Dear Parents and/or Guardians,
Let me take this opportunity to welcome you and your child to 7th Grade Computer
Applications. I feel strongly about informing parents and guardians on
the variety of 21st Century skills that we incorporate into our
class during the semester (Google/Gmail, wikis, blogs, and others), and so I am
sending this letter in an effort to keep you abreast of what your student will
be accomplishing in class. Should you have any questions during the
semester, please feel free to contact me via email (dpardoe@dist228.org) or by calling
the school.
If you wish to keep on top of what your son or daughter is doing in Computer Applications class, I keep a daily "log" of activities and assignments on the Computer Applications class blog. You can access that blog at this address: gmscomputerapps.blogspot.com. I encourage you to stay on top of your child's education, and the best way to do that in my class is to subscribe to the blog so that you can receive daily updates on what we do in class. In order to subscribe you will find, at the top right of the blog page, a place where you can subscribe through an RSS feed (you can get these in your emails). This is a great tool for parents - especially if your child is out of school for sickness, vacation, etc. Use it as you see fit.
To begin with all of the students will learn to properly key using a standard keyboard. This will be exactly like the Typing class you went through when you were in school. This will take up the first several weeks of the semester. Once we get done with this part of class we will be moving on to the technology portion of the class.
Students will also be learning about Google – more specifically Gmail, the calendar function, and Google Docs. The purpose of using Gmail is to get students familiar with email, attaching files to messages, and a variety of other email skills. Additionally, Google Docs is an excellent way for students to be able to save their unfinished work and then access it at home in order to complete their assignment, project, etc. We will discuss the advantages of using Google Docs in hopes that your student takes advantage of what it has to offer - it can be very useful in helping to keep students organized. Obviously these will be 21st Century skills that will be important for them to survive in the technological world we live in.
The school district has partnered with Google to create accounts for every student in the school - thus your son/daughter already has been given an account that they can call their own and that they can use. Their email address is their first name, followed by a period, followed by their last name (no spaces), then the @ symbol followed by geneseoschools.org. For example, John Doe's email address would be john.doe@geneseoschools.org. If your son or daughter uses a nickname for short (i.e. Jenny for Jennifer) then they will need to make sure to use jennifer.doe@geneseoschools.org. If your son/daughter has two last names they would need to include both with a hyphen between - such as john.wilkes-booth@geneseoschools.org. Lastly, their password is their lunch pin # followed by the words leafs (0000leafs).
After learning the keyboard and creating a Google account, students
will also be creating their own blog. This will provide the students a
sort of online portfolio of completed work from this class, as well as help
them develop a better understanding of how to communicate with others when they
are online. Maintaining a positive digital footprint and learning to how
to properly post online are also concepts learned from keeping a blog.
We will also be completing a unit on Internet Safety. This is
required by the State of Illinois, but with the widespread use of the Internet
this may well be the most important part of the class. Students will
create an online project detailing how to stay safe while using the Internet.
Once they complete this project, the students will publish their online project
to their blog.
Your son/daughter will also be using a wikispaces page in
class. This will be the basis for our vocabulary that we will learn
throughout the semester (we will have 10 vocab lists, with a quiz over each of
the lists). They will use the wikispaces page to learn how to edit and
post to a wiki page as well as for the review of the vocabulary.
One of the more exciting parts of class (for the students) is the
learning of Alice – a freeware program that teaches the students to think
analytically while creating “worlds”. It is a great starting point for
anyone who believes they are interested in computer science and/or computer
programming.
Additionally, we will be spending considerable class time learning how Microsoft Word works – more specifically how to use many of the formatting features in Word (we do this in the form of assignments that I call Formatting Activities). It is impossible to cover everything (and at this age they don’t need to know everything), but after this semester they will have an excellent working knowledge of how to use Word. If we are fortunate to get through what is planned for Word we will begin learning Excel, but usually what get to in Excel is very limited.
As technology continually advances and permeates various facets of our lives, I believe this is an exciting time in education as students and teachers alike explore and utilize new technology as teaching and learning tools. As such it is important to have students develop twenty-first century technology skills, with an emphasis on safety. I believe this class accomplishes each of those goals in a safe and caring environment. If you would want any information or support in online safety for your child, feel free to contact me. Should you have any other questions, please let me know.
Sincerely,
Mr. Pardoe
Computer Applications Teacher
