OLPH Technology 5
Useful links: October 31, 2011 New information posted for grade 5 on the
olph-technology wiki. October 3, 2011
September 26, 2011September 12, 2011 Hi everyone and welcome back to a new year of technology adventures! This year I am experimenting with posting news and class assignments in a different way. I have created a wikispace for OLPH technology (aptly named olph-technology) and I will be posting class project information on that site. You can still subscribe to this page for updates, since whenever I have information to push out I will do the push from this page and you can just click the link back to the wikispace. ( You may not want to use the Notify tab on that page as you would be notified every time I changed a typo and that could become tedious!) The technology wiki will grow as the year progresses. There is a lot I want to add that the space on schoolnotes just doesn't permit. Students or parents should feel free to contact me via the schoolnotes link at the top of this page or directly at pruffing at gmail dot com. Visit the new site at http://olph-technology.wikispaces.com/ and please pardon the dust - still under construction! **I have deleted the notify option for any parents who do not have a student in fifth grade this year. I believe when you sign up you get the option to be notified of "all pruffing's pages" and many people check yes, not realizing that they will get 3rd grade updates, and 4th grade updates, etc. Our emails accumulate quickly and we don't need any more unnecessary messages to open. So when you sign on for a page be sure it is just the page for your child. My main schoolnotes page will just be a portal to the other pages and will not likely be updated throughout the year, so feel free to add your name to that page and you will not be inundated. :-)
May, 2011 - Our classes ended a little earlier than usual due to a change in the construction schedule. Students received their project folders back today. There were 3 scores for the 4th quarter: Weather presentation slide show (73 pts.), weather presentation script (30 pts.), and Constitution project (60 pts.) Many students received extra points and earned higher than 60 for the Constitution project; however, some did not complete all the activities and some some zero entries on their rubric sheet. Some students also did not take advantage of spell check to correct mistakes. There is a re-score opportunity until Friday, June 3. Any student who wishes to complete or re-submit a post because of a low score is welcome to do that. There is one catch, though. I MUST have the rubric sheet back with the score to be be re-evaluated boxed in red. "Please re-score" should be written on the bottom of the paper and returned to me NOT LATER than Friday, June 3. I will not re-score any re-submitted posts without that sheet. It would be impossible to keep track of what is being adjusted without it. Please take advantage of this opportunity to make improvements if you have room for improvement. Also, many students like to write blog posts on their own, and I encourage them to do so. Just because it is not a graded assignment, though, does not mean we should not do our best writing. Whether you are writing about a special event, sharing a great website, or being creative, there is no reason in fifth grade not to proofread your work. Paste your writing into a word processor and see what corrections need to be made. (Just don't paste writing from the word processor into your blog article!) Ask an adult to read over your writing. YOU read over your writing. Sometimes I believe students hit submit without going back over their sentences even once. If I do not publish a post because of errors, I always indicate that in the teacher comment section found in the Text view. Even with the Constitution posts, I was writing what needed to be fixed, but few students paid any attention to the comments. Please make use of all the tools that are available in our blogging program. And please keep writing; just make sure the writing you post for the world to see is your best work.
April 18 - Part of the 5th grade social studies curriculum is learning about the Constitution. We are going to use digital tools to learn about the document that is the law of our land. Today we looked at the Constitution Glog to begin our study. Students will follow the directions in Step 2 which uses Discovery Assignment Builder to watch some great Discovery videos and complete responses via their own blog. All directions are on the glog and in the assignment builder. We completed part 1 in class, though not all students have finished their first post. All specific directions for the posts appear on the left of the class blog under Teacher Assignments. Since we have no class on the Monday after Easter, I am asking students to access the glog, assignment builder, videos, and blog from home. (They were also reminded not to enter their full name when signing into the Discovery assignment builder.) The assignment is not long, nor difficult, and the use of these online tools provide a way for students to access the resources anywhere. Should you have any difficulty accessing the videos, first make sure that your Quicktime or Windows Media Player is up to date. If there are any other issues feel free to contact me via schoolnotes. Happy Easter!
