6/9/2017 June 9. 2017Congratulations to the Class of 2017! Though I did not get to tell each of you in person, my wish is that your high school years will be filled with enriching learning experiences, the companionship and support of old and new friends, and the confidence to know that you can accomplish great things. Understand that goals worth reaching are always worth the effort. Find your passion and believe in your dreams. Thoughts shared with previous graduates: Some important ideas I hope you take away from this past year are a sense of time management, attention to detail, taking pride in what you produce and create, and learning how to learn. By that I mean, in this time of digital overload of information, how do you know what is true, what is right, what is safe? We can no longer say, "No one ever taught me that" because all we have to do is find someone on YouTube or Twitter who is an expert in that skill we need to learn. We can sign up for an online course or learn about a topic in so many ways. Teaching correct use of digital tools and providing you with opportunities to think, analyze, and create is our way of "teaching you to fish", rather than merely handing you some fish. There is a wonderful world out there. Continue to learn what is worth keeping and what to throw back. Make a positive mark on the world. When He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch." (Luke 5:4) We have worked on a variety of skill areas this year, including: critical thinking organization of information evaluating websites for authenticity and purpose writing/communication skills analyzing and synthesizing information time management research skills comprehension of informational text crediting sources choosing appropriately licensed media image editing formatting spreadsheets writing formulas in spreadsheets creating graphs blogging digital citizenship coding and programming logic video production in Moviemaker and iMovie Our final project of the year could have used a little more time for "tweaking" and polishing (or proofreading) but every team managed to complete the impact video. I hope that these topics have made you realize the importance of the choices you make and the impact you can have on the future of our planet and the future of mankind. Perhaps your message will have an impact on someone else's choices as well. Video links are below. 8th Grade 60 Second Earth Impact Videos What is the impact of landfill leachate on groundwater? What is the impact of stormwater runoff on the environment and human health? How does surface mining/strip mining impact the environment? Could CO2 capture and storage have an impact on reduction of carbon emissions? What is the impact of increasing greenhouse gas emissions on humans and the environment? How does deforestation impact global climate change? What is the impact of fracking on groundwater? What is the impact of agricultural pesticides on groundwater? What is the impact of soil degradation and desertification on the environment? What is the impact of rising CO2 levels on the ocean? What is the potential environmental impact from oil sands and the Keystone XL Pipeline? What is the impact of bottled water use on the environment and human health? What is the impact of styrofoam on human health and the environment? How can the use of geothermal energy impact climate change? What is the impact of groundwater depletion on the environment? Remember the quote on the computer lab wall by the legendary football coach Lou Holtz: Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. If I can ever be of any assistance to you in your high school years as you cast your net out over the sea of knowledge, please do not hesitate to contact me. I would love to know of your high school adventures. Be safe in the physical world and in the digital world. Keep your digital footprint (digital tattoo) clean. God bless you all!
Love, Mrs. Ruffing Note: Your Google account will remain active until June 20, and the email restriction will be lifted so that you may access and share any of the contents of your school account to your personal email. After that date accounts will be suspended. 5/20/2017 May 20th, 2017Final deadline of the year is May 25 for the Impact: Earth 60 second video project. Teams had many options on how to create their 60 second video to convey a message about an issue of environmental concern in order to educate others about the problem and to encourage action to improve the situation. Each video will need to contain 3 basic areas: explanation of the scientific phenomenon, explanation of why this event is a problem, and a call to action to counter the problem presented. All of these problems have an impact on the earth and its inhabitants. The goal is to not only have students become more aware of these issues in order to make responsible choices now and in the future, but to allow them to use their creativity and communication skills to share their concern with others. This project is a science/tech project and will be assessed in both areas. I have been writing comments and evaluating the previous assignments and although there was open lab every day last week and there will be in the coming week, there are some students who have not made the connection between an Incomplete and the fact that something is due. Each student should be checking Google Classroom to be sure there is nothing left to be turned in.
