OLPH Technology 3 Useful links: Our Lady of Perpetual Help School Website PowerSchool Login Class Blog 11/19/09 - The virtual field trip is now underway. At the beginning of class we reviewed how to navigate the field trip in Google Earth, how to listen to my narration with Audio Pal, and how to open the associated video clips with each stop on the trip. We are learning to minimize windows and just pull them up when needed. There is a writing activity of 4 sentences to be posted to the blog after each stop. Some students sent their posts for publishing but did not have enough written. They will be able to continue at their own pace with the trip at our next class which will not be until Dec. 3.
Please continue to practice keyboarding skills at home using the links at the bottom of this page. Have a great Thanksgiving holiday!
11/12/09 - Students were introduced to the upcoming Google Earth virtual field trip to the Rainforests of the World. We visited stop 1 together and saw 2 streaming video clips to get us ready for the "trip".
11/5/09 - Last class period of the first quarter. I usually save this as a "free choice" for third grade. Students could blog, practice keyboarding, use Kid Pix, or go to a favorite game site. **Note regarding report cards: The first quarter grade represents student participation in activities in the first quarter. There are no graded technology assignments in third grade.
10/29/09 - We completed one full keyboarding lesson and if time remained students could create a blog post on the Fall Carnival or the World Series, or respond to comments from our Canadian friends.
10/22/09 - We used the Type to Learn keyboarding program for the first time and learned about correct posture and the Home Position. At the bottom of this page are two links to online typing programs that can be used for daily practice. These were demonstrated in class.
10/15/09 - We learned from their class blog that our Canadian friends celebrated Thanksgiving on Oct. 12 this year. We looked at similarities and differences between their celebration and ours. Then we learned to enter a comment by each commenting on a post written by a Canadian student. Some of our students have received return comments from our friends to the North.
10/8/09 - Today we went on a "field trip". We visited the class blog of our friends in Saskatchewan. If your child has not told you about our interaction with 3rd grade Canadian friends please ask. We found their city which is White City, Saskatchewan, by using Google Earth. We viewed some things on their class site and discussed what we saw, talking about time zones and their field trip to a Hutterite Colony (similar to the Amish). Then each student wrote a sentence or question as a blog post "to our Canadian friends". It is exciting that some of the Canadian students have come back to leave comments for us. We are looking forward to working with them. *I will soon be entering some scores into Power School for technology grades since it appears on the third grade report card. The students are not actually evaluated on the quality of their work as we do things pretty much step by step together. If someone has trouble, I help them complete the task. So, in effect, because of their effort and enthusiasm, students in grade 3 will generally receive a G on their report card. In order for this letter grade to show however, I need to enter a point value. So if you see your child receiving 85 out of 100 points, please do not think they have "lost points" for something. This is the only way to achieve a G value for a score.
10/1/09 - Today we uploaded avatars to our blog pages (well, some did.) We discussed the meaning of "avatar" and also "hyperlink". If your child is in the 3A group it may take a couple days for me to get their avatars showing because I found out in that group that we cannot all press "upload" at the same time on this site. Avatars were showing up on wrong pages. I did not let that happen in the 3B group, so I learned something new about this site. I will need to go into the PC where the student saved the avatar image and upload it to the individual blog page for them. Please sign both sides of the policy form that will be coming home on Friday. The policies are online at the sites indicated. There are tools there such as wikis, that 3rd graders may not be using, but the policy sheet was meant to span grades 3 through 8. Please let me know if there are any questions.
9/28/09 - Third grade students are now official bloggers. They have posted twice on their blog pages and are excited to share their thoughts. We hope to have some interaction with a third grade class in Saskatchewan, and I have been in touch with their teacher. The link to their blog site is on the left of our class blog. Each student has his/her own blog page. You will be receiving a signature page on Friday, Oct. 2, which will direct you to the online locations of our policies regarding Internet use and activities such as blogging in the classroom. We will be gradually learning about issues regarding safety and protecting our personal information, along with other skills. Feel free to write a comment on your child's blog entries. All comments, in fact everything on the page, comes to me first for approval as a safeguard.
Students are free to add other posts anytime they want to write and not just wait for class activities. In addition, if your child would like to correct any spelling in already published posts, they can be re-submitted. We will also soon begin our work on keyboarding and more information on that will follow.
On Thursday, Sept. 10, third grade had their first technology class. We talked about some computer lab rules and they used the Google Chrome browser to navigate to the main technology schoolnotes page as well as their own third grade tech page. We also visited the tech class blog site, and talked about opportunities to communicate with other students via blogging. Parents will receive an update on this information and links to read about policies on a signature page that will be distributed next week.
Third grade parents should be adding their email addresses to the notification list on this page. I rarely send out a notification on the main page. The current main tech page info is general information on having home computers updated to start the year off right.
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