If noise reaches a certain threshold, the robot will stop until it is quiet again. As an added challenge, if the robot receives an extremely loud noice (“STOP!”) then it will cancel it’s program and remain stopped forever.
- Send your robot directly at a wall and have it stop without bumping into anything and then react using sound or movement.
Playstation Network hacked
276 days
7th and 8th grade students this week are examining the timeline associated with a recent hacking of Sony’s Playstation Network. The story is evolving daily, as Sony releases information about the incident which may have caused over 77 million customer accounts to be compromised.
As a result of the hack, there is a class-action lawsuit filed against Sony and the U.S. government wants answers too.
Sony’s stock price has dropped as a result of the intrusion, and on Monday they announced that another 25 million older accounts have been hacked as well.
While some students felt this story didn’t pertain to them personally because they don’t have a Playstation Network account, we quickly realized that there are many online locations that have similar databases of customer information.
Here is a list of places that students shop online, places that keep records of our address, name, birthday, credit card numbers, phone numbers, etc:
- iTunes music store
- Amazon.com
- XBOX Live
- eBay
- anywhere online that we shop!
Every time we buy from an online location, we are trading the convenience of instant gratification for the risk of losing control of our personal information. Sony is an incredibly unfortunate example.
Since the database breach occurred, Sony had to switch off their Playstation Network until they can fix the security issues. This means that millions of people can’t play games online with friends or buy new games. This results in millions of lost revenue dollars for the company and many angry customers.
Will this problem cause Playstation to lose the console battle with Microsoft? Will people be able to trust Sony with their personal information after such a news story?
Spreadsheets beyond spreadsheets
282 days
by Jac de Haan
in 7th Grade
iTunes' media organizer actually looks just like a spreadsheet, complete with a header row.
7th grade took a look at two popular programs that store information in a database and then drew similarities between spreadsheets and databases.
This work follows our previous learning about Spreadsheets and Excel.
Google Earth's databases don't look like a spreadsheet, but it is clear that every entry must include a photo, text, links, supporting organization, latitude and longitude. These are essentially columns in a giant spreadsheet.
While in Google Earth, students realized that the program includes references to the primary sources for photographs, just as we do when writing a research paper.
Pribilof Islands
284 days
by Jac de Haan
in 7th Grade
7th grade students spend the spring learning about the effects of globalism and consumerism. This year, teachers are working with NOAA representatives to use the story of the Pribilof Islands as a case study of the impacts of trade on a culture.
In tech we are easing into the topic by getting a sense of the location of these tiny islands and scoring the primary database of Google Earth for video, articles and photos of the area. NOAA has posted a film that discusses what has happened to the people who live on the Pribilof Islands as the world learned of the seals that live there:
People of the Seal from NOAA Ocean Media Center on Vimeo.
“People of the Seal’ explores the centuries-old connection between the northern fur seal and the
Unangan natives of Alaska’s Pribilof and Aleutian Islands in the middle of the Bering Sea.
Aquilina Lestenkof traces five generations of her own family’s history in this remote part of the
world, weaving together native, Russian and American cultural threads. At the heart of the story
are the fur seals. Like the Unangan, the fur seals are struggling to survive. As Aquilina says, “if
they’re not here, then we won’t be either.”
*Special thanks to community member Pam G. who introduced us to this topic.
Googlers tinker too
284 days
by Jac de Haan
in Projects
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.
