Billings Beta

Only a single tech class this week - 6th graders spent their time together reviewing the term’s concepts and ideas in preparation for an upcoming quiz. The quiz will contain multiple-choice, short answer and open-response questions design to test recall and critical thinking. All answers can somewhere on this Billings Beta website. Good luck everyone!

Richard Kassissieh blogged last week about a cyberbullying incident at the Catlin-Gabel school in Portland. What technology did they use to stop the bully? A simple conversation between students, parents and the school.

From the story:

The student told her parents. The parents contacted her teacher. The teacher told IT. IT told the division head and together met with the mother. The division head told her faculty. One faculty member witnessed a suspicious activity, which led to the offender.

This story illustrates a few important points:

• There is no software out there that is a substitution for an open relationship between parents and students.
• It takes a community to create and maintain a safe environment for learning and growth.
• Technology is not good or bad - it’s how we use it that has an impact our world.

Microsoft Student 2006 is combination encyclopedia, web search, graphing calculator, fact checking center, atlas, homework helper, video & photo searching tool. Today we are going to explore the atlas & maps portion of the program.

Your assignment is to go on a scavenger hunt, using ONLY Microsoft Student - no Internet access needed! You may need to take advantage of the different map types in the right column of the program. If you don’t understand a word in the assignment, please use the search tool in the top right corner of the program to find a definition.

Please copy & paste (using keyboard shortcuts) the following questions into an email and send to Jac when your work is complete.

Let’s get started:

Questions about the USA

What are the 2 closest airports to Seattle?

How far (as the crow flies) is it from Seattle to Ft. Flagler (where the 7th grade students went on their Fall trip)?

What tectonic plate is the USA located on?

How many births (per 1000 people) per year are there in the USA?

How many time zones are there in the USA?

Questions related to the USA

Name a country with less births (per 1000 people) per year than the USA.

Name 3 countries (each on a separate continent) that contain an ecoregion similar to the one Seattle is located in.

World Questions

What is at the very top of the atlas (use the comprehensive map or the political map)?

What large desert is there in India?

Name 9 countries that border the country where Darfur is located.

Name 7 countries crossed by the prime meridian.

Name 3 continents crossed by the equator.

Name a country that has a portion which has less than 5 degrees of temperature fluctuation in a year.

Approximately how far is it by plane from the North Pole to the South Pole? How many miles is it all the way around the world?

Questions about Population

Most people in China live in what portion of the country ( state your answer as a direction - North, the SouthEast, etc)?

Which city has more people (in 2001 when the maps were made), Saint Petersburg, Florida or Saint Petersburg, Russia?

What type of Islam is practiced in oil-rich Saudi Arabia? Is it the same religion as the predominant religion in Iran?

What country will have the biggest population in 2025? How about in 2050?What country uses the most electricity?

What country has the most miles of paved roads?

What country should you move to if you want to have a life expectancy of over 80 years?

What country has the biggest labor force?

7th grade students are working on individual research papers that discuss and formulate an opinion on the term “digital identity”.