Creating a folder cover for SLC

What we are going to do today is create a cover that you will staple to your SLC cover for next week.  This folder should be a reflection of you rather than a just a bunch of images.  For example, you may choose to include an image of the rainforest animal that you did research on.  You might also want to include images of an activity that you are involved with - Builder's Club, Football, Cross Country, or Student Council (these are just examples - there are obviously others that you may be involved in here or outside of school that you want to include).

In order to create your cover page, you'll need to first open Word.

The first thing that I want you to include is a WordArt with your first and last name.  In order to do this, go to the INSERT menu, then put your cursor on "Picture" and choose WordArt (about halfway down the sub-menu list - see below):

Inserting WordArt

You'll then need to select a style to incorporate into your document.  Be careful here!  You'll want to select a style that allows you to be able to read what you have written - some are difficult to read!

Once you select a style a box will pop-up in your document - double click in the box and then a window will open up - type in your name, change the font style, and change the font size as you please.  When you are done, hit ok.  You'll end up with something that looks like this:

WordArt example

You'll be able to click and drag the circles in the corner to change the size of your WordArt.  If you want to edit what you have, double click on the letters of the WordArt and the WordArt window will open up again.  

Next you'll be inserting images into your document.  This is a little more difficult for a couple of reasons.  First, you'll want to do some research (probably on Google) to find the pictures you want.  Second, these images must be school appropriate.  Third, you'll need to find pictures then save them to your account (save them in your Computer Application folder we created earlier in the year).  Fourth, I highly recommend that you choose pictures that have very little dark background or dark colors to them - the reason for this is that we are going to be printing in black and white (sorry - no color printing anymore!) and if you have a bunch of dark colors the image will not look very good once it is printed out. 

I am including a visual description of how to save pictures from a website to your computer, then insert the saved images into your document next:

1. Go to Google.  Select "Images" in the top-left corner so that you are only searching for images.
   


2. Find a picture on the Internet (if you hav pictures saved in your account from another class and you want to use them, you will not need to do this step;  this is only if you are getting picture(s) from the Internet).  Once you find the picture you want, put your cursor on th picture, then hold down the Control key and click on the picture - you'll get a menu that pops up (shown in the picture below on the right of the picture) - and then click on "Save Image As...".  Save the image into your Computer Applications folder that we created earlier in the year (give it a name you can remember!).
3. The next step is to insert the picture into your document, so we now need to go to Word.  In Word, go to the INSERT menu, put your cursor on Picture, and click on "From File".
   
4. Once your picture is in your document, you're going to want to change the formatting on the document so that you can "freely" move your picture anywhere you want within your document.  To do this, first double click on the picture so that you open the following window:
    
   Just as you see in this picture, select "Layout" in the bottom left, click on Tight under "Wrapping Style", and then click on "Advanced" 
5. In the Advanced Layout window, on the bottom-left side under "Options", make sure that the box next to "Move Object with text" is NOT! checked (see the blue arrow below).  This will allow you to move your picture freely within the document.  You may also want to change the size of your image - in order to do that click on the image once, then grab and drag one of the circles in the corner of the image to resize it.

More blogging techniques

For those who are responsible for defining words this week on the Wikispaces website you should be working to get your words defined ASAP.  Remember, there can only be one person at a time editing the website.  You should have decided who was defining in what order when you met yesterday in your small groups.  All words should be defined by the end of class tomorrow!

To start off today open Microsoft Word and turn to page 42.  Type lines 1-3 on 18A, at the top of the page, once.  Then, in 18B, type lines 1-6 twice.

Vocab help for this week:
HTML - "View source" in Safari or "Page Source" in Firefox
IP Address - What is my ip address

We will continue to discuss how you can further design and create using your blog.  As a reminder, this is a school associated activity so you must keep everything on the blog school appropriate.

Blogging

This week we have another vocab list.  This is the 3rd list that deals with the Internet.  Here is the list of students responsible for this week's vocab words:

3rd hour:  ElizabethB, EthanK, EmmaL, AlexisP, ElizabethP

4th hour:  MaddieA, BenettE, CaysonF, DestinyL, GraceM, PaigeO

6th hour:  RossC, HaleeG, BrileyK, DevonM, CamarieM, ReneeT

7th hour:  ElliottM, AdamN, TravisR, CassandraT, JacobV, AlexW

8th hour:  BritnyB, NikolasF, LucasH, DwightM, PaigeS, RyanW

To start with this week we will be learning the at sign - @ (right shift + left ring/3rd finger); the left parenthesis - ( (left shift + right ring/3rd finger); the right parenthesis - ) (left shift + right little/4th finger); and the asterisk - * (left shift + right middle/2nd finger).

