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.