Tips for Gamers and Their Parents: ESRB Ratings

It's that time of year - the time when children make gift wish-lists for the holiday season. Often included in these lists are video and computer games.  Here's some information regarding the ESRB Rating system.  

It is highly recommended that parents pay special attention to the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) ratings. These ratings can help parents determine the suitability of games for their children, even if the parents themselves have not played the game prior.  

Remember that these ratings are designed to help buyers decide which games are appropriate; however, the final decision as to whether a game is okay or not rests solely with a parent or guardian.  I recommend checking many sources of information - ESRB ratings, online reviews, and  product websites - to determine any game's suitability.  

These ratings are as follows: 

eC: Early Childhood, appropriate for ages 3+

E: Good for ages 6+ 

E 10+: Good for anyone 10 years and up

T: Good for teenagers or older (13+) 

M: Mature game, good only for adults 17+

Ao: Adults only game, usually includes some kind of sexuality or violence of an exceptional nature. 

All games must be rated by the Entertainment Software Rating Board to be on the market.  If a game is offered for sale with the label "Rating Pending", it is from a questionable source and should not be purchased.  Games with ratings of E 10+ or higher will usually include Content Descriptors, which provide some indications as to why that rating was given.  Learn more at:  http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=735291849989549240

Class Notes: Lower Elementary

This week, lower elementary classes started the Internet Safety unit.  Students from Beth's, Katie's and Keri's classes watched a video featuring Faux Paw the Techno Cat!  We learned that we should always guard personal information; things like our name, phone number, school, picture, or address should never be posted online or given out to Internet friends.
We will continue our adventures with Faux Paw throughout the month of December.  We will learn how to prevent cyber-bullying, how we can all be good digital citizens, and why we should never download files from unknown sources.  

Class Notes

This week Middle Elementary students went on a virtual field trip to Plimoth Plantation, in Plymouth, Massachusetts.  An interviewer from Scholastic spoke to the curator of the Plimoth Plantation living-museum, a current member of the Wampanoag tribe, a Wampanoag warrior from 1620, and two English settlers from Plimoth 1620.   We learned interesting facts about what day-to-day life was like for the settlers and the Wampanoag tribe, the famous positive relationship the two cultures shared, and the bountiful harvest of 1621 that led to the three-day thanksgiving celebration.  

Favorite facts the students learned included:

• In the 1600s, there were no spelling rules.
• When the Pilgrims arrived, they had to live on the ship for many months while their homes were being built. 
• The Wampanoag people and the Pilgrim settlers had a hard time communicating, so they were scared of each other.  Instead of having a war, they chose to have a treaty.  
• The Native American who helped the Pilgrims was named "Tisquantum".
• The Pilgrim children had to sleep on mattresses on the floor! 
• Children from both the Wampanoag and Pilgrim settlements had some toys a lot like ours - dolls, marbles, board games, and toy versions of grown-up tools.  
• The first Thanksgiving lasted for 3 whole days!  There was a huge feast and sporting competitions.  There were 50 Pilgrims and about 90 Wampanoag in attendance.  

Welcome to Gaggle!

This week, students from Kim's, Betsy's, Katrina's, Emilie's, and Linda's classes will begin using their Gaggle accounts!  These accounts provide email, chatrooms, a social wall, access to online videos, blogging, and other great online communications tools - all in the safety of our Community School environment.  Look forward to a lot of Gaggle fun ahead!

How to...Do a Search using Google!

Welcome to my first installment of "How to..."  I hope this will be an informative blog series for all student, parent, and staff readers!  I plan to post a new "How to..." bi-weekly.  


This week's "How to..." describes the process for using the popular search engine, Google.  Words in bold are important technology terms to know. Oh, and don't forget to check out the Special Pro Tips at the bottom! 


How to do a search using Google:

1. Open a web browser (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, etc.)
2. Type the following URL: www.google.com in the address bar
3. In the search box (the large blank in the middle of the screen), type the search terms, or words or phrases you are seeking information about.  With the new "Google Instant" feature, results will start to pop up as you type each letter!  
4. Review the links returned to find the one that will best suit your needs.  When you find one that looks promising, click on it! Read the page provided to see if it has the information you need.  Remember to review links for indications that they are a credible source: things like being .gov or .edu addresses, or being part of well-known sources such as newsgroups or publications (CNN, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, etc.)
5. If needed, make any changes to your search terms, and try again (starting at step 3)!

Special Pro Tips!

