11/1/2015 November 1, 2015Our second project of the first quarter was creating our "wild selves". Our Wild Thing posts are now live and ready for your comments! In this project students each created an imaginary "wild thing". The Wild Self tile on the webmix takes us to a fun website sponsored by the New York Zoo and Aquarium where students used their imaginations to "Build Our Wild Selves" while learning about wild creatures. We hope you will visit and view their creations on our Kidblog page. During this activity students learned to use the snipping tool as well as entering text into their blogs. Our wild things below are Adelia, Marco, and Sara. Come read about us! My comments regarding technology grades:
The first quarter ends this week, and I have just posted grades in PowerSchool. Unless there is a very unusual circumstance, all students in grade three will receive a G for their work in the computer lab. Why? My philosophy is that at this age level they are all giving it their best shot, trying hard, and really want to succeed. They are enthusiastic, ready to learn and to take on new challenges. And in my opinion that is a "good" thing. There are many new skills that will be tackled, from keyboarding, to cut/copy/paste, to saving to a network location, to blogging, to researching information. Some will grasp it more quickly than others, and some will need a little extra help, but they all will succeed at their own rate. I do not want any student to come away with the idea that he or she is "not good at" technology. I will help them as best I can to see that technology tools can make our work easier, help us to learn more, and also allow us to have fun. 9/29/2015 September 29, 2015Our third graders have published their first blog posts and I know they would love to receive comments from family and friends. The posts are in the Who Am I? category on our third grade blog page. This activity was a follow up to our discussion of the story The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds. Just like the character Vashti in the story, we want students to have the courage to try something new and be willing to work and build their skills over time. They just need a little encouragement and support along the way. I have shared more about the story in my post Making Our Mark. IMPORTANT: I am stressing the importance of not revealing too much personal information online, so students will never be identified in their posts by their last names. This means that commenters can enter their names in the comment name box as "mom" or "dad", or "Grandma" or "Aunt Joan" and still have the comment be approved for publication. (I approve everything before it goes live.) We don't want to compromise our students' privacy by having someone enter a first and last name and then sign "mom" or "dad". In the old version of Kidblog it was possible for me to edit the entered name but I can no longer do that. Coming up for our next class is our introduction to keyboarding. You will hear more about that in the next post, but you can check out the keyboarding link at the left of this post now. 9/18/2015 September 18, 2015We have finished our second week of technology class in third grade. Today the boys and girls received a "password keeper" in their homework assignment books. This will allow them to more easily access the online accounts they will be using this year. Today they tested their log ins for SuccessNet (math, science), for Kidblog, and for McGraw Hill (reading). The links to all of these sites can be found on the third grade page of the cougartech webmix, which we have set as our home page in school. Last week I introduced International Dot Day and the motivational message behind The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds. Today students tried out the ABCYa paint program (tile on the webmix) and created their own unique dot. We will be adding that to their first blog post and sharing it with the world. I would encourage you to add a link to the Cougartech Webmix third grade page on your home computer, if possible, to help them navigate quickly to the sites they will be using frequently. Mrs. Olson will likely have some links on her page as well. Also, stay tuned for information regarding keyboarding and our home program (or read about it now on the keyboarding link at the left). We will be working on a foundation for keyboarding skills as a big part of third grade technology.
7/4/2015 June 30, 2015This is a late post about wrapping up the school year, and I apologize for the fact that those parents who do read this 3rd grade blog may miss this. Closing comments for the year: 1. Third graders have been enthusiastic, eager to learn, and have grown in their digital literacy skills.
2. Those students who had access to the Type to Learn program at home showed evidence of definite progress in keyboarding skills. I would encourage you to download that program if you have not yet done so (free, PC or MAC version) using the information here. It will remain available all summer with the student log on information. 3. Students are welcomed and encouraged to write posts for their blogs over the summer. Read a good book? Have a fun experience? Travel somewhere exciting? Tell us about it! Please help them to proof read before hitting the SUBMIT button. I will check periodically for any submitted posts. 4. Have a wonderful summer! It has been my pleasure to learn along with your wonderful children this year! 4/23/2015 April 23, 2015Third graders now have 2 additional posts in their blogs. Their blogs are serving as a digital portfolio of some of the learning activities they are experiencing here in the computer lab. Last week they typed up their ecosystem reports to accompany the photos of their dioramas taken by Mrs. Olson. Today we re-visited the Super Bugs and copied the paragraph saved in notepad into a new blog post. They also changed to a larger font size and chose Arial for the font face. The name they gave to the bug they previously created served as the title of the post, and we reviewed capitalization rules. Of course we were continuing our keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste as well. At the end there should be a sentence stating the bug's score. Soon we will be comparing scores to see who has created the bug with the highest overall score. Next to the paragraph they inserted the stats card saved previously. Watch out for the Craler, the Lulubug, and the Crazy-Pants! You may not want to walk around barefooted after you see these superbugs!
