Week 12

The laptop cart continues to be used by Mrs. White's class as they make progress on their states brochures. Next week, Mrs. Gillespie's class will use the laptop cart to start creating Powerpoint slideshows. (Week of 4/28 and 5/1 - students not visiting computer lab due to STAR testing. Laptop cart used by Ramirez, Devore, Saldivar, Gillespie, White. Second laptop cart is up and running).

Grade 3: In the computer lab, 3rd grade students received a review lesson on proper keyboarding technique. Student spent time keying in words as they were announced. They also spent time trying to advance through the Type to Learn keyboarding software. Children who had completed at least 10 keyboarding lessons were encouraged to use the keyboard covers.

Grade 4: In observance of National Poetry Month and Earth Day, 4th grade students composed acrostic poems using the letters in the words “Earth Day”. Once the poems were composed, students created word collages from the words in their poems using a website called “wordle”. Completed poems have been uploaded to the 3rd grade drop.io website. From drop.io, poems can be downloaded and printed.

Grade 5: Students in grade 5 continued to work on a project in which they are creating a brochure that ties into the required 5th grade science curriculum. Students selected their planets, researched the planet and are beginning to create their brochure in which they advertise adventure travel trips to their planets. Students are creating their brochures in Microsoft Word.

5th Dimension: 2nd and 3rd grade students in the after-school 5th Dimension program participated in a newspaper scavenger hunt this week. They were asked to find items such as a compound word, a word that has at least syllables, the names of 2 countries in Europe, the names of 2 countries in Africa along with many other items that helped to reinforce their classroom learning. Students worked as a team with their UCSD buddies and really enjoyed the game! The 4th and 5th grade students began working on a Reader’s Theatre play. Student divided into groups and decided on their parts. They also began making props. Students will work on this project for several weeks.

Week 11

The laptop cart continues to get used by Mrs. White's class as they continue their work on the states brochures. In addition, Ms. Jabbour's class has checked out several of the laptops for classroom work.

Grade 3: In the computer lab, 3rd grade students participated in a hands-on explorations of the concept of symmetry by creating beautiful symmetrical designs using the online paint program Sumo Paint (http://www.sumopaint.com/). The designs that the students made were absolutely stunning! Student designs can be viewed and downloaded from the Grade 3 computer lab dropio website.

Grade 4: 4th grade students completed their assignments in which they typed up several paragraphs related to how the wireless internet works. For this project, students brought in clip art and formatted the document to produce a professional looking document. Students were required to bold text, change fonts, center, create double spacing, right justify text, insert and resize clipart as part of the assignment. Students also learned the difference between hardware and software plus learned what a processor and RAM is.

Grade 5: Students in grade 5 continued to work on a project in which they are creating a brochure that ties into the required 5th grade science curriculum. Students selected their planets, researched them and are beginning to create their brochure which advertise adventure travel trips to their planets.

5th Dimension: 4th and 5th grade students in the after-school 5th Dimension program participated in a newspaper scavenger hunt this week. They were asked to find items such as a compound word, a word that has at least syllables, the names of 4 countries in Europe, the names of 3 countries in Africa, a homophone, a homonym and many other items that helped to reinforce their classroom learning. Students worked as a team with their UCSD buddies and really enjoyed the game! The 2nd and 3rd grade students played bingo using cards that had the vocabulary words that they had learned so far this year. They also loved playing the game with help from their UCSD buddies.

Week 10

Laptop cart usage is up at our school! This week, Mrs. Saldivar’s class used 2 carts to type up their persuasive paragraphs. Mrs. White’s class used the laptops to start creating brochures on the states that they had been researching.

Grade 3: In the computer lab, 3rd grade students wrapped up the state trading card project Students researched information on their state and typed in the text for their last card. The cards turned out beautiful and can be viewed and downloaded from the Grade 3 computer lab dropio website. Students are continuing to contribute to their classroom blogs. 3rd grade blogs can be viewed at http://amazingb4.blogspot.com/, http://amazingb5.blogspot.com/, http://amazingb6.blogspot.com/, and http://amazingb7.blogspot.com/.

Grade 4: 4th grade students put the finishing touches on their explorer’s webpages. The completed webpages can be viewed at http://poster.4teachers.org/. Once at the site, scroll to the bottom of the page and search by teacher name. The teacher name is : tpeslajolla. Select the desired webpages (posters) to view by clicking on the poster number. Students spent the bulk of the 45 minute period learning about how wireless internet works. They learned about routers, they typed up several paragraphs related to the subject. Once text was typed, students brought in clip art and formatted the document to produce a professional looking document. Students were required to bold text, change fonts, center, create double spacing, right justify text, insert and resize clipart as part of the assignment.