April - Students have been working on a PowerPoint slide show to use to present their topic on severe weather as a television weather report. We have been working on what makes a "good" slide show, such as a focus on images, color contrast and appropriate size, and never (never, never, never) reading slides to your audience. We will publish a script to be used during the presentation.
March - We have spent most of the quarter working on projects related to biomes. Third quarter grades consist of these projects:
1. The biome report published in MS Word (62pts)
2. Transferring information to the class wiki for sharing (10 pts)
3. Creating a glog (digital poster) using the research of all team members (82 pts)
4. Creating a blog post containing the embedded glog to showcase the work for a wider audience (50 pts)
February 18 - Biome projects
We have several phases of this project.
1. Research on assigned question for your group topic. This report was turned into Mrs. Generose and graded. I will be viewing them to evaluate for use of technology skills on the checklist.
2. Copying the researched information into your own student page on the grade 5 wikispace. This allows for your information to be shared with others on your team. This should be all in place and ready to be evaluated.
3. Creating a glog that incorporates your part of the research and that of your team mates in order to show the climate, geography, animal life, and plant life of your assigned biome. The current goal is having the glog components all finished by the end of class on Feb. 28. If you are behind in this please access the glog from home (as well as the wikispace - see links at top of this page) in order to continue working. Don't forget to refer to the sample glog I created as a guide.
4. Embedding your glog in your blog. We will share our glogs with the world by embedding the finished glog onto our blog pages. More information on how to do this will follow.
Please refer to the information I wrote on Jan. 31 for help in accessing your wikispace and glog. If you are still having a problem please email me.
February 3 - Comments regarding second quarter grades:
There were 3 grades assignments for the quarter - Drawing Tools Sampler (32 pts); anti-smoking poster (55 pts) and embedding the anti-smoking poster in a blog post (40 pts). Remember to click on any number or letter in blue as that is a link to further information. We are currently working on the ecosystem report in MS Word, placing the information on a wikispaces page for sharing with the team, and creating a glog using the team's research to share information on an ecosystem with a wider audience. Students should be accessing the wikispaces and edu.glogster sites (see links above) at home to be sure they can log in and access their pages.
January 31 - Today we were very busy learning about 2 new tools for collaborating and for displaying our work.
1. Wikispaces - Grade 5 has a private wikispace (use link at top of page). This space is for posting work in progress that can be added to or accessed from any computer. On the science page of the class wiki, each student has his/her own workspace and here will be pasted the information gathered on the ecosystem team project. I did a demonstration of how to complete the table, how to revert to a previous version if something happens to the page, and what is shown in the history tab. We will NOT use the discussion tab. How to log in to the wiki - Use the link above and enter your username (firstname last initial 2014 - no spaces - Mary Smith would be marys2014); the password is the same word and number combination used for blogging. Once your research document is completed you simply paste your information onto your wiki page (Remember to Save often!) and you and your teammates can access it anytime. 2. Edu.glogster.com - Use link at the top of this page. EduGlogster is a site for creating digital posters. We can display our work not only to our classmates but to the world. Do not change any settings when you log into this account. Simply go to your "dashboard" and click "create a new glog". Please practice using all the tools; make a fun glog, explore and see how everything works. You will receive a checklist for items that must be included on your glog to display your team's research on your assigned ecosystem. How to log in to eduGlogster - Click Log in (top right corner) Username will be 2014olph--- the dashes respresent your three digit number: 2014olph001, 2014olph002, etc. I made a mistake in setting up the accounts and skipped #27 so if you would normally be 026, you are 027 and the rest of the alphabet is back one. Sorry for this mix up! Your password is the same word and number combination used on your blog.
Students should experiment and use the potential snow day to become really good with the glog tools. Can you embed a jpg image? Can you format text? What graphics did you discover that will work well with your project? Next week you should be all set to use the information your team has collected and shared on the wiki to build a very cool digital poster (GLOG) that will go on your blog page and be shared with the world. Have fun! If you have trouble logging in to either site, please email me. There were a few people who had to have a slight variation in their log in names either because the name was already in use or because I may have typed it incorrectly. If you do email for assistance, be sure you include an email address for me to answer you back.
