OLPH Technology 4 Useful links:OLPH School Website
Powerschool Log In
Grade 4 Wikispace
Tech class blog
EDU Glogster
April 16, 2012
New information posted on the olph-technology wiki.
February 20, 2012
New information posted on the olph-technology wiki.
January 29, 2012
New information posted on the olph-technology wiki.
November 14, 2011 New information posted on the olph-technology wiki.
 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 namedolph-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 fourth 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, 5th 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. :-)
April 7 - This week we began the actual glog project. I demonstrated the samples and reviewed inserting images and text. Students may access the glog at any time from home. I will review inserting hyperlinks next week.
Sample state glog - Pennsylvania
Sample national park glog - Acadia (still working on this one- I will add more to it on the weekend.)
Here is a video tutorial on YouTube regarding the glog tools. Start at 2:10 to see the tools in use. Tutorial When we are finished students will embed their glog into their class blog page and also share it with their classmates.
One caution: Students were told when they signed in that, just as with blogging, we are known by our initials only. There were told NOT to put their real names in the name boxes and yet I just noticed that a few have done that. These should be changed back to initials. I will have anyone who has done that change it back next week but if possible, it should be done immediately.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions about the glogs.
Here is a link to 4th graders who completed glogs about jazz musicians.
Some students are confused about how to access the URL of their image link. This will vary depending on the browser being used. Here is a video I created when 5th grade was creating glogs and using a site called Pics4Learning. In the video it shows where to find the URL of the image in Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox.
March 29 - Students were introduced to EDU Glogster (link above) for an upcoming project on national parks. This is the virtual poster that Mrs. Smith mentioned earlier but students had not yet been taught to use it. Each student now has a username and password for the site, and everyone was able to log on successfully in class. The log on names follow the pattern: 2015olph001, 2015olph002, 2015olph003, etc. The password is the same as for the student blog page (word and number, word begins with same letter as first name). I demonstrated use of the various tools and students were given time to explore and experiment. On this site we again do not give any personal information. Students are known only by initials as on the class blog, and the glogs we publish will be set as private. Be sure to always access the site from edu.glogster.com; the partner site glogster.com is not the educational version of the site.
Over the past few months students have been working on various projects for the fourth grade curriculum, including publishing their writing, creating a guinea pig booklet, and most recently sharing an aspect of the midwest region of the US. Technology class has been used to helping with technical aspects of those assignments. Correct keyboard is still encouraged and students are urged to continue practice at home using one of the keyboard links at the bottom of the page, another online program you find, or even purchased software.
Sept. 15, 2010 - After practicing logging in with individual user names and passwords last week, we tried again this week and still had some difficulties remembering the password. It is a piece of information that students should know well and Mrs. Smith will mention more about this at her parent meeting this week. We also did a test save of a MS Word document into the student network folder. I stressed the importance of saving to the right location, naming the file, and saving often. This point was illustrated perfectly when a few students in one group lost power to their workstations and the little bit they had completed was lost. We were just ready to go through the saving process when that happened! The information we used in our sample document was name and address and many students had difficulty remembering their own address. This would be a really important thing to go over with them.
2009-2010 School year June 17 - I have gone back to the Collaboration files where the national park projects were saved and compiled each team's placemarks into one kmz file. A kmz file is the zip file for a Google Earth file. When you click on the link you will have the option to save or open. Either one will put the file into the Temporary Places folder in your Google Earth program. (Fourth grade should be familiar with this procedure.) If you choose to open you may see a kml file which you then need to open. If you have not yet downloaded GE get it here. Some of you may see some items missing from your placemark and you are SURE you put them in. Remember that if you did not save it to the collaboration file on the network but instead saved the final version to the local computer's hard drive, it is not accessible for sharing. Very few groups got to put the citations for their images at the bottom of the page, and that is something we should always include. All in all I think the fourth grade did a great job with their first time saving this kind of file in a team project. Let me know if you have any trouble with the file. Click here to access the virtual tour as a Google Earth file. If you get to visit any of these national parks be sure to blog about it!
End of year comments -
The fourth grade worked hard in the second semester to create a virtual field trip of US National Parks. Each team researched information on an assigned national park and added the information to a chart in MS Word. They saved information and image URLs in the chart as well. They then created place marks in Google Earth and put their information and images in the place mark so that each park would be part of a virtual tour. I am in the process of putting their place marks together into the finished tour. I explained to them how to access the finished tour and be able to view it at home. 1. You will need to have Google Earth on your home computer. If you do not already have this free program installed you can download it here.