Grade 5: Students in grade 5 began a project in which they will be creating a brochure that ties into the required 5th grade science curriculum. For the project students are researching a planet and creating a brochure to advertise an adventure travel trip to the planet.

5th Dimension: A new group of UCSD students has joined us in the lab. We played an ice breaker game so that everyone could get to know each other. After the game, 4/5 students worked on reviewing their vocabulary through a bingo game. 2/3 students continued to complete game related task cards with their new UCSD buddies.

Week 9

Another week in which much time was spent resolving technical issues. Print drivers were installed on 15 of our newer laptops. In addition, a new printer was was installed for Mrs. Bell. The second laptop cart was used for the first time this week. The laptop cart was used this week by Ms. Randi, Mrs. Bell and Ms. White. I had the rare opportunity to be in the classroom while the laptop cart was being used. Was definitely impressed at how teachers and students managed the use of the cart!

Grade 3: Grade 3 continued to work on their state trading card project. This week students added their pictures to their trading cards and made text boxes.

Grade 4: Grade 4 continued to work on their Explorers web pages. This week students added a picture of their explorer as well as a link to an external website. Webpages can be viewed at the 4th grade webpages link. Go to the bottom of the page. Search for the teacher named: tpeslajolla.

Grade 5: Grade 5 did not come to the computer lab this week due to their Balboa Park field trip.

week 7

Much time was spent this week attending to numerous technical issues around the campus. Updates were installed for the laptop computers as well as printing issues resolved for Mrs. Bell, Mrs. Baniaga and Mr. Berry. Time was also spent addressing a problem with one of the document cameras. The laptop cart was used by Mr. Devore and Mr. Ramirez.

Grade 3: Grade 3 continued to work on their state trading cards. As a warm-up for this project, students had an opportunity to play a word game that challenged their skills on state names. Students also practiced copying pictures from the internet for their trading cards.

Grade 4: Grade 4 did not come to the computer lab this week, due to parent teacher conferences.

Grade 5: Grade 5 students gained background knowledge on the solar system by visiting a website where they earned space trading cards: http:// http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/resources/explorations/trading/directions.html and also a site where they acted as a space doctor taking care of astronauts who had landed on Mars http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/playspace/games/spacedoctor/. Students completed a space oriented crossword puzzle to reinforce their knowledge of planets, asteroids and comets.

5th Dimension: Due to UCSD spring break, the 5th Dimension after-school program was not held this week.

Week 6

The TPES technology committee met this week to discuss the school technology plan as well as brainstorm ideas to increase use of the laptop carts in the classrooms. The laptop cart was used this week by Mr. Devore and Mr. Ramirez.

Grade 3: Students started making “States” trading cards in Microsoft Word. This week students learned to make a table as well as modify the sizes and color of different rows of the table. The project will continue next week with inserting auto-shapes into the table, using Google Images to search for photos, inserting the images into table cells and creating text boxes. Students practiced saving word documents into their individual folders under My Documents.

Grade 4: Student in Grade 4 continued to work on creating their Explorer’s webpages. This week students continued to research and compose text for their webpages. Some classes started building their webpage.

Grade 5: Students worked with their partner to record their podcasts using Audacity software. After recording podcasts, students had a chance to mix in an intro soundclip. Students enjoyed exploring the different effects that could be added to make their productions sound professional such as fading out the intro music. Listen to the 5th grade podcasts, by clicking on the 5th grade podcast listening link. Completed podcasts are also available for download from the 5th grade dropio site: http://dropio/grade5computerlab/login.

Week 5

This week was the first week of computer rotation for many of the 4th and 5th grade students. The laptop cart was used this week by Mr. Ramirez and Mr. Devore.

Grade 3: Students spent time in the lab doing research for the states reports that they were doing in class. Remaining time was spent using Type to Learn software to practice typing. Students also learned how to input their entries into the classroom blog. Students enjoyed creating entries for their classroom blogs.

Grade 4: Some of the lab time this week was spent on housekeeping activites (seat assignments, moving files, going over rules) since some of the students were new to computers and/or had switched rotations. Students were also introduced to a new project that involves creating a simple web page on an Explorer of California (Cabrillo, Vizcaino, Cortes, de Portola).

Grade 5: Some of the lab time this week was spent on housekeeping activites (seat assignments, going over rules) since some of the students were new to computers and/or had switched rotations. Students were introduced to podcasts and were give time to write a script for a persuasive podcast they might want to produce. A suggested topic for a persuasive podcast was attendance.

5th Dimension: After school 5th Dimension students who were interested in creating digital stories continued to work on the stories with their UCSD buddies. Other students completed computer based activities.