Monday 9/20

Now we are getting into some more historical content!!! While the students are finishing up their analysis of Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat and preparing their presentations to teach the class (Monday, September 27th), we will be using class time to start getting into the Industrial Revolution. The IR set up the foundation for our modern world and we will be running segments of Modern Me and Putting the 'Us' in the Industrial Revolution to show the parallelisms between now and the IR and prepping for our debate.

One way we will be flushing out content during the Putting the 'Us' in the Industrial Revolution unit, is by housing content in pvOnline. We will be using pvOnline as a way to access content, organize groups, engage in online disussions, share videos and we will be combining that with face to face interactions and activities as well. pvOnline can be reached and used by any computer because it is a web-based program.

Here's how to login:

1. Go to: https://pvschools.mrooms2.net/login/index.php

2. Enter your username and external password (this is your pvLearners password)

3. Click Middle Schools

4. Search DLC

5. Select DLC7th Grade -Bailin

Tomorrow is a half day and we will be using class time for three things:

1. Demonstrate public speaking style of Miss Bailin/peer analysis, so you can get tips to improve on before presenting on Monday, September 27th.

2. While not meeting with Miss Bailin/group to receive presentation feedback (refer to the Public Speaking Rubric on the class webpage), students will be working on completing their slides. If students finish their slides, he/she should be on pvOnline and investigating the IR.

3. During 2nd and 8th periods, we will have a demo of glogster (http://www.glogster.com/) by some selected Alphas. Students are to ONLY investigate the educational area. Students will be making an All About Me multi-media poster for their _______'s Bio & Blog page on their :)DLC7 website. This will be due Monday, September 27th.

IMPORTANT NOTES

-School Dance is Friday

-Every Tuesday is Spirit Day....wear your Sunrise t-shirts

-Tuesday is a half day. No sports today.

-My midterm grades will be completed by Wednesday evening.

9/13 Welcome to Tech Trouble Shooting Day

Today was a day full of twists and turns in the tech trouble shooting world. There are times when we can't control everything that happens and most of the kids saw first hand today what happens with things go wrong. There are lots of ways to trouble shoot technology problems. The most important thing is to remember what applications were running and what you, as the user, were doing at the time when disaster hits. This helps us retrace steps.

Some students were able to show their products to the other block and Ms. Binder and I were very pleased about how the students behaved as audience members. We could see that a lot of effort was put in and many of the presentations have very sophisticated multi-media elements.

This week the focus will be on the students completing the Friedman notes and prepping their slide presentations. These presentations will be done in Google Docs, so students will not need to be checking laptops home unless they do not have access to the Internet. The purpose of these presentations is to teach the rest of the class a brief history of the 21st century as told by foreign affairs columnist and economist Thomas Friedman. These presentations are nothing fancy. The complexity comes from the information analysis, not the technology proficiency. It will be nice for the students to take a bit of a break from all the tech tinkering they have been doing. There are times when we just need to let things settle in and I believe we are at that point.

The students will also be learning about Final Cut Pro during class and experimenting with it.

I am very excited for our demo tomorrow.

The Short Week

This week were showed our Welcome Vids for our websites. The students have grown a great deal with what they can do with the software. The students were also working on their more creative product with their animated slides and poem vids. I can't wait until Monday to view these. We will even have all the :)DLC7 students together for the first time for the viewing!

Next week we will get more sophisticated and go more in-depth with The World is Flat. Make sure you are keeping up on your reading and revisions! :)

Jacob & Jackson's Demo

Later in the week, two Blender genius and all-around stellar tech gurus from the Alpha Class, Jacob & Jackson (as shown above), came in and did a presentation/demonstration for the Betas about Blender. They left the Betas with many feeling inspired and motivated. They left their former teacher feeling so humbled because they did this all on their own. I never showed them a THING about Blender. :)

8/30-9/3 Highlights

Monday, we had our first collaboration between the Alpha and Beta classes of the DLC. The Alphas served as mentors by viewing the students' projects, providing them feedback, assessing them on the Digitally Narrated Product Rubric, and demonstrating ways to revise their products with our technology tools. This was an incredible moment for me as a teacher. I was so proud watching the Alphas share their knowledge and I was so excited watching the Betas asking questions and trying out what their mentor shared with them. It was challenging to contain my joy during this time.

Shown Image Left: Austin, Brady, DJ, & Lucy

Topics covered this week: analysis of The Axemaker's Gift, expectations for Socratic Seminars, Google Scholar v. Google, basic research, credible sites/evaluating websites review, comparing and contrasting electronic v. hardcopy text, citations, Blender, and Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat.