Skype

Below you will find a copy of a letter that was sent home to you with your child on Tuesday, December 14. A permission slip is needed for this activity. An online permission slip has been provided at the end of this post.

Dear Parents,

Skype is a free program that allows you to make videophone calls via your computer. It allows our students to see and hear each other. They can build academic relationships while collaborating on projects, sharing information and creating knowledge.

I believe we must vigilantly supervise students while teaching them about video conferencing. Here is how I plan on introducing them to Skype:

1. After introducing the students to Skype I plan on supervising them while they set up their profiles. This will be online profile so their safety and security is my number one concern.

· Students will only use their first name and last initial.

· Students will not provide an email address.

· Students will not complete their profile.

· I will provide students with a usernames and passwords.

2. After students set up their account, each student will call my Skpye account. During that call I will look at their profile information and confirm it is safely set up.

3. Students will then be able to begin to call other students in the classroom.

4. After I have spoke with each students I will demonstrate how to conference with two or more people.

5. We will discuss Skype safety and other issues.

As of now, we have two Skpye appointments set up for the first week of January. We will be making contact with the third grade class from Minnesota that we have been blog buddies with and the Edgewood Pre-K classes.

HOW CAN YOU HELP WITH THIS EXCITING PROJECT?

If you have a web cam, you also can Skype. I am planning on having a “What do I do while your at school?” day. I am asking parents to spend no more then 5 minutes during their child’s class time to talk to our class. We would like to know what you do during your day? Your child will be in charge of facilitating the session.

· The student will help parent set up their Skype account.

· The student will coordinate the Skype appointment between the parent and Mrs. Phares.

· The student will place a test call.

· The student will facilitate the classroom Skype call.

PLEASE COMMENT BELOW IF YOU WOULD BE WILLING TO PARTICIPATE IN A SKPYE CALL WITH OUR CLASS.

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I WILL NEED TO HAVE PARENTAL PERMISSION BEFORE STUDENTS ARE ALLOWED TO USE SKYPE IN MY CLASSROOM. YOU CAN FILL OUT A PERMISSION SLIP HERE. http://tinyurl.com/26vyo6l

Book Trailers, Third Grade Friends and Skype

Wow! We have been busy in room 301! My amazing students used their developing multi-media skills to create book trailers. After choosing their favorite books, they developed a storyboard and created a 30 second to 60 second iLife movie. Like usual, I was amazed at the level of their performance. Take a look at this book trailer by Kyle H.

My first three periods have been blogging buddies with a third grade class from Wisconsin. (Periods five through eight will have blog buddies next week.) I found this class through one of my Twitter contacts. This week they designed a Holiday greeting and posted it to their blogs. The third grade class was then able to practice their "comment" skills by writing back to us. You can see the results here.

• Period Two http://kidblog.org/PeriodTwo2/
• Period Three http://kidblog.org/ThirdPeriod2/
• Period Four http://kidblog.org/PeriodFour3/

This week we are busy working on our personal websites. Students were able to choose the topic and design a three page website. This is all new for them and the process is taking a bit longer then I thought. I am sure the results will be worth the wait.

SKYPE IS COMING

Very soon we are going to begin our unit on Video conferencing. We will be using Skype so students can learn from other students, connect with other cultures, and expand their knowledge in amazing ways. I am really looking forward to this opportunity. PLEASE LOOK FOR A SKYPE PERMISSION SLIP TO COME HOME TO YOU SOON.

You can send our class a word of encouragement by sending a comment below. Thank you for your support.

The Three R's

The Edgewood faculty recently listened to WIllard Daggett, Ph.D., founder and President of the International Center for Leadership in Education talk about the three ‘R”s. What are the three ‘R’s'? Dr. Daggett believes the three R's are Relationships, Relevance, and Rigor. Daggett’s point about relationships was that learning is personal. When teachers have strong, trusting relationships with their students, they work harder and achieve more. This is something that I strive to accomplish everyday. Getting to know these middle school students has not been the easiest task in my life. They are, as I am sure you know, a strange breed.
My hope is that once I have established their trust, my students will start to trust me.

