3/15/2016 March 15, 2016For our three activities for Q3 we have 007-8 (all students completed), 008-8 (one student incomplete), and 009-8 ( 6 students incomplete). Some students are losing too many points just because assignments are not submitted on time. (See previous post for assignment details.) We have begun the line chart for displaying the performance of the chosen stock. A sample chart was created as a guide, and students will follow the checklist for formatting the chart. See checklist. From there the chart and paragraph containing researched information will be posted to the blog. Final Stock Standings Top Five
1. Dan $9834.06 2. Marco $9738.94 3. Alexa $9583.66 4. Bridget $9403.92 5. Isabella $$9094.56 Not all students submitted their final total and some who did had incorrect calculations, but these students had the highest standings as of March 15. A lesson from this, in addition to working in spreadsheets of course, is that sometimes you lose money in the stock market. Taking a risk can pay off, or not. So congratulations to these students for losing the least amount from their original $10,000 investment. Some years are like this. If you want to know what stocks they invested in, stay tuned for their blog posts. 2/8/2016 February 8, 2016Congratulations to Casey, Drew, and Emily for being in the lead in 8B as of Dec. 28. Their assets (portfolio and cash) were $10,174.08, $10097.41, and $10,036.52 respectively. In 8A the leaders were Marco, Alexa, and Dan with $10386.76, $10,082.57, and $10009.06 respectively. These six students were, in fact, the only students to date who had not experienced a loss from their original $10,000 investment. Will they stay in the lead when the January 25 totals are posted? Will Marco still be in first place overall? Assignments in progress for 8th grade: 007-8 Taking a snip/screenshot of progress made during the Hour of Code (December) coding activities. Submit as many snips as necessary to receive credit for your coding efforts. Feel free to add private comments if explanation is necessary when submitting. Due date: Feb. 19 008-8 Complete the stock sheet for Weeks 5-8 and add the final Total Assets to the stock standings list. The stock sheet should be re-submitted as an 008 assignment (navigate to Classroom folder and attach the sheet to 008-8 assignment and NOT submitted back into 005-8.) There is a checklist to indicate all the details I will look for when evaluating the sheet. View the checklist. Due date: Feb. 19 009-8 Information organizer to gather information on one company in which the student invested money. It does not have to be the best performing stock. Caution: When describing what the company does, do not just write what you know it does. Part of the research is investigating this company and learning more about it. We will be using this information to share the performance of one stock in a line chart. Due date: Feb. 26. *There will be no class on Feb. 15 due to the holiday and no class on Feb. 22 because I will be away at a tech conference. Any questions regarding these assignments? Students should email prior to the due dates. 1/24/2016 January 24, 2016ALERT: Please check the stock standings sheets for your group. There are 4 people in Group A who have not submitted their Dec. 28 standings (006-8) and several who have submitted incorrect totals. Those who have submitted a total have received a score for their submission. There are 5 people missing in Group B. We cannot actually determine standings until everyone has a correct total posted. This is a second quarter assignment and must be completed by Tuesday, Jan. 26, in school or not! If you do not submit a total your second quarter grade will be shown as INCOMPLETE. There is a strong possibility as I write this on Sunday morning that we will not have school tomorrow, January 25. In that case, please consider your classwork to be completing the stock spreadsheet for weeks 5-8. Group B is scheduled for technology class but Group A can certainly work on this also to be ahead of the game as we never know what the next week may bring. Our next phase of classwork is to complete the second page/sheet of the Stock Sheet project for weeks 5-8. Again, this is copying and pasting the previous week and simply substituting prices. The only things that change from week to week are the price per share and the date. NOTE: Because we need to keep our weeks evenly spaced we will list Jan. 18 for charting purposes but actually take the opening price from Jan. 19, since the market was not open on the MLK holiday. This diagram shows what you should be working on for Weeks 5-8. The companies and prices are not correct but only used here as sample information.Weeks 5-8 will show January 4, 11, 18, and 25. Assignment 008-8 will contain specific requirements for submitting the sheet, but for now please just bring your sheet up to date for all weeks up to January 25. Questions? Email me.