January 9 - As we begin to look toward the end of the second quarter (already?) I would like to re-cap what we have been working on this quarter and what still needs to be accomplished.
We have concentrated on Microsoft Word, especially the use of the drawing tools, and formatting a page layout including headers and footers. The first assignment was a "sampler" of drawing tools that would be used in the Smoking Poster project (a cross-curricular project for health and technology). The assignment was worth 32 pts. and I created an individual video for each student to explain what they did right and review skills they seemed to need work on. I believe that wearing headphones and hearing the teacher speak directly to you, pointing out parts of your assignment and doing a personal demonstration of skills you might need, is a way to individualize the learning process. It also allows students to go back and review the video as often as necessary for extra help.
From there we went to the creation of the actual smoking poster itself. I reviewed tools and also created how-to videos on combining shapes and creating page borders. Our goal was to have the posters completed before Christmas but we had to extend it to the first week of January. They should all have been completed by now. Mrs. Criscuolo will review the color copy and then display those, and I reviewed the black/white copy with all the required elements labeled in pencil by the student. This labeling was to force a comparison of the checklist of required elements to the finished product. Some students checked off that they used certain tools, yet they did not appear on the poster. This should have been a red flag that there were missing elements, but some were turned in anyway with items missing!
The final phase of the project was taking a screen shot of the finished poster and converting that screen shot to a jpg file by way of a PPT slide. The jpg files were saved in the collaboration folder on the school network and I uploaded the files and provided students with a link to the large and the small sizes of the files. They then used these links to create a blog post on what they have learned in health class about the dangers of smoking, with the image of their poster embedded in the blog post. There is a sample post done for students on the class blog, and the assignment is also listed on the left sidebar. We should be finishing the assignment no later than January 14. We will not have class on Monday, Jan. 17, due to the holiday, and the quarter ends that week on Jan. 21. Students who need to use the lab to catch up on the assignment should come to the lab during lunch recess; however, the blog post can actually be completed at home with the links provided above, and also using the uploaded image links here. This will let you continue to work at home in case of bad weather. (If your initials are not on the page that means I do not see your jpg file saved in the collaboration folder and therefore have no file to upload!)
Video on how to embed your poster in your blog post (Please note: The video references finding the image links in the shared work folder on the network, but they are now located in the Google Doc linked in the previous paragraph so they are accessible from home.)
November 22 - Students have been learning to manipulate drawing tools and other objects in MS Word. The sampler assignment should have been finished today. If not finished, please arrange to come to the computer lab at recess during the week of Nov. 29-Dec. 3 to get caught up. Our health/technology project is an anti-smoking poster created entirely with these tools. Be thinking of a creative plan for your poster and bring your sketch in on Dec. 2 according to the Mrs. Criscuolo's schoolnotes message. This assignment will be completed before Christmas and we will embed an image of the poster on the blog page to share with everyone.
Happy Thanksgiving!
October 25 - Energy conservation post: To showcase what they learned from their science unit on energy conservation and use of the conservation kit, students are creating a post on the topic. During class today we went through the steps for creating a hyperlink and also for inserting an image and giving attribution (or credit) for the image. The completed post should include the following: 1. an appropriate title for the energy conservation post 2. three things that were learned by using the energy conservation kit 3. one way your family is putting energy conservation into practice as a result of this activity 4. all writing in complete sentences with a minimum of six sentences in the post 5. a word or phrase turned into a hyperlink to the site http://thinkenergy.org/states/penn/index.html 6. an image relating to conservation from the Energy Images document in the Shared Work folder (also available at the bottom of this page). Format the image so that it is aligned left or right with vspace and hspace at least 6 px. 7. the image attribution at the bottom of the post 8. no misspelled words or grammatical errors (Paste into MS Word as a spell check.) 9. publication by the end of class on November 1.
