This will be my last entry as the Tech teacher. I am moving up at HFA from the basement to the main floor and will be the Office and Food Manager for the 2008/09 school year. Wednesday, June 4th will be my last day teaching Tech.

A mobile lab will be used next year so I have instructed the students to bring either a flash drive, memory stick, or a CD/RW disc if they would like to save any of their work.

Here are a few websites to check out:

openoffice.org to download Microsoft office applications for free. All the students have enjoyed doing PowerPoint presentations but some do not have PowerPoint on their computers at home.

freetypinggame.net to continue mastering typing skills.

http://scratch.mit.edu/pages/download to download the programming program.

I hope your children have enjoyed Tech and have learned skills they can use in years to come!!

It's hard to believe but there is only one more day of Tech class for the Third graders. Today, they learned how to make a card in Microsoft Word. They had to change the page from portrait orientation to landscape orientation; make two columns; insert Word Art and make it tight to move it to the second column and rotate it; start a new page and repeat the process but instead of inserting Word Art, they inserted a text box and changed the direction of the text to type so the words went in the right direction.

I told the students that if they wanted to save the work they've done, they would need to bring a flash drive (also called memory stick, USB stick, etc.) These can be purchased from Office Max, Office Depot, Target, maybe any store that has office supplies. They range from low to high in price depending on the type and the amount of memory needed. A 256 MB should be sufficient.

Also, if you don't have PowerPoint on your computer at home, you can get it free by going to Openoffice.com.

It's been a pleasure teaching the 3rd graders! They are very enthusiastic and catch on rather quickly to computer skills. I would like to encourage them to continue to practice typing over the summer. A good program for this is freetypinggame.net.

Enjoy the summer!!

The 4th and 5th graders are learning a programming language called "Scratch" that makes it easy to create interactive stories, games and animations. Today was "learn as you go" and some of the students were actually able to figure it out :) The program is free and can be downloaded at http://scratch.mit.edu Students who learn how to use it will be able to "teach" the rest of the class next week.

The 6th and 7th graders learned how to put list information into Microsoft Word in text format and then easily convert that into a table.

The students have been enjoying learning how to do Power Point presentations. So far they know how to begin a presentation, get a new slide, insert clip art, change the colors in the clip art, format the background of the slides, automatically transition from one slide to the other, custom animate words and pictures. Next week they will learn how to add sound. From there they will learn how to draw in Power Point and create "movie" like presentations. That should take us to the end of the year!

For the next two weeks, the 6th and 7th graders will be working on a History Power Point Presentation. Students should bring flash drives with them to class to save their work on to.

The 6th graders are to critique the Enlightenment view that the Middle Ages were "Dark Ages".

The 7th graders are to cricize the Supreme Court's understanding of the First Amendment's religion clauses since 1947.

I will be working with Mr. Berthuiame on this project.

It is true! There will be no Tech typing homework assigned for the remainder of the school year. Students have greatly improved in typing. If they would like to fine tune their typing skills, I recommend www.freetypinggame.net.

For the remainder of the year, students will have opportunities to work on their Science Invention Fair projects if needed in class. They will be learning skills to enhance their projects like graphs and tables in MS Word and MS Excel.

Yes, it is true! There will be no typing homework assigned for the remainder of the school year. Students have done a great job with typing so now we are moving onto the "FUN" stuff for the remaining 7 Tech classes the 3rd graders have for the school year. They will be learning Power Point basics! This way, when they are home for summer and say, "I'm bored", you can suggest they create a Power Point :)

I recommend www.freetypinggame.net if you would like your child to continue fine tuning their typing skills.

The fourth and fifth graders took poles last week of at least 20 people to find "the favorites" on a subject of their choosing. Today they took the information they gathered and constructed a pictograph OR a bar graph to demonstrate the results they found. Many of the students were very creative!!

Type To Learn practice lessons were not assigned this week and none will be assigned over Easter/Spring break. When we return from break,the students who have passed Lesson 15 will not be required to do any more Type To Learn in-class lessons or practice lessons for the remainder of the year.