Kids in the Mid

Below is a google form asking about which technology you use at home and school.  Please fill in accurately as we will be using the data to look at technology use by students in grades 6/7 at our school.

Welcome to the middle school technology blog. It is most important that you know the URL for this blog as you will be asked to open this every time you come into the computer lab for ICT lessons.

On the sidebar on the left, you will have a link to every student in the middle school and the blog they have created either last year in 2009 or this year 2010.  You will also see links to other blogs to visit under the heading ‘Amazing blogs’.

On the sidebar on the right, you will find two ways your parents or relatives could subscribe to this blog – either through email or a reader. This means everytime a new post is written here, they will be notified and will know what is expected of you during ICT lessons.

Also on the right sidebar is a clustrmap which shows where readers and visitors have come from to get to this blog. The final three items on the right sidebar are a list of the most recent comments and posts as well as what the posts are all about.

In the header section of this blog are some important pages you need to read.  Firstly the checklists to see what you have to be assessed in by the end of either Grade 6 or Grade 10. If you have any questions about blogging or a topic you want me to write a post about, leave a comment on the page ‘Blogging ???’

Once everyone has their own blog and has started writing posts, you will be able to go to the page called ‘All your Posts’ to see a link that will take you to all the posts written by all the students in grade 6/7. I have subscribed to all your blogs using Google reader and then have put them in a folder to which you can now click on a link. I have also subscribed to all your comments, so after you have approved a comment I see it in my reader and can decide if that was an appropriate comment or not.

For parent information there is also a copy of the letter sent home for parents and students to sign regarding ICT in grade 6/7 in 2010.

Well I hope you enjoy this year in ICT – you will only get out of it what you put into it. Have a go at new things, ask questions of other students or the teacher, be prepared to make mistakes and learn from them.

Here is an easy way to connect with students in other countries of the world. 

 Join the student blogging challenge . 

Just read the information on this post, then fill in the student section of the form, scroll down to the end of the form and hit the submit button.   Keep checking the pages on that same blog to find out what the challenges are, who the participants are, and what the participants have been posting. Maybe adding a link to that blog on your sidebar blogroll would make it easy for you to join in.

This is a safe and easy way to be assessed for items 5, 8, 13, 15, 16 and 18 on the grade 6 checklist. Or if you are in grade 7, get marked off on the grade 10 checklist with items 5, 7, 13, 15 and 16.

Attribution:  Original image: ‘Ioni’s world DSC01433‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/99037763@N00/346630496
by: Dimitris Papazimouris  

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

Some students are doing a great job in organizing their blog.  They have added widgets like:

• clustrmaps – to show where their visitors are coming from
• Mixpods – to allow their readers to listen to music while reading their blog posts – looking at the terms of service, you should be 18 or have parental permission to sign up for a mixpod – check with mum and dad and if they say “NO” then take your mixpod off.  Next term I will be checking with parents.
• pets – so their readers can feed the animals while reading

Check out these grade 6 blogs: 

 Allira,  Brooke,  Claire,  Elliot,  Grace,  Isaac, Jack, Lockie, Lucy,  Natalia,  Nick,  Shenae,  Skye  and Sophie

These are some great grade 7 blogs – some students have been blogging for nearly two years:

Benjamin,  Bessie, Brohde,  Bronte,  Billy, Gemma,  Braiden,  James,  James,  Jess,  Jessica,  Joseph, Laura and Caleb 

Remember, if you want help with your blog, Miss Wyatt is in the grade 6/7 computer lab during lunchtime on Fridays, or ask her when you see her at other times at school.

Congratulations to those students in 6/7D who over the last two weeks have learnt how to insert images into their posts correctly.  They used this link to read the instructions and when stumped they asked other students who had already added images.

James CM, Skye, Nicholas, Jesse and Allira

If you have saved an image on your computer then it is best to use the ‘Browser uploader”.  If you want to use an image from the web, you will need to go to one of the websites below as these have creative commons images. Remember, Miss Wyatt  is in the 6/7 computer lab during lunchtime on Friday if you want some help with your blogging.

