This is a “Paper Critter”, an online box art piece created by Mika, a student in our Graphics Arts class. Using this online flash application, we learned how to use different layering, opacity, and symmetrical spacing in graphic art; an online canvas lets us not only create and experiment with different medias, it also lets us share it to others.
“The best thing about this application is you can import images into your critter, or draw your own. It makes creating your graphic art piece, all the more interesting.” -Mika
This week, Billings hosted the first open house of the school year. The event began at 7pm and included a large group introduction to the school followed by the opportunity for prospective families to spend 30 minutes in a variety of different classes.
Around 8pm I entered the tech lab and found 2 people (not Billings faculty or students) logged into the school network under a 6th grader’s credentials and violating the lab guidelines created by our students.
This experience was a great learning opportunity for the 6th grade, one that we discussed for the entire class on Friday. We started by talking about all of the things that could happen when our network is compromised. Students came up with the following possible scenarios:
The intruder could delete a student’s files
send email from a student’s school email address
change grades
delete pictures we have taken
give our computers a virus
break programs
waste paper by printing lots of things out
violate our lab guidelines.
From there we reviewed the guidelines we came up with for choosing a password back in Week 2. Students learned how to change their account passwords (Control + Alt + Delete) and were reminded that their email passwords would also change as a result.
Some students were intent on finding out whose account had been compromised. Others were angry at the visitors who had invited themselves into our secure environment. Both of these reactions are normal and well-intentioned, but as a group we have to understand what we can do to minimize our risk. As a reminder, students should not share their passwords with ANYONE except for their parents - teachers, friends and tutors do not need to know how to access a student’s account.
Apple releases new operating system. From this article, we defined the term “operating system” as software that has a set of instructions that tells a computer’s hardware how to talk to each other and tells other software how to talk to the computer. We talked about Apple’s marketing, how they focus on the uses of their products (not necessarily just the hardware specifications) and how they work to generate “coolness”. We watched clips from a 20 minutes introductory video, produced by Apple, and discussed whether the new features were revolutionary, evolutionary, or just good-looking.
Students in one class had enough time to actually play with Leopard and tested Spaces, explored Safari 3 and looked at the new finder, dock and Coverflow features.
Last week, when multiple fires converged on San Diego, it was initially hard to find reliable and consistent status updates. News websites were slow to update - due to either server outages, electricity shortages or staffing issues at the local media organizations.
Tired of surfing around to the same sites repeatedly throughout the day, I tested Google’s mashup beta to gather data from Google’s news feed, San Diego’s KPBS map data and Twitter feed, news updates from a San Diego blogger and a list of useful links into a single webpage.
The page is a simple one and has display issues in Safari 2, but was a useful exercise in creating meaningful information from disparate data feeds and the project got a positive response from the mashup community.
For a month, students had an opportunity to self-organize into groups based on interest. The 2 groups researched a topic relevant to our lives here at school and their conclusions will be implemented in the coming months.
One group started to form opinions on the OLPC program. They will research laptop hardware and software configurations, design, energy sources, and OLPC philosophy and will work to raise our community’s awareness of the project.
The second group addressed the issue of battery consumption currently faced by our school. All of our digital cameras, video cameras and GPS devices run on AA batteries. On the Port Townsend trip alone, the 7th grade used over 20 disposable batteries to fuel our electronic devices. In the coming weeks, students will learn about what happens to batteries when they are dead, how they impact our environment and possible alternate solutions to our energy needs.
Based on discussion and compromise between the 8th grade, 7th grade, faculty and 6th grade, we have come up with a set of Lab and Internet Guidelines to govern our use of the school-provided network.
These guidelines and our Internet usage will be monitored in the coming months to assess their accuracy and success.
Only a single period together this week because of community service day and a teacher in-service. As a class, we reviewed the quiz taken last week (to be posted for download after all students have completed it).
There was no correlation between the self-reported “easiness” of the quiz and a student’s grade.
Those that scored towards the bottom of the distribution can still get a great grade in the class by completing their weekly typing homework and participating in class discussions.
To view anything on the Internet, whether video, photo, words or games, your computer is actually downloading a copy of the item before displaying it. That means that anything you put on the web is downloaded by everyone that views it.
Are there parts of your life that shouldn’t be shared with the world? How do you know what is appropriate to post about online and what isn’t?
On Monday, the 6th grade was introduced to the mechanics of email. We discussed the similarities, differences, advantages and disadvantages of web-based vs. program-based email access.
Students set up MS Outlook 2007 to display their email inbox and explored some of the advanced functionality of the program.
We also reviewed for an alleged quiz that may or may not take place this Thursday. Topics for review include the OLPC project, ENIAC, lab guidelines and anything else referenced on this 6th grade lab tech page.
While Jac was on the 7th grade Port Townsend trip, the 6th grade had an opportunity to work with Charis - Billings graphic designer, teacher and Curriculum Committee Head.
Students used dictionaries and encyclopedias dated from 1938 to 2006 to look up the definition of “computer” and “internet.” This lead to a discussion of when both terms first became common.
The discussion turned to ENIAC, the first super-computer developed at the University of Pennsylvania in 1943 with help from the U.S. Government. Students went down to Greenlake Park with a tape measure to plot out the size of this early monstrosity (40′ by 40′ packed up, 100′ by 50′ unwrapped). They talked about the power of this early computer as compared to common devices such as an iPod or a Nintendo DS.
On Monday, the 6th grade was introduced to the mechanics of email. We discussed the similarities, differences, advantages and disadvantages of web-based vs. program-based email access.