1/14/2016 January 14, 2016 RED ALERT! Assignment 006-8 for posting your Total Assets as of Dec. 28 is due tomorrow, Jan. 15.
VG Posted on time with correct total calculated. G Posted on time with incorrect total calculated. S Posted late with correct total calculated. S- Posted late with incorrect total calculated. 1/8/2016 January 8, 2016We are investors! (virtual investors, that is). Students purchased stock in their pre-selected companies based on the stock's opening price on December 7. They will then record the opening price for each stock held once a week for the next eight weeks. Those of you who follow the market may not be surprised that many of their portfolios have lost money after the initial purchase. It is always difficult for some students when doing their spreadsheet set up to get the idea that their assets do not have to total the original $10,000 each week. If nothing ever changed why would anyone invest? We buy stocks at a certain price, whatever is left over from our original money is cash. The value of the stocks held plus the original cash will equal the total assets. We are just holding what was originally purchased and monitoring the increase or decrease in the value of the shares. For assignment 005-8 students submitted their spreadsheet containing the first 2 weeks of data, and I reviewed it for accuracy before they continued with the remaining weeks. For assignment 006-8 students must complete calculations for all four weeks in December and then post their assets total (cash plus stock) in a master list and we can then see who is "in the lead" to date. Finally for this quarter, students will submit a screenshot (one or more) to indicate progress made during the Hour of Code activities in December. (assignment 007-8) Final reminder: Students who have an Incomplete to date due to not finishing all parts of the November assignment will have until January 15 to submit all missing work. After that the missing components will be entered as a zero. There have been 2 recess periods where students have been called in to work, but there is nothing that cannot be finished outside of the classroom for this.
12/1/2015 December 1, 2015I am very disappointed that a number of eighth grade students did not complete the preliminary stock market activities by the due date of November 30. I explained everything in my last post and also asked Mrs. Chiappinelli to post the message on her schoolnotes page since I know few people read what I write here. I have reminded students to check their Google Classroom calendars for upcoming assignments from teachers and I also sent an email to each eighth grader on the morning of November 30 as a final reminder. The scoring that I showed them in class for the activities gave about 30 percent of the point value to on time completion. See scoring chart here. Those students who did make the effort to complete their 5 questions and select their 4 stocks on time are to be commended for their effort in paying attention to deadlines. Some students did not have an acceptable to response to one or more questions and I have returned their responses so that they can be explained more clearly. If the response was received on time but corrected after the deadline, it will still be considered as an on time response. There will be no more responses returned for corrections after Friday of this week (December 4). Any responses coming in at that late date will sink or swim on their own. Once I have closed the assignment to further input we will discuss the five questions in class. The objective in viewing the 5 short videos and responding to a question was to have students not only gain some background information on the stock market and how it works, but also to think about what was presented and to demonstrate comprehension of what was presented in the video by their responses to the 5 questions. Students also needed to have chosen their 4 stocks for purchase. The actual purchase will take place later in December. Anyone who has not chosen stocks by then will have to choose from a grab bag of stocks listed on the Dow and will not receive any credit for making their own choices. 11/10/2015 November 10, 2015The first quarter is behind us and so is the logo building activity. There were some great logos created and I hope the students will be actually uploading them to their Chromebooks. Their posts describing the logos are now published, and if you would like to comment please do (without leaving your last name if you are a parent commenting on the post of your own son or daughter.) They can be found under the Chromebook Logo category.One focus of the first quarter was Google Drawing tools, and another was image attribution. It is important for students to realize that there are some images that they cannot use in a new creation and others that they may use with proper attribution. We have discovered several glitches (in my opinion) in the new version of Kidblog and I hope they will be ironed out soon. If you go to the page and get a pop up saying that this class has been transitioned to the new version of Kidblog, just click OK. I hope they will take that box away VERY SOON! For the second quarter our technology focus will be in two areas: spreadsheets and computer coding. Students have been enjoying completing the "hour of code" activities the past two Decembers and there will be some new challenges this year. More information will be shared as we get closer to December. The context for our work with spreadsheets will be the stock market. Students will be working on two preliminary assignments posted in Google Classroom. 