Classmarker account; create a Google doc with passwords; review all keys learned

Today we are going to check to make sure your Classmarker account works (this is the online website we will go tomorrow to take the vocab quiz).  I will give you your username and passwords so you can gain access.

Next we will create a new Google document that will hold all of your usernames and passwords - this way you will have 24/7 access to the usernames and passwords and you won't have to memorize them or carry around papers to help you remember what they are.

After we get that accomplished we will review all of the keys we've learned so far.

Learn period and left shift key; bookmark websites

Today we will learn two new keys that are not letters - they are the period (R3) and the Left Shift key (L4).

Additionally we will be checking our Classmarker accounts to make sure that you are able to get logged in - this will be how you take your quiz tomorrow, and with me being gone you will need to make sure everything is in working order today.  I gave you your username and password yesterday.

Lastly, if we have time, we will learn how to bookmark websites so you don't always have to type the web address in in the URL bar.  I've listed several websites on the board that you have been frequenting - it would be helpful to bookmark those.  Remember that a bookmark only works on the computer you are using, and only with the browser you are using - they do not transfer from one computer to the next or from one browser (on the same computer) to another.

Vocab Quiz; Finish FA5; email blog post; missing assignments; Alice

There are several different things that you may need to work on today.  First we will all review for the vocab quiz.  After being given several minutes to review we will all go to Classmarker to take the quiz.

Here are the other items that you need to get done:

1. Finish FA5 if you did not get it completed yesterday.  Remember that this must be printed out and that you must sign your name at the bottom between the complimentary close and where your name is typed.
2. Complete the blog post that was given to you on Monday.  Here is the writing prompt:  "In what ways do you see learning how to format documents in Microsoft Word useful, or important, for your future?" When you get done you need to send me an email with a link to your blog so I can read your response.
3. If you have missing assignments now is the time to get these done.  The missing assignment list on the wall has not been updated since Tuesday, but you should know which assignments since then you have not turned in.  Zeroes have a devastatingly bad effect on your grade - getting some credit (even if it is only 50%) will greatly improve your current grade.
4. If you have all of the above done, and you have no missing assignments, you may work in Alice and complete the Fish Fairy world. 

First vocab quiz week; signatures in Google

This Friday you will be taking your first vocab quiz.  As with any class it will probably take you one quiz to get acclimated to how I ask questions and how to prepare for our quizzes.

Our quizzes are taken online, and can only be taken here at school.  If you miss a quiz you must come into the room to retake the quiz - therefore makeups can only be done before school, during homeroom, at lunch recess or after school (unless we happen to find some extra time in class to complete it - but you'll need my approval to do that).

In order to take the quizzes online you must have an account at the website that houses the quizzes.  The name of that website is Classmarker - the website is www.classmarker.com.  My suggestion is that you go to that website and bookmark it so you don't have to remember the website.  The nice thing about this website is that it grades your quizzes immediately - therefore as soon as you submit your quiz you will know exactly what your grade is.  However, you will not know which questions you missed because I don't want 3rd hour students telling 7th hour students the answers to the questions.

The login procedures here will be fairly easy...your login will be your first name and the first 3 letters of your last name (and some people may have a number that they will have to include after their last name).  There are no spaces to your username.   The password is congo and then the hour you have Computer Applications (for example, 3rd hour's password is congo3).

I want everyone to log into Classmarker, Google, and also your Wikispaces account.  The Wikispaces pages for each class can now be accessed by clicking on your class hour on the Vocabulary page.  That will take you to your class' Wikispaces page, but you will still need to log into your account so that you can access the Wiki and then edit the page with your definitions.

I will be gone the rest of this week and possibly next Monday for a minor surgery so I want to make sure that everyone is capable of accessing their accounts.  Mrs. Glazier will be here and can help, but I want to try to get any problems out of the way today.

While I am gone my expectation is that you will be on your best behavior.  It's hard enough with as many people as there are in here, but for someone who is coming into the room from the outside it is even more difficult.  Please help to make Mrs. Glazier's week enjoyable.

Vocab Quiz #6; reflection; finish FA4

Today's activities will be as follows (and in this order):

1. Review for the quiz
2. Go to Classmarker to take Vocab Quiz #6
3. KEEP YOUR SPEED SKIN ON YOUR KEYBOARD!  Enter your reflection on your blog for this week.  The week is October 22.
4. KEEP YOUR SPEED SKIN ON YOUR KEYBOARD!  If you did not finish FA4 from yesterday you need to do that now and email to me.  Make sure to include everything that is needed in an email (if you forget a subject line I will take points off!).
5. KEEP YOUR SPEED SKIN ON YOUR KEYBOARD!  Turn to page 32 in your book; open Microsoft Word and type lines 1-6 twice on page 32, 14D.  You will be learning the 3 (L2), the 6 (R1), and the 2 (L3).  
6. KEEP YOUR SPEED SKIN ON YOUR KEYBOARD! If you are done with steps 1-4, go to the Free Online Typing Games website and choose 3 (out of the 10 available) of the timed writings to complete.
7. Once you get done with those timed writings, go to the 10 Fast Fingers website and see how you do compared to others.  Do 3 of these "competitions".  KEEP YOUR SPEED SKIN ON YOUR KEYBOARD!
8. If you complete all of the previous steps you may choose any of the practice websites to play games on, but KEEP YOUR SPEED SKIN ON YOUR KEYBOARD!