• If you are looking for a specific type of results, such as Images, Videos, Books, Places, etc., make sure you click the corresponding link on the left-hand side of the results page!
• If you aren't getting the results you need, try putting in synonyms for your search terms.  You can combine the terms with AND, or separate the terms with OR.  OR searches will look for results with one term or the other.  AND searches will look for results with both terms. 
• If you are looking for an exact phrase or word, try putting it in "quotation marks"
• If there are words you do NOT want included in search results, put a minus sign (-) in front of them.  Such as: Community School -New York State
• Google can solve math problems for you!  Really!  Just type your math problem in the search box.  Google can find percents [example: 15% of $45.67], square roots [example: sqrt (81)], and exponentials [example: 20^2], in addition to basic four-function problems [ +, -, *, / ].  
• If you are getting results that are inappropriate or that make you uncomfortable, try adjusting Safe Search in the Settings menu.  Google defaults to "Moderate Safe Search", which will filter explicit images.  "Strict Filtering" is the stronger option, and it filters explicit images and text.  

Fall Festival Photo Project

In the weeks following Fall Festival, Middle School students have been working on multimedia presentations.  Here is a video a Seminar student created using Photo Story, using pictures taken by students at Fall Festival.

Happy Halloween!

In honor of Halloween, this week I'd like to share a fun online game!  Go to: http://www.dedge.com/halloween/  to play Halloween Hangman.  Words are Halloween themed too, such as "shriek", "pumpkin", and "ghost".  Make sure your sound is on, so you can hear the skeleton's funny quips!

Class Notes

October was a busy month in the Computer Lab!  I apologize for the delay in getting a new post up.

This month the classes have been focusing on our Photography project! Students from all classes (Beth's through Seminar) have had a chance to use the cameras, take some great photos, and tell stories using their own pictures.

Here are some of our students' great photos!

Each class will complete a story-and-picture based project related to Fall Festival.  Samples from Beth's, Katie's, and Keri's classes will be displayed at our Fall Open House in November.

Class Notes

It's been a busy week in the computer lab!

• Beth's class watched amazing Animal Diaries from the Australia Zoo! We learned about koalas, turtles, and tigers!  We practiced our mousing skills and hand-eye coordination by helping Blue play hide-and-go-seek with some friendly ghosts on NickJr.com.  
• Katie's and Keri's classes continued learning about peripheral devices: input devices, output devices, and storage devices.  We also played Plants vs. Zombies to practice our mouse skills!  
• Betsy's and Kim's classes started an Online Scavenger Hunt, and learned how to search for answers on the Internet! We also learned about the hardware inside a computer, and even got to touch and feel some motherboards, hard drives, floppy disks, and CPUs!  Today we are continuing our keyboarding lessons, adding 6 keys to our typing repertoire.  
• Middle school classes learned about the hardware inside the computer.  We identified them both on-screen and in a real computer used here at Community School. Middle schoolers had their first Computer Lab quiz - many did very well!  We started an Online Scavenger Hunt to hone our research skills, and discussed the importance of using credible sources. This lesson will continue into next week, when we will discuss verifying information and fact checking.  We will also begin discussions of how to cite our sources.  

Imagine Whirled Peace

This morning Pat led the entire school in a fun Art event!  Student-made pinwheels were displayed on the playground fence, and all our elementary students joined Kim in singing our brand-new "The Big One song".  We had a great time, and talked about what it means to bring peace to our world.

Look for our students' amazing pinwheels next time you visit our campus!

Awesome Animal Videos from Australia Zoo

Check out the amazing Animal Diaries from the Australia Zoo!  These are short, fun videos that teach interesting facts about tigers, koalas, crocodiles, and many other incredible animals!

Class Notes

As of today I have had class with each class here at Community School at least once.  It was wonderful meeting each and every student, and I appreciate their enthusiasm and hard work!

Here's a quick review of what we did in our first week of classes: 

• Beth's Class learned what the Internet is.  Then we practiced our skills (mousing, following directions) playing games at SesameStreet.org.
• Keri's and Katie's classes played review games, and learned some basic computer terminology (CAPS LOCK, monitor, etc.).
• Kim's and Betsy's classes have had two classes this week.  We did a fun review game (in which the classes won $1 million!) and started keyboarding.  Ask them about their score in Typer Shark (found on Yahoo! Games)! 
• The middle school classes played a fun review game, and started making posters to share their computer know-how with the younger students!  Seminar students will edit and display their posters this week! 

This has been a great first week.  I look forward to many more weeks filled with learning! 

Meet the Teacher

Hi!  I'm Karen, and I'm the new technology teacher here at Community School.  I'm super excited to get to know everybody!  I would like to thank every single teacher and student for giving me a huge, warm welcome this week!

Here  are some topics I'm looking forward to covering this year:

• Proper keyboarding procedure/ergonomics
• What is the Internet and how does it work? 
• What's inside the computer
• Multimedia presentations
• Using the Internet for research
• Communications technology 
• Web 2.0 Tools
• Robotics

Keep checking back here for more updates! 

Welcome to the 2010 School Year!

Welcome to the Community School Technology Blog!  This is the place to get up-to-date information on what we're doing in our technology classes at Community School.  The 2010-2011 school year starts September 7.  Starting next week, watch for regular posts from students and myself regarding our goals, ideas, projects, lessons and successes.   We are excited to share our experiences with you!

Here's to a great year of learning!