During October the first assignment was reviewing how to save a Word document into their network folders. They also deleted old files from the network. The document contained their names and addresses. We reviewed the correct format for typing in names and addresses. The second assignment was to complete several items for their blog pages. Students should have posted the following: 1. A title for the entire blog page. 2. Five sentences "about me" in the right sidebar. 3. A post of 5 or more sentences explaining their goals for fifth grade with an appropriate title for the post. 4. We learned about copying the post into a Word document and using Word spell checker to see what needed to be fixed in the blog post. Spelling counts! 5. All work should have been completed by mid-October. If the blog page does not show these published items, they are now late. Students behind in work should ask for a pass to come to the lab during recess to catch up.
Sept. 13-20, 2010 -  During the first 2 technology classes of the year students practiced correct procedures for logging onto the school network and what to look for to see if their log ons were successful. All students have network storage space and do not need to bring devices such as flash drives to school. I showed them a "floppy disk", the symbol known to them as the "save" symbol, and explained why that is old technology and what part of it is really "floppy". We also talked about policies regarding Internet, network, and other online tools we will use. Parents, please be sure to complete both sides of the form that is coming home on Sept. 20. Please return as soon as possible. We have discussed browsers, "default" browsers, and have begun to make desktop shortcuts to sites we will use frequently. Students reviewed saving a document to their network folders, as well as adding their names to the MS Word dictionary. Parents, if you have not done so, please add your name and email to the notify list for this page. Do not choose "all pages by Mrs. Ruffing" because then you will be notified for changes for every grade 3 through 8. Choose only the grades that pertain to your children and the main technology page as well.
End of year comments: The last quarter of the school year was devoted primarily to the Google Earth virtual field trip. It was a struggle in many ways. One issue was a number of students not completing their charts of information in a timely manner. Another was students not saving their Google Earth files in the appropriate locations. The final grades for the quarter are based on completion of the charts. Those students who completed a place mark correctly to share in the tour received 5 bonus points for each one correctly completed (meaning it contained the appropriate image, accurate information, AND citations for resources used). There are some students who did everything but did not put in the correct image, others who did a place mark but never corrected the information that I had pointed out was inaccurate, and others who did everything but the citations. With the ones that were correctly completed I will be putting a tour together and I have explained to the students how to access this when it is ready. The link to the kmz file will be posted here and also on the class blog. 1. You will need to have Google Earth installed on your home computer. If you do not have this free program you can download it here. 2. Click on the link that I provide to access the kmz file and choose to either open it or save it to your computer. The place marks will then be available in the left side bar in the Places panel. Feel free to email me if you have any difficulty. Students are also welcomed, in fact encouraged, to write in their blogs over the summer. I will check for things that are awaiting publication. Feel free to write about books you read, places you visit, whatever your heart desires as long as you do not give away personal information either in your post or in your comments. If a post is not published, you can check the text editor version to see if I have left a comment as to why. One reason might be including images without crediting the source, or an excessive amount of misspelled words. Also check the class blog for information I may add as well. Have a wonderful summer!
March - My America Field Trip -We have begun our multimedia project which will end in a Google Earth tour of American landmarks and symbols. All details are found on the grade 5 wikispace which can be accessed from the link at the top of this page. Each team of three will cover twelve landmarks or symbols, so each student will complete 4 of the stops on the tour. The information chart for the first landmark needs to be completed on the wiki by the end of class on March 29. All information can be accessed at home. Students should use the pre-selected sites for each stop and not be googling or using Wikipedia. Those sites were specifically chosen for each stop on the tour.
February - March Throughout the month of February and into March we discussed Internet Safety and issues such as email scams, cyberbullying, social networking, determining safe sites, posting information, and online shopping. The culminating activity for our unit of study is to complete a blog post of 10 Internet Safety Tips following these guidelines. We reviewed all the topics and went over the details of the assignment on March 15. The post must be submitted by March 26. Scores for the post "Three Best Things About My School" completed for Catholic Schools Week have been posted.