Final Stock Standings: A list of the top 5 portfolios based on accurate completion of the spreadsheet and class standings totals: 1. Maya $10,975.59 2. Marin $10,853.14 3. Gavin $10,599.80 4. Rece $10,464.14 5. Jack $10,461.26 Students began with $10,000 and since the market was performing well in February and March, most students did make a profit. Congratulations to all our investors! Maya's portfolio consisted of 16 shares of Apple, 16 shares of Johnson & Johnson, 15 shares of United Technologies Corporation, and 30 shares of Goldman Sachs. 5/2/2017 May 2, 2017During the weeks since the last post eighth graders should have been finishing up all work related to the stock market. I am still unable to post final results of the standings because of some students not correcting their errors for submitted data, but the next post will contain a list of the top five "investors" during our 8 weeks in the stock market. I will also share the stocks they chose, whether deliberately or at random, in case anyone wants some" investing tips". Prior to our stock market work we had been using Pixlr to learn some image editing techniques and how to choose images from the web that could legally be used with permission and even edited if the license permitted. The culminating activity was a "mashup" of an image which had been chosen, edited in some way, and then overlayed with the student's quote of choice for the yearbook. Although this should have been completed at the end of trimester 2, I let it flow into trimester 3 because there were so many students who had not finished the assignment.One big problem for some students is time management, and not being able to use the limited amount of class time wisely. Some students will get right to an activity and keep at it until finished. Others, not so much. Missing a class due to illness or a trip will put you behind and you need to invest your own time to get caught up! One of the organizational strategies I have tried to develop with classes from the early grades is that of using a checklist of what needed to be completed and highlighting each item in the list as it was completed. There are still some students in 8th grade who never seem to look at the assignment details (which usually contain a teacher created example) and go on to submit an assignment that is only partially complete, or worse, never submit anything at all. These organizational skills and attention to details will be essential in high school. Attention: Whatever has been completed on the 010-8 Image Quote Mashup, 014-8 Pre-writing Chart, and 015-8 Stock Market video response by Friday, May 5, will be what is evaluated. WYSIWYG = The old tech acronym, "what you see is what you get".
The following Monday, May 15, will be the final acceptance of the line graph 017-8 (which was due on April 10) and the week after that will be the sharing post (which is simply combining the information from the pre-writing chart with the line graph to share publicly.) There was an open lab offered on May 2. There were no 8th graders who felt they needed to ask for help or get caught up on anything. I will continue to offer open labs, and in some cases actually send for individuals as necessary. 3/31/2017 March 31, 2017We have been wrapping up our work with the stock market with several related activities. Students previously submitted a spreadsheet containing weeks 1-4 showing the performance of their portfolios and now should have submitted the same spreadsheet showing weeks 5-8. (Due Date: March 30). Our portfolio activity ran from Feb. 1 to March 22. We have a class standings document to see who was ahead after the first 4 weeks and then who is the final "stock market champion" BUT...several students had calculation errors for the Feb. 22 total and so I will not announce the mid-point rankings until those calculations are corrected. We are now putting together a line graph to show the performance of one stock from the portfolio and writing about that company and an analysis of the stock's performance. April 13 is the due date for submitting the line chart and later in April the blog post will be due that summarizes the performance. As we finish up our work on with the stock market and spreadsheets we will be moving into an Earth Day related science and technology project. Students will be working in teams to research and then share a current environmental problem. More will follow on that topic. REMINDER TO STUDENTS: Always check your Google Classroom calendar to be sure you are aware of project deadlines! 