Original image: ‘Lonely in golden place!‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51813223@N00/2258984128
by: Khalid Almasoud   Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

http://flickrcc.bluemountains.net/

http://johnjohnston.name/flickrCC/

http://compfight.com/

http://www.behold.cc/

http://www.pics4learning.com/

http://www.morguefile.com/

http://www.freefoto.com/index.jsp

http://www.imageafter.com/index.php

http://www.djusd.k12.ca.us/technology/images.htm

Finally a link from Mr Bogush’s class for their links to photos to use

You can now get into our school intranet at home.  You will need to log in first by using  schools\then your username and password that you normally use when logging in at school. The only people who should know your password are yourself and perhaps a parent or teacher.

Then head to classes>specialist classes> computer IT to find the links section on the right.  Here you can get  to activities set by Mrs Barnes that will help you achieve your grade 6 or 10 checklist.

We will be using some of these over the next few weeks in IT class time.

Miss W.!  Miss W.! 

What’s happened to my dashboard?

I logged on this week and couldn’t work out how to add a post?  I wanted to add a clustrmap and it came out wrong. Now I see the grade 8 students have added a wordle.  How do I do that on mine?

Well here is your answer.

You will need to check out the Edublogs help pages.  Sue Waters from Western Australia is writing a new manual to use with the upgraded Edublogs blogs. There are pages about how to put in an image on a post or page; how to input HTML code from Vokis and polls etc.  If you find the information helpful on Sue Waters’ posts make sure you mention that in your blog with a link back to her post.  This is just good manners or blogging etiquette.

Remember your best way to learn is to ask questions, read information then have-a-go yourself.  Even better, if you know how to do something, write a post about it so other students can also learn.  In this digital age you need to be able to

LEARN, UN-LEARN, RE-LEARN

Attribution:   Original image: ‘Help‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/82625518@N00/5228173
by: Mike Scullen      Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

If you look on the right sidebar, you will see a map of the world with lots of red dots on it. This is called a Clustrmap and shows us where people live who are coming to our blog to read our posts.  So far we have people from USA, Canada, Australia, Italy, England and Portugal.  I wonder if any of these people have also been to your blog?

Do you want to add one of these to your sidebar in a text box? 

Well follow the instructions at Sue Waters very helpful blog called “The Edublogger.”  If you get stuck, there are some students in my class who have added one to their blog or come to the grade 6/7 computer lab on the days Miss Wyatt is running lunchtime blogging sessions and she will help you.

Every year, a new map is started, but your old map will be archived.  Here is the archive map for Miss Wyatt’s class blog from last year.  Notice they had over 19,000 visitors.  How can you get more people to visit your blog?

One way to start is to have a blogroll on your sidebar with the links to your favourite blogs.  Include more than just the people in our grade 6/7 classes.  If you have had visitors from other schools leave comments on your blog, add a link to their blog on your blogroll.

What is a simulation? 

After you have played these games, you should be able to tell your teacher what it is.  Play two of these games at least twice each and write a post in your blog about what happened in the game. Completing this activity helps with the checklists for Inquiring 4 and 6

What type of choices did you make?

Were some choices better or worse?

What happened when ….?

Ayiti – family in Haiti

Stop disasters – can take a while to load

Refugees in Sudan – takes a while to load

Third world farmer

Sweatshop – in a shoe sweatshop

Expedition Africa – can take a while to load

Not quite a simulation but interesting historical websites with choices

20th century London

Over the top – in the trenches in WW1 – lots of reading

Check out the reviews from a couple of our grade 9/10 students.

Darcy  and  Kieron

Completing this activity helps with the checklists for Inquiring nos. 4 and 6

Original image: ‘Lion & lioness‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/15745225@N00/2660850293
by:          Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial License

I often see students writing a post asking their readers to state their preference for a favourite food or favourite football team.  This can look very messy especially when your readers leave a comment giving their answer. Wouldn’t it be easier if they just clicked an answer then a program somewhere out there in cyberspace did all the collating of answers?  Well, here is how you can do that.

Sue Waters from Western Australia posts the blog called The Edublogger.  She always has posts about lots of questions students might have and here is her post about using PollDaddy.  She also tells you how to put the poll into your blog post so make sure you read the whole post.

Create your own poll by logging in at Polldaddy. Remember to try and keep same name and password that you use for other sites on the web where you have to log in. Once you have created your poll, add it to your blog and wait for the results to come in.  Once you have your poll published, come back here and answer the question on my poll.

 Oops, I forgot to mention, you must be at least 13 years old to use this website.

Completing this activity helps with checklists Creating 2 and 4