2/8/10 - We have been working on our Safety in the Digital Age topics using Discovery Streaming resources and other video and website information. So far we have discussed safety in online shopping (Parents, ask your son or daughter to tell you how to evaluate if a website is safe for entering credit card information.), social networking and protecting personal information online(Parents, do you know that students under 13 are not permitted to register for Facebook, according to their terms of service?), and today's topic - Cyberbullying. (Parents, this would be a great topic to discuss at home and how your child can be safe at home and how to handle situations that may arise.) Students completed an anonymous survey about their access to email, texting, instant messaging, and personal computers. I will be compiling the results and displaying them.
1/4/10 - Welcome back! In class today, those students not yet finished with their smoking poster activity continued with that. Those who have handed in their labeled black and white copy spent time on keyboarding skills. All smoking posters must be printed and handed in no later than the end of class on Monday, Jan. 11. (During that class time we will also be practicing logging in to the class wiki in order to use it for our Internet Safety unit of study which will begin on January 25.) Anyone who has not completed their work for the smoking poster by the end of class on Jan. 11 will need to request a pass to the computer lab during lunch recess. All colored copies will be given to Mrs. Criscuolo on Jan. 15. Because of holidays during the second quarter (Christmas, Thanksgiving, and MLK) we will only have time for 2 scored activities - the drawing tool sampler and the smoking poster. Do your best!
11/23/09 - Students worked on completing the drawing tools "sampler" to demonstrate their use of the drawing tools presented the week before. This will be saved in their network folders and evaluated by me. Following directions is key! They will hear more from Mrs. Criscuolo regarding the smoking poster in the next class in which they will either encourage someone to stop smoking or encourage someone never to begin. Put on your creative thinking caps! Have a great Thanksgiving holiday!
11/16/09 - We began experimenting with the drawing tools in Microsoft Word in preparation for the Smoking Poster project for health class. Students worked with autoshapes, grouping, rotation, patterned fill, arranging, and duplicating. Next week there will be a graded sampler activity to demonstrate correct use of these tools.
11/9/09 - Additional time was given for making up work due to absences. Those students caught up had time to visit other student blogs from other schools and leave comments and link back to their own blogs. **Comment on first quarter grades: There was a definite curve to the grades which will be evident if you compare the % score to the letter grade. I am hoping we will improve in listening and following directions in the second quarter and also that more students will take advantage of information posted on Schoolnotes!
11/2/09 - I reviewed the 3 assignments that would count for the first quarter: 1. Blog Challenge 1 - 46 pts. 2. Blog Challenge 2 - Widget - 10 pts. 3. Blog Challenge 2 - Comments - 34 pts. Students were told that if they had received a zero for the first assignment because it was incomplete they had until Wednesday morning to complete it and submit the original score sheet with the words "please rescore". Any points for on-time completion cannot be earned. Without this sheet I will not re-grade any work whether it appears on the blog page or not. I also said I would make one more pass over the blogs before Friday to check for late widgets. Students had the class period to complete the commenting assignment or any old work. Students who are absent or leave class for instrumental music should be making use of schoolnotes to catch up with assignments.
10/26/09 - We are working on our last assignment for the first quarter. This involves searching for other student bloggers and writing comments to them. The assignment is to write a post showing exactly what you will write to the 3 student bloggers and providing a direct hyperlink to the specific post (and not the entire blog page). Read the directions followed by grades 6, 7, and 8 earlier this year in Blog Challenge 2 - Comments. You must include the following parts in your post: 1. Title (Blog Challenge 2 - Comments) 2. The name of the student blog page 3. The name of the specific post you will comment on 4. The name of the specific post turned into a hyperlink that goes directly to that post. 5. A minimum of 2 sentences in each comment. 6. Correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation 7. Published no later than Monday, Nov. 2. DO NOT LEAVE A COMMENT ON THE STUDENT SITE UNTIL I GIVE THE OK!
10/19/09 - Today score sheets were returned for the first blogging activity. Some students did not complete the assignment, or only did the avatar part of the assignment, and their grade is showing in Power School as U. They have an opportunity between now and Friday to complete the missing parts either at home or in the lab at recess. The score sheet must then be returned to me. If I do not have it by Friday the grade will stand as is. In class we completed the steps to adding a widget on the sidebar, either a flag counter or ClustrMap. For students who missed the explanation due to absence, you can find all the steps to follow here. The widget activity is worth 10 points. Only one needs to be added to the sidebar.