2/27/2017 February 27, 2017On Thursday in tech class I posted the following list of assignments from Trimester 2 and the status of each: 008-8 Selective Coloring of Images Using Pixlr 009-8 Sharing Colorized Images Blog Post (one student incomplete) 010-8 Image Quote Mashup (being moved to Trimester 3) 011-8 Stock Selection Chart (2 students incomplete) 012-8 Coding Self Paced Progress (2 students incomplete) 013-8 Stock Spreadsheet displaying weeks 1-4 of Stock Game (due Feb. 27) Any student missing one of the above, except for the last assignment, will have an Incomplete grade displayed in PowerSchool. The 010-8 image activity is being pushed back for completion because a)there were still many incompletes and b) some of those completed had a poor quality image which will display poorly in the final sharing of the images and quotes, so we will revisit that in order to make improvements in technique. Students should have finished updating their stock portfolios and should also have entered their total in the class standings document. In the next post I will be indicating who is in the lead after the first four weeks. Almost all students have made a gain, but will that hold up over the next four weeks? Students are seeing what a workhorse a spreadsheet can be and how much time it can save if it is set up correctly. We are working with formulas, formatting, and functions in our stock activity. From here we will go on to analyzing the performance of one of the companies and creating a line graph to display the stock's performance during the course of the game. B&O Common Stock via Wikipedia in the Public Domain
1/19/2017 January 19, 2017Below I am listing some revised due dates for assignments. Today we are revisiting the 009-8 assignment because so many students did not follow directions that scores would have been pretty horrible. I want to stress the importance of putting forth your best work when you are publishing something for the world, so I will be reviewing some of the common errors I am seeing. One frustration is that many students are quick to do just the minimum of explanation (which really is not an explanation at all) and say they are finished, without going over the list to be sure all required elements have been included. Going over directions carefully and paying attention to details is an important life skill, as is meeting deadlines. If something takes longer in class than you expected (or you spent time chatting or were not focused) then there will be additional time outside of class needed in order to meet a deadline. We have quite a few students who are not convinced. 009-8 due date has been changed to today. I will be pointing out where I have seen mistakes and omissions and allowing the post to be re-submitted. Another issue that needs to be addressed is something that is not the fault of the student, but the Kidblog platform. We first encountered this issue when Kidblog changed from a WordPress platform to AWS. This has also caused some posts published in prior years to no longer be formatted correctly. The issue is with image crediting. When the 3 part image credit is used at the end of the post, the AWS format forces the image to appear in the post itself, even though the blogger wants to only provide a link to the image. This does not happen in other platforms such as Edublogs, and it is a great frustration. I will be working with students to edit their HTML to remove this. Alert: The deadline for choosing stocks (011-8 Getting Started with the Stock Market) is still Jan. 23! There are some video clips which should be viewed before stocks are chosen to guide the decision making process. When students come into class on Jan. 26 anyone who has not submitted the choice document will take 4 random picks from a grab bag of stocks from the Dow Jones Industrial Average. We will be setting up week 1 of the stock sheet using the stocks that have been chosen. There will be no changes made on that date! The image and quote mashup (010-8) has been moved to Feb. 9. The coding individual progress deadline has been moved to Feb. 17. Trimester 2 Progress Report - issued on Jan. 20 - will only contain one grade for 8th grade at this time because of the adjusted deadlines. 1/2/2017 January 2, 2017Happy New Year to all 8th graders and their families! 2017In looking over the past assignments I am going to recap the status and hopefully some of you will be reminded of some projects that need attention. Remember that on time points are a part of every project evaluation. 008-8 was due back on November 29. There are 3 students in 8A and 2 students in 8B who have never submitted that activity. There are also some 8A students who submitted but are missing 2 of the attachments. 009-8 Sharing Colorized images was due on December 22. Only 7 students in 8A and 3 students in 8B have remembered to submit the assignment in Google Classroom. Some of you may have submitted the blog post (or not) but not submitted the GC assignment to indicate completion. 010-8 Quote and Image Mashup is coming up on January 12. In addition we have the stock market activity and coding progress also posted in Google Classroom. These will be discussed in class on January 5 and then students will have time to work Jan 5 - Jan 19 on activities. By the end of this week there should be "incompletes" posted in PowerSchool for students who have not completed the old assignments. CAUTION: A number of students dawdle during independent work time and have not made the connection that if you do not get down to business and make use of those minutes, somewhere else you will have to invest time to accomplish your goals. The same holds true for being absent for a technology class whether for illness or a trip. Time will need to be invested somewhere. "Time and tide wait for no man" (or 8th grader). 