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.”

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)

On the last day of school in December, students took an online self-reflection survey to share their experience with the first 3 months of iCLAST (integrated class of language arts, science and technology).

Today we took the anonymous quantitative data from that survey and explored trends between student submissions. Students were also given a data set from the 08-09 school year for comparison.

The QOD (Question of the Day): Based on student ratings, was last school year’s iCLAST more difficult than this year?

Aaron came closest to cracking the data.  He used a formula to figure out how many students assigned each rating and then graphed the results.

The formula: =COUNTIF(Sheet1!$A$2:$A$38, “1″) and repeat while replacing the “1″ with the rating given.

His resulting charts looked like this – enjoy drawing your own conclusions:

Students quickly recognized that this was a “think and search” question…and there were multiple puzzles to solve:

• current President: Barack Obama
• daughters’ nicknames: Sasha & Malia
• last public record: 2008

So the question became, “Which name was more popular in 2008, Sasha or Malia?”

There were quite a few ways of finding this answer using search engines.  Most students ended up at babynames.com or the Social Security Administration website.  Some employed the Control+F keyboard shortcut to search for names in a list.

Once the dust settled, Halley, Elijah and Twig took top prize for cracking the code!  We then took a few minutes to get familiar with  WolframAlpha, a computational knowledge engine that is built specifically for mathematical and statistical analysis.  Typing in “sasha, malia name 2008″ quickly netted a clear answer:

In December, students will be working in groups of 3 to create a photo video that documents our favorite Science labs of the year so far.  We’ll be using collaborative document editing to create the perfect lab report that covers the Scientific Method.  We’ll use that report to write a narrative with a specific audience in mind, learn to use the digital cameras and tripods to photograph the experiment, introduce ourselves to PhotoStory so that we can stitch the photos together on the computer, and then record our voices over the photos.

• orange text – tech skills
• blue text – language arts skills
• green text – science skills

• logging into school computers
• accessing school email via Outlook Web Access
• using the Student Homepage effectively
• accessing Google Apps for Edu accounts
• retrieving information from the iCLAST and American History websites
• use and care of the new laptop cart

These skills will allow students to manage their own learning: find out what happened when sick, contacting teachers and other students, accessing missing worksheets, checking assignment status for classes, taking advantage of extended learning opportunities, and more.

In tech class this week, we are solidifying our new skills through practice – we’ve taken an online iCLAST survey,  will flex some math muscles while analyzing typing results in a spreadsheet, and posted LA manifestos to the computing cloud.

acronym – a word formed from the initials or other parts of several words
defame – to attack somebody or somebody’s reputation, character, or good name

We also talked about the 9/9/09 Apple event at Moscone Center in San Francisco.  We monitored TUAW’s Twitter and blog to find out what was going on in near real-time. In the process, we got a chance to discuss the iCLAST Twitter account (used to help parents understand what we are doing at school) and the Tech Blog.