10/5/09 - THERE ARE 9 STUDENTS WHO DID NOT TURN IN A COMPLETED SIGNATURE FORM! Notations have been made in Powerschool as to whether the form was submitted or is missing. It may have been handed in but is missing one or more signatures. Anyone in the "missing" category will not use the Internet at school until the completed form is returned. In class we took a last day to complete the steps that have been listed below regarding the first blogging assignment. If students did not complete the avatar, About Me, and the post on blogging goals, that needs to be completed before next class period. We will not spend anymore time on that in class as we must move on to other things. Please read the entry below for Sept. 27 if you have something to be completed.
9/28/09 - Students are bringing home a signature page indicating their compliance with and parental awareness of Internet and network policies and other activities. Parents must indicate their preference regarding a student's ability to access the Internet at school and sign both sides of the form. Please return this to the homeroom teacher no later than Friday, Oct. 2. Students will use a wiki later in the year and podcasting may or may not be one of our activities this year. Without your permission for your child to access the Internet at school, they will not be able to complete the activities in class next Monday, so it is imperative that the sheets are signed and returned this week.
Classtime on 9/28 - Due to the mile run activity the entire class had technology in the classroom. It was also the first time this year students had used the laptops. I was dismayed to see the number of students who had no idea how to access the schoolnotes site, and that took precious time out of our class to work on that. Please have your child practice at home navigating to the site. We will create desktop shortcuts on the lab PCs but students in 5th grade should be able to access their teachers' pages without help. Listening skills, or lack of, also slowed us down.
Several students said their home computers had virus issues and they could not get online. Hopefully those issues are taken care of soon. Students need ready access to the Internet to check on assignments or to complete assignments. Students also should have entered the blog website, their username, and password into their homework assignment book. Those who forgot came up for a reminder. Please practice logging in to the student blog page and even create a shortcut to the page on your home computer if possible.
9/27/09 - We are participating in the Bloggers' Challenge this year, an activity that will run for several weeks. Hopefully this will get us established in a blogging routine and allow for blog posts to be used for various subjects as well as for student creativity. Grade 5 has gotten off to a slow start for a number of reasons but we hope to complete the challenge activities even though it may be behind the rest of the classes. I do expect that students will make an effort to access their blog pages from home and work on the activities whenever they have a few moments.
There are 5 easy components to the first challenge as seen on this sample blog page.
1. Create an avatar and download to the computer at which you are working. Once it is downloaded to your computer it needs to be uploaded to the blog site using the Control Panel in Edit Mode. Browse for the image on the computer and when the location is in the window, click Upload. The avatar appears on the right with the word "pending", meaning it needs to be approved before it will appear. If you do not see that, you have not done it correctly.
2. Add 5 sentences in the About You box on the control panel.
3. Add "Your Blog Title" in Control Panel. This title will represent your entire blog page and not just the current post. Choose carefully and capitalize key title words. You must click Submit Descriptions or your entries will not come to me for approval.
4. Complete the first post regarding the challenge and blogging goals, also 5 sentences. Refer back to the class blog for what these sentences should include. These sentences are entered into the Articles box (graphical not text editor)
1. Give your post a title "Blogging Challenge Week 1".
2. Enter your 5 sentences regarding the blogging challenge.
3. Choose the correct assignment to associate your post with in the drop down list.
4. Only when you are sure you have proofread for grammar and spelling, check the Request Publishing box.
5. Save your work. (Remember to save often but always save a final time after you request publishing. Once you save the first time your article will be listed under the window with any earlier posts. The PUB column indicates the status of your post. A blank means you have not requested publishing, a question mark means you have requested publishing and are awaiting teacher approval, and a star/asterisk means your post has been published. Target dates: Avatar and About the Blogger sentences and title for blog page by Monday, Oct. 5
First post on blogging challenge by Wednesday, Oct. 7 Students will still be able to work in class on October 5, but it would help greatly if they got a head start and did some of this on their own. After October 5 we will move on to another activity.
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