Feb 28 - Mar 4

This was a very productive week.  I think every class got some good work done with some interesting learning experiences.  The big projects are coming along nicely...I am very impressed with the work our students are accomplishing.  Stay tuned for when we get these done...I think you will be impressed, too.

Kindergarten: 1A – Due to some time issues, class was cut a bit short, so I gave the students free time on Kid Pix.

1st Grade: We began our collage project.  The students used images.google.com to find images about a particular subject.  Once they understood the process behind finding images, we downloaded an image and saved it to their folders.  This process was similar to saving a Kid Pix document, so the students had a good basis for the theory, but given we were downloading in OS X vs OS Classic (Kid Pix), the interface was a bit different and it took the students a few minutes to get used to finding their folders.  We will download more pictures next week.

2nd Grade: We began our collage project.  The students used images.google.com to find images about a particular subject.  Once they understood the process behind finding images, we downloaded an image and saved it to their folders.  This process was similar to saving a Kid Pix document, so the students had a good basis for the theory, but given we were downloading in OS X vs OS Classic (Kid Pix), the interface was a bit different and it took the students a few minutes to get used to finding their folders.  We will download more pictures next week.

3rd Grade: We went onto the Internet and used google.com to research either their planet report or their Women’s History Month subject.

4th Grade: The students reviewed their work again to check for grammatical errors or omissions.  The students then gave each of their paragraphs a title that was centered, underlined, and bold.  We then talked about lists (bulleted and ordered) and how to create them using Appleworks.  The students began adding a list to their brochures.  We will finish the lists up next week and add pictures.
Homework:

5th Grade:We continuted to talk about using tables to format information on a web page.  We talked about using them to create sidebars and titlebars.  We talked about imbedded tables, borders, cellspacing, and cellpadding.  I worked with the students individually and reviewed with them the be best way to use tables in order to create the page they had laid out a few week ago.
Homework:

6th Grade: We talked about FTP and publishing a site.  The students set up their netscape to publish their site on the main server.  We published their sites on the Internet...if you would like to see their work up to now visit wornickjds.org with their grade and first name (lowercase)...for example: http://www.wornickjds.org/grade6/matt  We continued to add content and text.  Each week, students will save their work and publish it to the Internet.  We also talked about adding images to the web pages.  We talked about keeping the images in the same directory as the web page.  We talked about the two formats for images: JPG and GIF.  We also talked about alternate text and using the image as a link.
Homework:

7th Grade: We discussed using Hotkeys for quicker operating system navigation.  We talked about ways to find hotkeys in the menus, then spent the duration of the period creating a list of useful hotkeys for Mac OS and Windows.
Homework:

8th Grade: We brainstormed ideas for the theme of our final movie project.  We narrowed it down to our final theme...stay tuned for details.  Then we brainstormed ways to use that theme in the movie.
Homework: Write a 1 page description of your chosen part of the movie, preferably with dialogue.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me at matt@wornickjds.org

Have a great weekend!!!

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Matt Harris
Director of Technology
Ronald C. Wornick Jewish Day School