4/1/2015 April 1, 2015We have been working on a SuperBug activity based on the Minibeast site. The term "minibeast" is more common in UK or Australia, but we know them as invertebrates, which third graders studied this year. They were able to choose from bug parts in the experimental "lab" while trying to create a superbug. Once the bug was created, they copied the descriptive paragraph about their creation and pasted it into notepad. They also saved the image of the stat card for their bug's special features. They will then copy their paragraphs from Notepad into a blog post and insert the image of the stat card. (Can you tell we are working on copy and paste now? Ctrl +c and Ctrl + v) Get ready for the bug invasion on Kidblog! 2/26/2015 February 26, 2015Beans are very healthy, and magic beans are even better! Third grade students have worked hard to type a brief summary of Jack and the Beanstalk and tell you about keyboard shortcuts they have learned. Please visit their posts in the category Magic Beans and Magic Keys. They would love to have comments on their work. There is a spell check built into Kidblog, but it is not quite as in-depth as the spelling and grammar check in MS Word. After we learn and practice copy and paste (so far we have done cut and paste) we will revisit the posts and paste the text into the Word editor and do some official proofreading. Until then, enjoy their "kid spelling" as they grow in their skills. 2/17/2015 February 17, 2015So far third grade students have learned keyboard shortcuts for cut and paste (ctrl + x, ctrl + v), and also for undo (ctrl + z). They used cut and paste to rearrange the story events in Jack and the Beanstalk, and then at the bottom of the page used the drawing tools to create a "bean" and duplicate it (ctrl + d) to make a total of five beans. They they used the fill and outline tools in the format menu to make the beans look magical. Finally they used the snipping tool to snip a screen shot of their beans. You will get to see their magic beans when they share the story in an upcoming blog post. After that we move on to copy and paste. Here is a sample of the magic beans.
1/23/2015 January 23, 2015Our upcoming activity in grade 3 will be learning to use keyboard shortcuts to copy and paste. The students had a taste of copy and paste using the right click function on the mouse, but we will spend a lot of time becoming comfortable with these keyboard shortcuts by doing a cut and paste assignment and then a copy and paste assignment. I had hoped to start in right after the new year but first there was an exam conflict and students who needed to catch up on old work, and then so many missed class for Mass practice last week that it was not a good time to start something brand new. My new goal is now January 29. Ctrl+x, Ctrl+c, Ctrl+v, and Ctrl+z here we come! Image: Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V...Ahh! Ctrl-Z! Ctrl-Z! by Jenny Cestnik is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0. 12/13/2014 December 13, 2014This past week the third graders learned about Computer Science Education Week and the Hour of Code. In class they logged into the code.org site (using the same log in and password as they use for their online texts) to use a coding platform called Blockly developed by Google. This makes writing lines of code a more visual experience for students, allowing them to use logic and reasoning to complete each puzzle. We will continue with the coding activities on December 18, which will be our last class before the Christmas break. If students become a little restless over the holidays, picking up with the coding activities will provide a nice workout of thinking skills. I am able to see their progress as they work through each puzzle. Feel free to explain and reason it out with them if they hit a snag. They have done a great job so far. An interesting anecdote: This week as I walked around the room during the coding time, one student was very pleased with himself as the message flashed each time as to how many lines of code he had written so far. He confided to me that another student had taught him a little trick as to how to get the total number of lines higher. Just have your character (in this case the Angry Bird) turn around in a complete circle, each right turn being an additional line of code, and then give the bird instructions to move forward. I then shared the strategy that in writing a computer program, you want to use the least amount of code possible to make your program clean and simple. Although he was a little disappointed, it did seem to make sense to him. And it will make more sense as in future puzzles they will learn about "loops" and get instructions to accomplish the task with fewer lines of code. I did commend him on his creative approach, and I love the enthusiasm of the students as they master each puzzle. Please encourage this at home if possible. It is a great learning experience for them! The red and blue tile is available on the class webmix or simply sign in at code.org. Article: Why the Future Will Be Made by Creators, Not Consumers |