With the plans in hand, the students set out to film their scenes. We'll be filming for two days, so if someone is absent, there is still an opportunity to film their scenes. Most students are using their phones to record their video, so getting the footage into iMovie is an important step that might cause a few problems. AirDrop isn't reliable with our school laptops, so if the students have Google Drive on their phone, they can upload it there and then access it on their laptop to use in iMovie. Speaking of iMovie, students need make sure they have it loaded on their computers, and if not, get it from Self Service before class (it will take a while). Based on the smiles and hustle, I think they're enjoying this assignment and I'm excited to see the finished projects!
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Many of us (parents) grew up before the digital devices and constant internet connection so we are able to see the difference between our childhood and our students', as they are growing up with these things. But, like most things, with the positive impacts comes some negative. In order to address some of this, I combined the issues into three categories: Cyberbullying, Digital Balance, and Media Manipulation (which also fit nicely into our curricular requirements). The students formed their own groups and then I assigned (randomly selected) one topic per group. That way we'll all get to learn all the topics. Regardless of the topic, I provided some questions that the students needed to research to hopefully guide them in a useful direction for the content of their PSAs. This information need to be explicitly referenced in their video, but for some reason, every group is also trying to figure out how to incorporate some sort of bullying into their topic. As long as they also have the required information, it'll be fine. Since this unit is all about digital media, the PSAs also need to include: video, images, audio from speech, and music. There are many ways this assignment can be completed and I'm excited to see what the students come up with. If they want to score a 4 on the assessment, though, they will need to create something that stands out from the rest of the videos. Friday/Monday was used as an end-of-quarter catch-up day. There were a few students that still needed to take our latest assessment and several others who wanted to retake one of the others. Students could also use it to complete last class's assignment (if they were absent) or catch up on keyboarding (15 lessons due by the end of 4th quarter). But many students have been keeping up as we go (which is the preferred method!) and ended up with some free time. We started a new unit today, all about digital media. But before we can start creating amazing videos, we need to learn about the laws and protection for those things we create. Instead of a lecture, we rotated through six "stations" to get the information with our groups. The stations included: 1) Patents, 2) Trademarks, 3) A video about trademarking colors, 4) Trade secrets, 5) Copyright, and 6) Licenses. Once we had gone through all six stations, we submitted our notes and then played a game of Kahoot to see if any of the information stuck. The first part dealt with the notes, but then the second part was seeing if the students recognized slogans and logos of a variety of companies. It was a fun way to end the class! Today we took the "Know it" assessment to end our unit. We had reviewed these terms and ideas so many times that the high scores were not a surprise. If your student didn't get the score they wanted, as long as they have all their assignments turned in, they can ask me for a retake. Just a reminder, though, the quarter ends Friday! Today was all about reviewing and getting ready for our upcoming assessment. First, we started with a bit of competition by playing Quizizz. The students could take it as many times as they wanted within the 20 minute window to try to get the highest score possible. There is a bit of luck involved with the power-ups, so even getting 100% didn't guarantee a top spot, which of course got candy or tokens. Then the students took the "Know it" review that includes the actual test questions for the multiple choice. Granted, there was not a candy reward, but seeing the test questions ahead of time is still a pretty good deal! To finish class, the students had time to complete and submit any missing work. Since the quiz is close to the end of the quarter, we won't have much time to retake if necessary. And if there's missing assignments that have to be done first, it might not work out. But of course the best option is to just ace the quiz to begin with. We finished our note-taking about computers today by talking about binary code, prefixes (kilo, mega, giga, tera), and software. The students even decoded a message written in binary code just for fun! (Okay, it was tedious, but a great learning experience to appreciate our input devices which do it for us). After the notes, we took a few minutes to clean up and organize our Google Drive accounts. We created a 2023-24 folder for this school year and then created a folder for each class before moving all the files into their respective folders. An easy but necessary task. Finally, we also had time to work on the Computer Buying Guide. Next class is our catch-up/review day so if they didn't finish this today, they can show me next time. Today we started our new unit about how computers and software work. This is a basic introduction, and the students will learn more next year in Exploring Computer Science. For our day's lesson, we learned about what a computer is, how input and output devices get data to the CPU, the tools the CPU uses to process the data (algorithms, loops, and conditionals), and the role of RAM, ROM, and storage. The students filled in an organizer as we talked about it and one lucky group even won some candy. (Note: the students on Friday used the video to fill in the notes (most started last class) because we had very short classes due to an assembly.) After the lesson, we started the multi-day assignment, Computer Buying Guide. The students are creating a flyer to help an unknowledgeable consumer decide what type of computer they should purchase. The flyer focuses on what the various components do and provides suggestions as to what to look for. We'll be working on this for chunks of time over the next two days. Today we took the unit assessment: create a Keynote/Google Slideshow about pandas. I provided the instructions, information, and the the type of image they needed to find. The students needed to include everything and make sure the whole slideshow was automatic. For a "4", the students needed to replicate a panda drawn from circles within Keynote (the same one to the left). It seemed like most of the students got the score they wanted. For those classes on Wednesday, we also started our next unit (Computers 101) because we have an assembly on Friday, meaning very short classes. This way we won't fall behind. Today was used mostly as a catch-up day - the majority of students needed a bit more time to finish their "Awesome Story" since they are doing such amazing work. I've really enjoyed what I've seen so far! For those students who didn't finish today, they can still submit it to Canvas. There was also a "review" component to the day since next class is our assessment. For the first time this quarter, the unit has only a "Do it" part (skills) and not a "Know it part (vocabulary and concepts). The students were excited about this, and if past performance is correct, that means they will all get great score next class! As for the review, it was a list of the required skills plus the challenge of having to recreate a penguin made out of circles and triangles! |
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April 2024
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