Next we will begin learning how to manipulate and design your blog.  Creating a blog can very much be a creative experience for the blogger.  There are several things that you need to keep in mind as you create your blog:

1. Remember your audience.  If you are trying to reach adults, then you don't want to design a blog that would look like something you find in a Kindergarten classroom.  Your audience is who you are trying to attract to the website - make it appropriate to your audience.
2. Use colors and backgrounds that make what you have on your website easy to see.  
3. Use Fonts that are easy to read.  Sometimes the coolest font is a terrible web font because it's hard to read.  You want your audience to be able to easily read what you write on your blog - not become confused because the information was read incorrectly.

Here are some of the things that we will cover in designing your blog:

New posts

HTML vs. Compose

Modifying text entries

Edit posts

Labels/tags

Publishing/Saving/Preview

Creating Pages
Changing your Settings

Designing your blog

Vocab Quiz; Creating a blog

First thing's first - take a few minutes at the beginning of the hour to review for the vocab quiz.

After completing the quiz, you can watch the video below (turn off the volume).  As you are watching it, follow along and complete the creation of your blog.  You should have no problems following along without the narration - watch and do as the narrator does.  The website that we used to create the blog was Blogger.

Once you are done with watching the video you need to complete your first post to your blog.  Title the blog post "Oct. 28th weekly summary".   In this blog post you will write a reflective summary in which you will share what you have learned this week and write any questions you may have about what was covered in Computer Applications (KEEP YOUR SPEEDSKIN ON YOUR KEYBOARD!).  Write the "A-Ha" moments you had, and write about what was frustrating.  You may need to go back and look at the other posts that I have made this week on the blog to help remind you of what we covered this week.

Once you have completed this assignment, send me an email from Google with a link to your blog so I can read your Weekly Summary post.  Remember - when you send an email you should have a subject line, an introduction ("Dear Jimmy" is just one example), a message to tell the person you're writing to why you're sending the email, and you need to include your name at the end of the email.



Here are a couple of reminders about the blog:

1. Everything posted on the blog must be school appropriate.
2. No adding games of any kind as widgets to your blog - this is not an arcade!
3. Use what we have learned about Internet Safety while being creative on your blog!  You can be safe and create a fantastic blog at the same time!

Vocab videos

Here is today's first video we will be watching.  It is on RSS feeds.  Basically an RSS feed (RSS stands for Really Simply Syndication) is a free online subscription to a website that frequently posts new articles; or in the case of blogs new blogposts.

The second video for today will discuss what a blog is.  You have been accessing my blog for most of the semester, so you should have a basic, beginning understanding of what a blog looks like and what you can do with a blog.  The video below explains blogs:

We will continue our learning of new symbols on the keyboard in an effort to try and get all of the symbols done.  Today we will cover the % (right shift + left index/1st finger), < (left shift + right middle/2nd finger), > (left shift + right ring/3rd finger), # (right shift + left middle/2nd finger), & (left shift + right middle/2nd finger).

After completing those symbols we will be working on creating your own blog using Blogger.  Creating a blog is relatively easy to do.  It also requires the use of an email address (you have a Google account so that will work perfectly).  We will use the blogs we create for several different purposes in class, but I want you to remember that since this is used for school everything must be school appropriate that is posted on your blog.  There will be no games on your blog while you are in this class - after this semester is over you can add whatever you want to your blog.

HAVE YOU CHECKED THE BOARD FOR MISSING ASSIGNMENTS??!!! If your name is on the board then you need to get the assignments that are missing completed and handed in.  Before school, Homeroom, lunch recess, REAL time, and after school are all available for you to use to complete work.

Logo Practice 4

To begin with we will be doing our blank keyboard assignment.  I'll give you just a little bit of time to review the keyboard.  Remember, you need to know all of the letters, the numbers, the tab key, the Caps Lock key, the shift keys, the return key, the space bar, the semicolon, the comma, and the period.

After the assignment you will have the rest of the hour to work with your partner in completing the Practice 4 page that requires you to write a procedure, then create the design on the page.  We will go over these at the end of the hour today.  Here are some hints:  #1 - use a procedure called a rectangle; #2 & #3 - use a procedure called a triangle; #4 - draw the crooked line then trace back over the line; #5 - use a procedure called a hexagon; #6 - use a procedure called an octagon.

Once again I need to remind people to get their vocab definitions done for this week.  You will need to get that done during class today if you haven't done this yet.

Also, as another reminder, get your Edmodo discussions done before midnight tomorrow.  If you need to come in during lunch recess, before school, after school, or some other free time then please do so.  Just check with me before you come in.

