Bat Detective

In honor of Halloween, several classes were able to do a special "citizen science" activity online during Technology Class.  Students learned about bats, listened to recordings of bats, and familiarized themselves with the project. Then they listened to recording data, categorizing it for use by the scientific community.

Students listened to the calls from Romania and the Transylvania region. Per the website: "Transylvania is a part of Romania, where the Romanian Bat Protection Association have been responsible for involving more than 100 volunteers in the collection of thousands of hours of acoustic recordings from microphones attached to cars driving over 50,000 km around some very bumpy roads! These data make up a large part of the calls in Bat Detective."

Do you want to try it? Visit http://www.batdetective.org to begin your own spooky journey.

Technology Notes: Surfing Penguins

Today lower elementary classes enjoyed activities to reinforce number sense and improve fine motor skills. We started with Dora's Number Pyramid Game, a game focused on putting numbers in order. Then students enjoyed the Blue's Clues Ghost Hunt, a game of hide-and-seek on the computer! What a fun and educational day!

Beautiful, Bedazzled Bots

Today was the first day of Beginning Robotics: Girls' Group. We built these rover style robots and decorated them. Here are some pictures.

Power Point lessons

This week, middle school students made their own slide shows about topics they wanted to share. They did a great job! Here's Katrina's class hard at work!

Super Star Power Update!

Middle Elementary and Upper Elementary classes have been doing a great job in Technology classes - and they've earned TONS of stars!  In fact, Keri's class will redeem their first Star Power Prize (10 minutes of free time for the whole class!) this week, and all other classes should be redeeming next week!  Way to go!

Class star counts will restart after redemption, and they will be able to continue earning stars and the much coveted "free time" throughout the year.

(Free time is time when students may do any school appropriate activity on the computer.  This includes drawing pictures, playing games, looking at pictures, watching videos...and other fun! Students are still expected to exercise their best judgement and listen to instructions from any adult supervising in the lab.)

Email Accounts for Students

I have an important announcement for Upper Elementary and Middle School Technology classes:

This year upper elementary and middle school students will continue using Gaggle tools in technology classes.  Due to technical difficulties beyond the control of the school, we will not be using Google Apps in Education. 

These tools may also be used for regular classroom activities, as deemed appropriate or useful by the classroom teachers. Gaggle accounts are a safe, but fun, way for children to learn the proper way to use many typical online productivity and communication tools. These accounts are monitored by adults, to help ensure students' safety.  

Students and parents can find a handy how-to guide for basic use, along with FAQ and Troubleshooting guide, online at http://www.communityschool.net/gaggle_info.html 

If you’d like more information about the Community School Gaggle accounts, or to discuss any concerns you may have regarding your child’s use of these accounts, please contact the Technology Teacher.

New forms and a hard copy of the Gaggle How-To instructions will be coming home to students this week. 

Thank you! 

Music Robots

Today in beginning robotics we did something new - we built music robots! We made robots that sing a song, played percussion instruments, and even a trumpet bot (pictured below). We also learned an advanced programming technique!

Narwhals Rap about History

Here is the video Katrina's class created last week during Technology class.  They did a great job.  Enjoy!

Reading with Technology

This week, the Surfing Penguins enjoyed using the Tag Readers during Technology time. We explored books and played games to help improve our letter skills and grow our vocabularies!