12/11/2016 December 11, 2016On December 8 we kicked off Computer Science Education Week with a look at computer science innovations and what makes the Internet work. A video explained the concept of pixels, bits and bytes of data, and RGB color designations. This ties in with our current work with image editing in Pixlr. Students tested log ins to Code Studio but because of a message from Code.org, the sponsors of Hour of Code, that their servers just couldn't handle saving progress for millions of students during that week, we held off going through a coding course until next week. Students will have through January to make progress in the CodeStudio course and will receive credit based on the amount accomplished. Other assignments: 008-8 Selective coloring of digital images was due on Nov. 29. There are 4 students in 8A and 4 in 8B who have yet to submit that assignment. The clock is ticking! 009-8 Sharing Colorized Images in a Kidblog post is due on Dec. 22. 010-8 Image-Quote Mashup involves using the image editing techniques to create a "poster" to emphasize one of the quotes chosen in 007-8. Due date is January 12. All directions are found in Google Classroom. Students have also been asked to begin thinking about which stocks they may wish to purchase for our stock market activity, which will begin in January. There will be some video lessons to help them decide but they are encouraged to seek input from adults regarding stock picks. There will be an assignment posted in the beginning of January to formally choose the stocks. 11/19/2016 November 19,2016We have concluded our technology classes for Trimester 1. On Thursday, Nov. 17, I listed names on the board and what assignments were overdue. Students with no overdue work could continue onto their image editing activity (008-8) using Pixlr.com. There had also been an open lab at recess on Thursday as well but there were no 8th grade takers on that offer. We have spent the bulk of the first marking period on digital citizenship and technology and information literacy: How do you know you can trust the information on a website? How do you evaluate a source? How do you legitimately use someone else's images online and give proper attribution? In our Google Classroom assignments (002 through 007) the emphasis was not only on skills and thought process, but also on meeting deadlines. The students who dawdle and waste what little class time they have will have a harder time coping with high school deadlines. (There will be some seat changes in Trimester 2!) A student who is absent has everything at his/her fingertips in order to stay up to date with assignments and still is responsible for meeting deadlines. Our current project is learning about some image editing techniques using Pixlr. We are demonstrating colorizing images with two different techniques: selection of an area on the image and adjusting hue and saturation, and also using layers and the eraser tool to bring out the color of one area while the background remains black and white. These will be shared on the blog with proper image attribution. Due date for 008-8 is November 29. I am wishing everyone a blessed Thanksgiving. Let us be thankful for our families and the gifts of the earth. Below is Pope Francis's message regarding taking care of the earth: A Prayer for Our Earth
All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe and in the smallest of your creatures. You embrace with your tenderness all that exists. Pour out upon us the power of your love, that we may protect life and beauty. Fill us with peace, that we may live as brothers and sisters, harming no one. O God of the poor, help us to rescue the abandoned and forgotten of this earth, so precious in your eyes. Bring healing to our lives, that we may protect the world and not prey on it, that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction. Touch the hearts of those who look only for gain at the expense of the poor and the earth. Teach us to discover the worth of each thing, to be filled with awe and contemplation, to recognize that we are profoundly united with every creature as we journey towards your infinite light. We thank you for being with us each day. Encourage us, we pray, in our struggle for justice, love and peace. Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ 11/6/2016 November 6, 2016,Eighth graders have been working on 005-8 to discover the difference between the various Creative Commons licenses and how to give proper attribution. The due date is NOVEMBER 8. I have been reviewing what has been submitted and returning incorrect charts, giving students time to make corrections before the deadline. Some have been returned twice. It is just a matter of following the example chart which shows EXACTLY what to do but what is being turned in by some people is totally different! As of this date there are 8 students who have yet to submit and 5 whose work has been returned for corrections. The other activity coming due is the 3 Quotes assignment (due date for 006-8: November 14) This involves choosing 3 different quotes from respected individuals and indicating sources. There must also be a rationale for why this quote is meaningful to the student. One of these quotes will be with the student profile in the yearbook, so thought is required. |