I put this theory to the test this week when I introduced Excel to them. According to Microsoft, " Excel is a spreadsheet program which allows one to enter numerical values or data into the rows or columns of a spreadsheet, and to use these numerical entries for such things as calculations, graphs, and statistical analysis." NOW, I ASK YOU. HOW MUCH MORE FUN CAN A SEVENTH GRADER HAVE? I understand this is not their favorite program, but so far the grumbles have been quiet. Most of the students have managed to design their own word search using their Excel talents.

Earlier this week we used some "Action Shots" we made with our digital cameras to make some posters. I was amazed at the results of this quick and easy project.

This weeks blog question took a serious turn. I have the students talking about bullying at school. I was surprised at the emotions that poured out of them. Sometimes we forget how difficult it is to be a teenager. http://emscomputer10.wikispaces.com/Student+Blogs

The World through the Eyes of a Seventh Grader

This has been a fantastic week of learning in room 301. Honestly, when I began thinking about the digital photography unit a couple of weeks ago I was a bit apprehensive. I was comfortable in the technology side of projects but not the art side. I was having dinner with a good friend, Jill Fowler, who happens to be one of the best art teachers I have ever known and I asked her for some guidelines. Being the model educator that she is, she volunteered to come in and team-teach this project with me. ( Unfortunately, Mrs. Fowler has found herself unemployed because of budget cuts and I believe she was anxious to get back to see the kids that she loves so much.)

Jill spent one class period with the kids talking to them about how to take good photographs. One of my favorite quotes from her was "You will not find a yellow sticky note next to the good shots, you will need to open your eyes and look for them." We then had the students outside for two days and you will absolutely not believe the final projects these young students have produced. The best part of the day was when the students would run up to us and say "You will not believe the shot I got!"

You can view their photo slide shows on their wikipages located here.http://emscomputer10.wikispaces.com/StudnetsSemOne ( Period eight will not be posted until Monday.)

BONUS: If my son or daughter was taking photography like this in the seventh grade I would of wanted to frame some of their shots and hang them in my home. If you would like a digital copy of their work you can send in a flash drive or a blank CD/DVD and I will make sure you get them. You can then take them to Walmart or Walgreens to have them printed. What a great gift for Grandma and Grandpa.

The Quest Continues and an AMAZING STUDENT!

The Quest into Google Earth is continuing this week in room 301 at the Middle School. Students are beginning to understand the power of this amazing piece of free technology offered by Google. So far we have learned how to fly to any destination in the world, zoom, rotate and tilt the earth, dive under the water, view 3d buildings, view ship wrecks,track sharks, sea turtles, dolphins, and track the weather. Next week we will be completing a google earth tour of important events of our lives.

Did you know that packaged with Google Earth is Google Sky, Google Moon, and Google Mars? On Wednesday and Thursday we will be launching ourselves into outer space and become explorers of the great beyond!

Have a great weekend.

A word from an amazing student:

"Recently I found out a cool thing; Human inanimate object suggestion. It's where an human uses his/her words to make an electronic device do something. Now I know what you''re thinking, "Yeah right, more psychological stuff like Mind Freak." Well there is proof. One time they had a machine that picked up M&Ms and put them in a bowl. Alone, it took 25 motions to pick it up successfully, but when a person was in the room telling it to pick up the M&m, it did it in 2-5 motions! Just a coincidence? WRONG! They did this 25 times and got the relatively same results each time! Cool, huh?"

-C.J. Phillips, Grade Seven

PowerPoint to Google Earth

WOW! The students in room 301 have produced some amazing powerpoint presentations! I wish I could feature them all; however, because time and space restrictions I have chosen to feature Andrew T's from period two. I was really impressed with the way that Andrew embedded photos into his backgrounds. You can look at your son or daughter's presentation on their wikipage located at http://emscomputer10.wikispaces.com/StudnetsSemOne.

Next week we are going to dive into Google Earth. I am sure that my students will be mesmerized with its abilities to put the world's geographic information at their fingertips. First we are going to use Google Earth to find our homes, school, and other places of interest. Next I am going to show them the layers and how they can dive under the water to visit the deepest part of the ocean. Finally, we will be making inferences by comparing familiar places to other locations.