Logo Procedures

I have several reminders to give you as we start today:

1. After we watch the video below, if you have not yet defined your words on Wikispaces you need to get that done ASAP.  
2. You have a discussion in Edmodo that you need to have completed by Thursday, Oct. 27th at midnight.  The prompt is as follows:  What was the importance of learning about the Rainforest?  In addition, discuss what animal you did your research on, and what you learned about "your" animal.
3. If you did not complete the REPEAT assignment that was due last Friday, get that turned in as soon as possible.  I have started grading those, and it will take some time as I have to write each one in Logo to check to see if it works, so it may be later this week before I get everyone's graded.
4. Tomorrow we will have a "blank keyboard" assignment. This assignment will require you to fill in all of the numbers, letters, return key, tab key, shift keys, Caps lock key, space bar, period, and comma on a blank keyboard.  At this point you should know where each of these keys are and be able to label them.

To begin today we are going to watch a video on what phishing is (phishing is one of the vocab words for this week).





Logo - we will learn how to create a PROCEDURE in Logo today.  Basically a PROCEDURE is like a small program that you are going to create in Logo.  There are some rules that must be followed when creating a PROCEDURE, and they are as follows:

1. Every PROCEDURE starts with the word TO, and then you give the procedure a name
1. The name cannot have any spaces
2. Numbers and letters are acceptable
2. After giving the PROCEDURE a name, hit return and write a statement of instructions
3. Every PROCEDURE must be completed with "end"

A PROCEDURE allows a programmer to save time while writing instructions for the program.  Obviously, when writing extremely large programs, this can save lots of time.  The drawback is that a programmer may have a hundred or more different PROCEDURES they are using for a program, so they must keep track of how they name PROCEDURES and what those PROCEDURES do.

Connections Day!

Today is a Connections day, so our class periods will be a little shorter than normal.  Here is my Connection:

We will have another vocab quiz this week.  This week's list (we are on list #6) is related to the Internet (just like last week).  Those who are responsible for the vocab list this week are as follows:

3rd hour:  JacobG, TristanJ, AaronL, AlexaM, IsaacR, RyannT
4th hour:  SavannaA, AllyssaF, LillyH, AndrewL, PayneO, CharlieW
6th hour:  DaltonC, SethC, MackenzieK, KatelynM, AndrewP, DylanV
7th hour:  EmmaA, ChristosA, KayseyB, KaylaJ, BrittanyL, AutumnS
8th hour:  DylanD, DavyenM, KeeganM, AvaM, ReneeR, McKenzieW


If your name is on the above list you should get with your group immediately and decide who is going to define what words (there are 12 words this week).  The first person on the list needs to get on the wikispaces page immediately and define their words - when that person finishes they need to tell the next person on the list, and so on.  This should get done by the end of class tomorrow.

Today we will begin learning the symbols that are on the keyboard.  We will cover the diagonal or forward slash (right little/4th finger), the dollar sign (left index/1st finger), and the exclamation point (left little/4th finger).

We will also continue our work with Logo by reviewing the REPEAT command.  We will have a handout on using the REPEAT command to create regular polygons and circles.  This should not be a difficult handout to complete as we've already completed an assignment on this.  Instead this should act as a review sheet.

Vocab Quiz #5 - Internet #1

Take the first couple of minutes today to review for the vocab quiz.  When we are ready to take the quiz, we will go to www.classmarker.com.  If you haven't bookmarked this website yet, please do so now.

After we take the quiz you can get back with your partner and complete the Logo work with your REPEAT statement assignment.  This is due today!  Please make sure to have everyone's name who is in the group on the sheet of paper when you hand it in!

If you are done with the Logo assignment, you have three choices:

1. If you haven't handed in the crossword puzzle yet get that done and handed in now.  It is late so you'll lose 10% (or .5 points) - but losing 10% beats getting a zero on the assignment.
2. Complete the discussion board assignment on www.edmodo.com (again, bookmark this website if you haven't already done so).  Answer this prompt:  What was the importance of learning about the Rainforest?  In addition, discuss what animal you did your research on, and what you learned about "your" animal.
   
   
   This discussion post will be due on Thursday, Oct. 27th at midnight.
   
   
   Remember that you must post your original response and then you must also reply to 2 of your classmates.  Your responses should create more discussion and should not be something like - "I agree", "Great post", "I like the way you think", etc.  
3. Practice websites - these are located on the blog by going to the Website resources page on the blog, then choosing the practice website of your choice.  

Thursday, Oct. 20

Get back with your partner and spend the day working on completing the Logo practice 2 page.  Remember, each design needs to be completed using a REPEAT command in your statement.  When you are done make sure that everyone's name who is in your group has put their name at the top of the paper and then hand in the tray.

CROSSWORD PUZZLE IS DUE TODAY!