Monday, August 29

We have many things that we will be accomplishing this week.  They are as follows:

1. Accessibility rules.  Now that you have access to gmail, and have accessed the Internet (and will be doing so frequently), we need to have rules in place for when it is ok to check gmail, access the Internet, and so on.  Otherwise it becomes complete chaos in the room.  Therefore the accessibility rules are in place to keep order in the room.  If you need to refresh yourself on the Computer Lab Policy, here is the link:  Computer Lab Policy.  
1. No one is to be on the Internet unless granted specific permission to do so.
2. You may not check gmail at will - Mr. Pardoe will let you know when it is appropriate to do so.
3. You should only be accessing the programs that Mr. Pardoe has instructed you to access.  In other words, if we are working in Microsoft Word you should not be in Excel.
4. After we create blogs, games will not be allowed to be on your blog.  Once you are done with this class you can do what you want, but in here there will no games.
5. Be school appropriate at all times!!
6. Chatting is not allowed during class.
2. We will continue to learn the keyboard - we will review all letters learned and learn the n, g, left shift key, and period (.).  
3. You will have a technique grade this week.  Last week we did this for practice, and to be quite honest I didn't get as much done on this front as I wanted with all the gmail problems we had.  Nonetheless, this week you will be receiving your first technique grade.
4. Your first submitted assignment via email will also be this week.  You will be submitting to me, at my school email address (dpardoe@dist228.org) an email that will contain "10 things about me".  But, it won't be just any "ordinary" list - instead, you must submit 10 things about you that relate to the numbers 1 through 10.  For example, if I were sending this I would start like this:  1.  I have one sister;  2.  I traveled 2 places this summer (Mattoon, IL and Schererville, IN); 3.  I have 3 kids;  and so on.  This will be due on Wednesday and is homework - we will not work on this in class.
5. We also will introduce Edmodo.  This is a social network that we will use in class for class purposes - it will not be a place for chatting.  We will sign up - I'll help you do that in class.  We will have a discussion item that you will be required to answer and post on Edmodo - this will be for a grade.
6. Our last assignment for this week is what I call a Correct Fingers assignment.  What I do with this is simply quiz you on which fingers are used on which keys.  If you are using the correct fingers then this should not be a problem :-)
7. We normally take all of our quizzes online.  In order to do that you will have to register at a website (www.classmarker.com) - we will do this in class.  Taking the quizzes online saves on paper - plus it's pretty cool to take a quiz online rather than use a pen or pencil.

As you can tell we will be busy this week with quite a bit of work - let's get to it!

Reminder for next week - we only have 4 days of school!  Monday is Labor Day so there will be no school.

Today will be a review day - we'll review all the keys we've learned so far.  Practice is an important part of developing a skill, and we will frequently practice so we can improve.  We will practice on page 7.