Our final Google Earth Project will be a student-made KMZ file which will be developed around a school topic and will take advantage of the technological power of Google Earth.

If you do not have Google Earth installed on your home computer, please consider the free download located at http://www.google.com/earth/index.html.

Have a great weekend!

What's the Point?

Teaching seventh grade students to use PowerPoint to create simple presentations is a great way to help them learn to organize their thoughts. This software is a high-powered tool used for presenting information in a dynamic slide show format. Text, charts, graphs, sound effects and video are just some of the elements PowerPoint can incorporate into their presentations with ease. I believe it addresses multiple intelligences by using color, images, shapes, sound, music, video (multimedia) etc. to reinforce the important points of their projects.

This week students began working on their individual PowerPoint presentations. We have been posting our progress on our class blog.

http://emscomputer10.wikispaces.com/Student+Blogs

The plan is to finish these projects next week and begin to present them.

I AM LOOKING FOR A FEW TECH-SAVY PARENTS WHO WOULD LIKE TO "SKYPE" IN WITH OUR CLASS TO BE A PART OF OUR PRESENTATION DAY. PLEASE EMAIL ME IF YOU ARE INTERESTED!

I decided to give my students a much deserved "mental health" day today and gave them a break from the PowerPoint project. They created their "Wild Self" and wrote a poem about them. I am always amazed at their creativity. You can check them out here. http://emscomputer10.wikispaces.com/Student+Blogs

PLEASE NOTE: NEXT WEEK WE WILL BE BLOGGING ABOUT OUR PETS. I WOULD LOVE TO HAVE A PHOTO OF YOUR CHILD AND THEIR PET(S). YOU CAN EMAIL ME THE PHOTO, HAVE YOUR CHILD BRING IT TO ME ON A MEMORY STICK, OR SIMPLY SEND THE PHOTO IN AND I WILL SCAN IT AND GET IT BACK TO YOU.

PowerPoint

This week my amazing students dug back into their memory banks to remember some useful techniques they have learned in the past about PowerPoint. We then added a few new skills and came out with a PowerPoint presentation titled "All About Me." We were able to put them on our wikispace by changing them into PowerPoint movies. One of the dangers of changing a PowerPoint into a movie is that it loses the animations, however, I thought you would enjoy seeing what they accomplished this week.

I am totally excited about next weeks project. I am turning the tables, they are going to be the teachers and I will be the student. Their assignment is to find something they are studying in another class and go above and beyond what they have learned. They are then going to make a PowerPoint and teach me. This project is going to exercise their research skills, their writing skills, and their presentation skills. They will be blogging for the last five minutes of every class to report on the progress they have made. What a great project this is going to be! My hope is that you will become involved in this project and add your support from home.

Not a lot of time for blogging this week, however, we did have a few minutes to write about a Random Act of Kindness we performed. I hope you enjoy reading them. Your comments are so appreciated and mean the world to your child.

A Summary of Week Four

Honestly, this has not been the easiest week of my life. I am trying to engage my students into an activity that requires them to think. I want to teach them a skill that they will be able to use the rest of their academic life. I believe the ability to summarize is an efficient way to capture what is most important. We began by reading an article from "Time for Kids". We then used our highlighting tools in Word to highlight the Who, What, Where, When, and Why of the article. We then created a table and moved the information over. I thought this would be an easy lesson for them, however, most of them found it challenging and frustrating.

After four days of hard work, I thought we needed a "mental health" day so I introduced the students to Photo Booth. Photo Booth is an application found on the Mac computers that uses the built in i-Sight camera. Students just look into the lens, smile and click. The fun part is the effects that can be added. There were lots of giggles and wiggles going on today in room 301. Next, we took those photos and posted them on our blogs along with a fictional short story.

Here is the fun part, the students were all having such a great time, they did not even realize they were writing. What a great day! My favorite post of the day belongs to Michael R. What a great story he tells. You can read his story here.

NOTE: The site went down for repair during our 8th period so their blogs will not be posted until Monday.

Next week we will be starting our adventures into Power Point.

Have a great weekend!

Ten Speed or Three Speed?

