Week 16

The laptop carts continue to be in high demand with Mr. Ramirez's fifth grade class using the laptops to create Powerpoint presentations on the Revolutionary War and Mr. Serafin's second grade class utilizing the laptops to turn their animal reports into Powerpoint presentations.

This week was the last week of rotations taking place in the computer lab for the 2008-2009 academic year. Here is a summary of what each grade worked on in the lab this week.

Grade 3: Students in grade 3 completed typing and editing their friendly letters. Remaining computer time was spent practicing keyboarding technique.

Grade 4: Students in grade 4 typed and edited friendly letters. Grade 4 students also worked on increasing keyboarding speed.

Grade 5: Students in grade 5 were introducted to a number of technology terms such as wikis, twitter and basics such as hardware and software. The remainder of the 45 minute class period was composing and edited a friendly letter.

Week 15

The laptop cart again was again buzzing with activity during Open House week. The digital story project for Ms. Nieto’s class was completed in time for Open House. Parents just loved seeing the results. Mr. Devore’s and Mr. Ramirez’s classes began creating a Revolutionary War Powerpoint projects. Ms. White’s class finished making their storybooks using the laptop cart.

Grade 3: Students completed typing and formatting their friendly letters. This was the last meeting of Grade 3 students for the year. Outside of computer lab time, students in Ms. Jabbour's class came to the lab to type and format papers they had written in class.

Grade 4: Students continued to practice their typing using the Sponge Bob Typing software. Proper keyboarding technique was stressed throughout the lesson.

Grade 5: Students received brush-up instruction on creating a Powerpoint and were also introduced to some of the advanced animation features that could be included in Powerpoint presentations. Students created a short Powerpoint on themselves that they shared with fellow classmates.

Week 14

The laptop cart again was buzzing with activity. Mr. Devore, Ms. White, Ms. Nieto/Gordon and Ms. Randi used the laptops for various projects. One project that was particularly exciting is a digital storytelling project that I have been working on with Ms. Nieto. For this project, students wrote narrative stories and then the stories were made to "come live" with the help of scanned pictures and narration. Several problems were addressed this week including a backspace key that had fallen off one of the laptop keyboards, a glitch that prevented one of the batteries from charging, a bad video card also a laptop that was re-imaged. Additionally, there was a teacher laptop on which the hard drive failed. A network printing problem is plaguing the computer lab. The problem is still being investigated.

Grade 3: Students returned to the computer lab after 2 busy weeks of testing. Students were introduced to an online piano (http://numbera.com/musictheory/piano.aspx) on which they could play music while at the same time practice their typing. Students also began typing a friendly letter.

Grade 4: Students practiced their typing using the Sponge Bob Typing software. The break from the MicroType Pro typing software was welcomed by the students.

Grade 5: Students used Microsoft Excel to create graphs for their science fair projects. Students also performed an online frog dissection in preparation for their science class frog dissection lab. The online frog dissection was found at http://www.froguts.com/flash_content/index.html.

Week 13

Students did not come to the computer lab this week again due to STAR testing. The laptop cart was very popular though with use by Mrs. Gillespie, Mr. Devore, Ms. White, Mr. Ramirez, Ms. Randi and Ms. Nieto/Gordon. I was very excited to be involved in the classrooms with Ms. Gillespie and Ms. Nieto. In Ms. Gillespie's class, students created slideshows using Powerpoint to showcase their state research. Student's really enjoyed this project. These reports turned out absolutely gorgeous! Students in Ms. Nieto/Gordon's class are making their narrative stories come to life by transforming them into digital stories. Several technical problems have arose with using laptop cart 2. These include: inconsistent internet access and a computer that currently won't boot.