Bill Eaker - Dist. #228

The 3rd grade is in the process of creating slideshows of butterflies and moths.  This is a unit that they have covered, or will cover in their curriculum during the year.  The slideshow program that is used is called Keynote, which was created and distributed by Apple Inc.  Third graders are learning the basics of typing, adding pictures and maps, and customizing fonts, colors, and backgrounds.  The following photos and distribution maps in the screenshots were provided by:

Opler, Paul A., Harry Pavulaan, Ray E. Stanford, Michael Pogue, coordinators. 2006. Butterflies and Moths of North America. Bozeman, MT: NBII Mountain Prairie Information Node. http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/

Over the next couple of weeks, the fourth and fifth grade students will be starting projects using another free google program called SketchUp.  This program is a drafting program that allows students to create just about anything their imaginations can come up with in three dimentions.  To learn and get used to the tools, which is probably the hardest part, students will be creating projects from sets of directions provided in class.  Students will learn about polygons, duplicating through measurement, radii, diameters, etc.  SketchUp can be found at http://sketchup.google.com/.Here are a couple of screen shots of projects that they will be working on.

After much anticipation, the Promethean ActivBoards are up and running in the computer labs.  What is a Promethean ActivBoard?  Well, it is  smart technology that allows students and teachers to write, type, draw, show videos, record, etc., etc. by connecting a computer to the board.  It works in conjunction with a projector that is mounted above the board.  It is difficult to describe, but students can manipulate lessons and answers on the board with a special pen.  The lessons are called flipcharts and they work much like slideshow presentations, yet the objects and text can be added, moved or deleted at the board.  Every application on the computer can be operated from the board as well.  It is an amazing technology that I will post about here frequently.  The link to the Promethean website is found on the right under Technology.

Below are some pictures of Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s class using the ActivBoard as well as the system.

The Southwest fourth graders have been gearing up for working with graphs of many different types in math.  To correlate with this, the students worked on making line graphs on the website http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/CreateAGraph/.  This is a nice little site that allows the kids to design, edit, and print just about any type of graph that they would need.  Students can choose colors for all the components of the graph, choose different fonts, and customize it in other ways as well.  Graphs can be saved in PDF format on computers at home.  This would make a nice site for graphing homework (with teacher permission of course).

Last Wednesday, the fourth grade students at Northside worked on longitude and latitude through an online tutorial.  It is found at http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/DE/k9mod/Mapskill/mod3fl5.swf.  I was really impressed with this website due to the amount of content that it was helping the kids learn!  Students also had to answer periodic questions before moving on.  At the end of class time, we did some review and I was pleasantly surprised on how much they all learned.  It had been introduced in class as well, so the website can’t take all the credit  Here are a couple of webshots.

The fifth grade at Millikin viewed a couple of google.com sites.  The first one was http://www.google.com/moon/ in which they could view the surface of the moon in great detail.  This site allows students to scroll around the satellite images of the moon and view craters, mountains, and valleys that are on the surface.

The other site they looked at was http://www.google.com/mars/ which is very similar to Google Moon, but appears to have better image quality.  It also allows students to view named craters, mountains, dunes, valleys, etc.  This is a great site for anyone interested in the planet Mars!!

Today, the fourth grade at Millikin explored a couple of awesome interactive websites that allowed them to build the different types of volcanoes that they have been learning about it class.  The first one is found at http://www.channelone.com/news/2006/01/18/volcano/  

The second website is found at http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/pompeii/interactive/interactive.html

Both of these websites are a great resources in learning about volcanoes and how they work.  Students adjust the gas and silica levels to create and watch various types of volcanoes!

On Friday, September 26th, the elementary teachers had an inservice on how to set up their own blogs, work with Skyward Messaging, and how to use iChat effectively.  Mr. Brookens provided the instruction on iChat, while Mrs. Burrack taught them how to use Skyward messaging.  I provided instruction on how to set up teacher blogs and post information and photos.  All in all, I think that everything went smoothly.  I think everyone walked away with something that they could use in their classrooms:)

The fourth grade has been working with the Apple Pages program.  This is a word processing program with many user-friendly tools that can be used to make unique and colorful documents.  The fourth graders are making brochures about themselves so that I can read about them and know them a little better.  So far, they have learned how to add objects, resize them, and change their colors.  They have also learned how to manipulate their line color, thickness, and design.  As these get closer to completion, we will share more about these awesome brochures.

The third grade has been working with our online math book program this week.  We have worked on logging in correctly, navigating the textbook, and navigating the activities.  Eharcourtschool.com is an interactive website that is provided to the school district through our math book company.  It is a wonderful resource for your students to use.  Every child should have been provided a username and password to enter this site.  Basically, it has the textbook on the site, but is loaded with interactive activities that children can practice to understand the concepts of each chapter better.  Click each picture to see an enlarged version.

Here’s the picture of the online book.

Here’s a shot of the interactive tutorials.

Finally, here is a picture of the interactive practice.