This weeks class motto was "Like a ten speed bike, most of us have gears we do not use." I really kicked my kids into high gear this week. I had high expectations and most of them achieved their goals.

We are continuing to work on our word processing skills. We live in a digital age. The 21st century learner will need to be proficient on their word processing skills to be effective in the classroom and the workplace. Communication skills will continue to be a focus of our classroom through our blog and wikispace.

This weeks accomplishments includes:

• Students created Wikispace Page on our classroom wikispace.
• Students uploaded their Wordle and Vacation Documents to their Wikispace Page.
• This weeks blog post was about the five things that makes them the happiest. I am continuing to fight the battle of getting them all to write in complete sentences. (I will win this battle!)

Thank you to the parents and grand-parents who have taken the time to comment on our blogs. It makes a difference when they know I am not the only one who is reading their post.

I have made an important addition to my blog. You can now click on the "lesson plan" page at the top of the screen to see my weekly lesson plans.

Next week is an crucial week for my students. We will be discussing the dangers of plagiarism.

Have a great weekend.

Robin Phares

pharesr@edgewood.k12.oh.us

Self Motivated Learners

I believe that I am responsible for my student's motivational level. A student may arrive in my classroom with a certain degree of motivation, but ultimately it is my behavior and the design of my classroom that has the largest effect on their motivation. This week's theme was "How to become a Self-Motivated Learner." I post their assignments daily and they understand it is their responsibility to complete their work. I am starting to see some impressive work habits.

This weeks class motto was "If you need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of your arm."

I can honestly tell you that my students have far surpassed my expectations. I am shocked at the level of work they are achieving and this is only the second week of school.

• We have completed three additional learning.com lessons on Word. Please remember that these lessons can be viewed at http://learning.com/. Students use their six digit school id number as both their user name and password. The district name is "edgewood-oh".
• Students completed the "Word" quiz and I am happy to report that the lowest grade was an 84%.
  
• We began two projects that will utilize their newly acquired Word skills. I will be posting their finished projects next week. About Me and A Teenagers' Guide to Everywhere
  
• This weeks blog post was about Super Heroes. I asked the students if they could be a superhero, what super powers would they have and why? You can read their responses here. Please take time to comment on their posts. I believe it will help them become better writers knowing you are reading their thoughts.
  

http://kidblog.org/PeriodTwo/

http://kidblog.org/PeriodThree/

http://kidblog.org/PeriodFour2/

http://kidblog.org/PeriodFive/

http://kidblog.org/PeriodSix/

http://kidblog.org/PeriodEight/

Have a great three day week-end!

If you need to get in touch with me you can email at pharesr@edgewood.k12.oh.us.

The First Week of School

WOW! What a great first week we have had in Room 301, the Computer Room, at Edgewood Middle School. I am so pleased with the progress my classes have made in just one week. Take a look at what we have been up to.

• The first day we spent exploring our new class website. Students were able to find everything they needed to be successful located on the student page. There is also a parent page.
• We discovered that our classroom calendar is going to be of particular help to us. All of the classroom assignments and due dates are listed on this page.
• We answered our first blog question. I asked the students to create two goals for the school year. You can read their responses here.
• We completed our first two Easy Tech lessons. Easy Tech is a Web-delivered technology literacy curriculum. Each student has been assigned a user name and password. These lessons can easily be made up if needed when an absence occurs.
• Finally, today we began working on our individual blogs. Many students did not have time to get this assignment finished; however, those who did have offered some amazing writings. The assignment was to describe their dream school. PLEASE TAKE TIME TO COMMENT ON YOUR CHILD'S BLOG. IT WILL MEAN THE WORLD TO THEM KNOWING YOU ARE READING THEIR THOUGHTS. The more comments, the better, so please have Grandma and Grandpa comment also.

You can view their blogs here.

http://kidblog.org/PeriodTwo/

http://kidblog.org/PeriodThree/

http://kidblog.org/PeriodFour2/

http://kidblog.org/PeriodFive/

http://kidblog.org/PeriodSix/

http://kidblog.org/PeriodEight/

If you would like to contact me, my email is pharesr@edgewood.k12.oh.us

Have a great weekend!