2. I will post a link here and on the class blog to the kmz file that will contain the virtual tour. You will simply choose to open and/or save that kmz file to your computer. It will put the placemarks right inside your version of Google Earth. If you run into any difficulties feel free to email me. Students are also encouraged to write in their blogs over the summer as well as check the class blog for updates. Just some reminders: I will not publish any blog posts or comments that contain personal information, or images that are not appropriately credited. We did have a discussion about copyrighted images and will talk more about that next year. Also, if a post has a tremendous amount of misspelled words I will expect it to be corrected. If a student views their post in the text editor rather than the graphical editor, they may see comments from me as to why the post has not been published. Feel free to write about places visited, fun activities, books read, anything at all. Let the creative writer in you come out. We would love to read your thoughts! Have a wonderful and safe summer!
December - Students have used the last few class periods to work on publishing assignments such as story summaries and the Guinea Pig booklet. For our last class before the holiday (Dec. 16) students created a blog post about some special holiday tradition or activity they wanted to share. We saw by looking at the main blog page that people from all over the world visit our blog site and so we want to share our traditions with people everywhere. If the Christmas post was not completed, please finish it at home and remember to "request publishing". Feel free to blog about other activities or ideas over the holiday. Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year celebration! Don't forget to practice keyboarding with the links on this page.
Nov. 18 - Students used the link regarding ecosystems on Mrs. Smith's page to read about field studies relating to Mexican Wildcats. I recorded my voice reading the segments so that they could listen and follow along with the text. This will be in preparation for creating a food web.
Nov. 11 - Because of National Young Readers' Day our time was a little shorter. Students worked on keyboarding skills. Be sure to use the link to online keyboarding practice at the bottom of this page to continue working on keyboarding at home. *** There were no first quarter graded assignments. All activities were done in conjunction with projects in the fourth grade curriculum and Mrs. Smith. Students received a G for effort and participation.
Nov. 4 - Students used already collected images or saved images if they had not done so for the Guinea Pig booklet. We inserted the images and learned about text wrapping for images.
Oct. 28 - We created a folder within the network folder in which to save images to be used in the Guinea Pig project. We also practiced copy the image link to a document so as to give credit to our sources.
Oct. 21 - We reviewed how to bookmark sites and add shortcuts to the desktop so that students could apply that skill to their laptops. We practiced on the Rand McNally site as that would be one frequently visited in class.
Oct. 7 - 14 - Students worked on entering information into their blog pages. Avatars were created to represent themselves and 5 sentences were entered in the "About Me" section of the sidebar.
Sept. 30 - We had technology in the classroom today because of the mile run activity. Students received a signature form that needs to be returned. Please be sure to sign both sides. The form is general and indicates some activities that 4th graders may not have experienced yet. We discussed Internet safety issues and will continue to do so. In their assignment books I asked the students to copy the website classblogmeister.com, but there is also a direct link to the class blog site at the top of this page. In addition they wrote down their usernames and passwords so they would be able to access from home when necessary. I have asked them to compose 5 sentences for the About the Blogger section on their page. They may view what other students have done so far in grades 5 through 8. They need to bring these sentences, already proofread, to class next Wednesday so they can be typed into the correct box on the Control Panel. We also looked at 2 online typing programs. The links are at the bottom of this page. We will soon be doing some keyboarding skills but with a once a week 45 minute time slot this skill cannot be mastered in school. Please allow them as much time as possible to work on keyboarding skills at home. We discussed speed skins and free alternatives to cover the keyboard so positions can be memorized.
Sept. 23 - Students learned how to create desktop shortcuts on their lab PCs to the previously bookmarked blog and schoolnotes pages. They also had time to practice the review games set up by Mrs. Smith on her schoolnotes site.
Sept. 16 - We used the Google Chrome browser and navigated to the technology class schoolnotes page and bookmarked the page. We also bookmarked the tech class blog page and students were introduce to the idea of blogging and the blogging challenge. We will do our best to participate in some way but progress is slow because we also need to work on listening skills and the idea that you cannot talk while directions or demonstrations are being given and still understand what to do.
I asked students to access the tech class blog and click on the avatar link to be able to have an idea of what avatar design they would like on their pages and to read what some of the other students have currently written in their About Me section so they would be prepared to fill it in next week. The same password will be used for the network and for the blog site to eliminate confusion.
Sept. 9 - Students learned how to log onto the school network using their individual usernames and passwords. We practiced opening browsers and navigating to the schoolnotes pages.
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