Welcome to Basic Computer Apps!

I want to welcome all of my students back to school, and I hope you will enjoy our class together. You will learn how to use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint -- all parts of Microsoft Office 2007. You will create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. We will also spend some time on website evaluation, research, and Internet safety. Periodically, you will use Web 2.0 apps, such as Edmodo, Wordle, and more.

Our class will be a very hands-on experience, in which students will use the computer daily.  Grades will mostly involve our classwork and projects.  I have no plans to assign any homework, except for occasional review of study sheets.  Although I will not give any tests, I will give infrequent quizzes.

Welcome to Current Events!  

Our class will discuss lots of local, state, national, and international news stories.  We will spend significant time on the upcoming presidential election and explore the pathway to the presidency.  I look forward to your thoughtful comments, as we explore all of these issues.  

Additionally, we will have two opportunities to stage a mock newscast where class members will role-play some of the people who bring us the news on television.  Each class member will be responsible for writing news scripts.

Another experience this class provides is The Stock Market Game, in which students will find out about what stocks and companies are -- and they will have the opportunity to "invest" while learning about the benefits and risks.

I do not plan to give tests, although it is possible that there could be an occasional news quiz.  Most of our work will consist of discussions, classwork, and projects.  

Homework:  For class on Tuesday-Friday, please have a general awareness (from television, the Internet, a newspaper, a magazine, the radio, etc.) of a news story that occurred (or continued) over the past 24 hours.  We will discuss a few of these on most days.  If I call on a student, he/she should be ready to share at least some of the 5 Ws (who, what, when, where, why) about the story.