Friday, September 9

TGIF!!

INTERNET SAFETY:
Today you will have all hour to work on doing research for your Internet Safety project.  Since today is the last "official" day you will have to conduct your research you need to try and get your information gathered and completed by the end of the day today.  If you finish your research today start thinking about how you want your characters in your movie to talk about the information you have gathered.


Using Xtranormal will require you to act a lot like a script writer and a director for a movie.  When we talk about using Xtranormal, you will probably want to use 2 characters - it will make the flow of presenting your information much easier.  Therefore, what do you want each character to talk about when it's their turn to talk?  Will you have each character do some of the talking about each of the 4 different areas, or will you split it up so that character #1 talks about topic A and topic B, and character #2 talks about topic C and topic D (or some other arrangement)?  


VOCABULARY:
As for the 11 files that I sent you yesterday to your gmail, 10 of those should be Microsoft Word files and have vocab words (listed as "Week 1", "Week 2", and so on) in them.  The other file, which is a spreadsheet file, should have a listing of everyone in class with a bunch of X's on the page.  The X's mark the weeks where you will be responsible for defining the words for that week.  You should notice you have several "partners" that will help you define the words for that week.


As for what you enter on the wiki, the most important thing to enter is the word's definition.  MAKE SURE YOU ARE DEFINING THE WORD SO IT IS EASY TO UNDERSTAND!  If you read the definition and you don't understand what the definition is, no one else is going to understand it either.  In addition, adding links to videos, pictures, or websites are highly encouraged as doing so will help everyone understand the vocab word better.  When you get done defining the word put your first and last name in parentheses next to the definition so you get credit for doing your job!


My suggestion is at the beginning of the week you quickly meet with the other 4-5 people and decide who is going to define which words - that way you are organized and not having multiple definitions of the same word.  


WIKISPACES:
You will use the following wiki to post definitions of words:  gmsamazon*.wikispaces.com (where the * is your class hour that you have Computer Apps - so 6th hour would enter gmsamazon6.wikispaces.com).  Once you go to the website you will be allowed to ask to join - you'll need to create a username (another one of these - UUGGHHH!!).  Use your first name and last initial for your username, create a password, and enter your email address.  Once you've done this I will receive a notification and I will allow you to join.  For those of you who think you can be sneaky - you will not be given permission to join a wikispace that belongs to another class.  If you try to join another class I will just block you from it.


The overriding concept here is that everyone shares in the responsibility of helping everyone else learn.  If it's your week to define a couple of words, then make sure that you accomplish your job - everyone else in class is expecting you to help them so they can get a good grade on the vocab quiz.  When it's their turn to define words you will expect the same - you want them to do their job so you can do well on the quiz.  Here is a teamwork quote that I think is appropriate: "Teamwork is the ability to work towards a common goal.  It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results."