1. Background videos to understand what the stock market is all about - 5 very short videos with one question per video. The responses will be entered into Google Classroom with a due date of November 30 for both A and B groups. 2. A chart to be completed listing 4 stocks the student wishes to purchase along with some other information about their choices. Please feel free to give advice on stock choices. After Thanksgiving the actual "purchases" will be made and students will track the value of their portfolios for several weeks. Chart due: November 30 for both A and B groups. I encouraged the students to get as much background information as possible before actually selecting their stocks. Both groups will use the same date to obtain the purchase price of their stock purchases. Special Note: I have shown students that the calendar in Google Classroom is a valuable organizational tool. By looking at that calendar they are able to see due dates for all upcoming assignments from any teacher who is using Google Classroom. Parents should ask to see that Google Classroom calendar to stay abreast of upcoming deadlines. DID YOU KNOW...The Google Classroom App is available for iOS or Android devices? 10/3/2015 October 2, 2015During class this past week I reviewed submitting an assignment via Google Classroom. For assignment 001-8 students submitted a logo made with Google Drawing. Because of some changes in scheduling and number of class meetings, I have revamped grading structure for tech assignments. (I will also be working with classroom teachers on curriculum projects that integrate technology tools.) Assignments will be receiving letter grades such as VG, G, S according to the established criteria for the project. For the logo assignment, the following was used:
VG - assignment was completed according to directions and submitted on time G - assignment was completed according to directions but submitted late S - assignment was completed but some directions were not followed When grades are entered into PowerSchool, in order to display the letter grade it is necessary to enter a number on the grade scale assigned to minor subjects. So in order for a VG to appear as a grade, a number from 90 to 94 would be entered. Since there are 5 different grades points in each letter range, I will be using the number in the middle of each range. For example a 92 for VG, and 88 for G, an 82 for S. Mathematically this allows for a student who receives two grades in a quarter (and that is likely all we might accomplish) the average will round to the higher. Here are some possible scenarios: Student with 2 scores in a quarter: G, VG - quarter average is VG Student with 3 scores in a quarter: G, G, VG - quarter average is G. For the logo itself, group 8B had a deadline of this week with the blog post due by the end of next week. ( Oct. 9) Then 8A will have their opportunity to work on the same project while 8B is in health class. Directions for logo Directions for post 9/22/2015 September 21, 2015
If you are still waiting for your PowerSchool log in information it may be because you have not yet completed the survey on the school website. There are still 5 eighth grade students whose information has not been entered.
After going through all the testing of log ons we are ready to jump into our first topic of evaluating information we find online, or information literacy. After viewing the video How Big Is a Yottabyte? students were amazed at the huge amount of data we are storing and what the potential storage needs may be. But was everything in the video true? How do we know that the person who posted the video was relaying accurate information? It all seemed quite believable, but was it?
Students will be learning some strategies to use to evaluate sources, how to find reliable sources, and how to cite those sources properly. By the way, did you even know there was such a thing as a "yottabyte"?
6/8/2015 June 8, 2015Congratulations, Class of 2015! May your high school years 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. Believe in yourself and understand that goals worth reaching are always worth the effort. Note: Your Google account will remain active until June 22, and the email restriction is 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. We have worked on quite a variety of skill areas this year, such as: critical thinking organization of information evaluating websites writing/communication skills analyzing and synthesizing information time management presentation skills research skills comprehension of informational text crediting sources choosing appropriately licensed media working with images formatting spreadsheets writing formulas in spreadsheets blogging The most important ideas I hope you take away from this past year are a better sense of time management, attention to detail (remember the newspaper article "Give Them What They Want" regarding applying for jobs), 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 you 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 just handing you some fish. There is a wonderful world out there. Continue to learn what is worth keeping and what to throw back. 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) 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 clean. God bless you all! Mrs. Ruffing |