Correct fingers assignment; Makeup day

To begin with, I want you to warm up using p. 18, all lines on Section 8E.

After a few minutes of warming up, we will complete a Correct Fingers assignment on Classmarker.  If you don't remember, the Correct Fingers assignments are where you enter the correct finger you use on each key (for example, the right index finger, or R1, is used to type the letter J).

After completing that activity, we are going to use the rest of the time to make up any work that you have missing.  There are plenty of people with missing assignments, so if your name is on the wall you should be working to complete and hand in whatever is missing.  There are plenty of possibilities in terms of missing assignments - vocab quiz, crossword puzzle, Assignments (Formatting activities, 10 Facts about me, etc.).  If you need to make up something missing and it is on Classmarker, please let me know before you start working on it.

If you do not have any missing assignments you have several choices as to what you can do.  I will allow you to complete any work that is due - for example your Edmodo posts or your crossword puzzles that are due Friday (7th and 8th hour - we do not have class on Friday so I am strongly recommending that you get your crossword puzzle done today in class and turned in).

If you have everything done you can go to the practice websites listed on the blog.  You WILL have your speed skin on your keyboard as you are working, and you will stay busy the rest of the period.  You are not to be on a website that is unrelated to what we are doing in class (for example searching images in Google or on a website that we have never talked about using in class).  Also, there will be no chatting in Gmail or posting unnecessary comments and replies in Edmodo (and other time-wasting activities) - once you have everything done you are to practice on the websites I've given you.

Vocab Quiz; Reflection Week 8; Logo

We will take a few minutes at the beginning of class to review for the Vocab quiz (#5).  Then we will be taking it on Classmarker.  DO NOT GO TO CLASSMARKER UNTIL YOU ARE TOLD TO DO SO!  


After completing the quiz, go to your blog and post your reflection for Week 8.  This week we learned the numbers on the keyboard, we learned the REPEAT statement in Logo, we watched a Netiquette video, and you should have learned something about the Internet with all of the terms that we had.  REMEMBER - you should be writing your thoughts about what we learned, not just writing that we learned this or that.

Here are the answers to yesterday's Exercise 3 in Logo:

1. REPEAT 3 [FD 75 RT 90]
2. REPEAT 2 [FD 75 RT 90 FD 75 LT 90]
3. FD 50 REPEAT 2 [LT 60 BK 40] FD 50
4. BK 70 REPEAT 4 [RT 20 FD 30]
5. REPEAT 2 [FD 5 RT 5 BK 0 LT 5] LT 90
6. RT 75 FD 10 REPEAT 4 [RT 60 FD 10]
7. REPEAT 2 [FD 5 RT 90 FD 25 RT 90]
8. REPEAT 4 [BK 6 LT 30] BK 6 LT 50
9. RT 10 BK 25 REPEAT 4 [LT 5 BK 25] LT 45
10. REPEAT 3 [LT 90 BK 10]
11. REPEAT 3 [FD 10 LT 5 BK 5 RT 20]
12. REPEAT 4 [RT 70 FD 10]
13. LT 35 REPEAT 4 [LT 25 FD 10] RT 50
14. REPEAT 4 [RT 50 FD 5]
15. LT 10 REPEAT 3 [FD 90 RT 120] BK 50
16. RT 10 REPEAT 4 [BK 30 LT 90] FD 20
17. REPEAT 6 [RT 60 FD 5]
18. RT 30 REPEAT 4 [RT 50 FD 15] LT 80

After checking these, there is a new Logo sheet to work on - PRACTICE 2.  There are 6 designs that you have to write the instructions for using Logo, and each one of the designs needs to be written using a REPEAT statement.  You will have time today in class, and you will have also have time Monday to work on this.

**There are new "Missing Assignments" sheets posted - please check to see if you have anything missing.  Next Friday is the last day of 3rd Quarter - you will want to have everything turned in by then; any missing assignment will turn into a 0 in the grade book if it not handed in.

Classmarker and Edmodo

Xtranormal videos - I will grade them as soon as I can.  I don't make any promises in terms of when I will get yours done, but as soon as I get them graded they will show up in Skyward.  I would expect sometime next week to have them all completed.  Realize that it takes time to watch ALL of them - I simply ask for your patience!

At this point, I'm sure you're tired of signing up for new websites, but we still have two more websites that we'll be using frequently and I'd like to just get them out of the way today so we have it all done and over with.  Those two websites are Classmarker and Edmodo.  We use Classmarker to take all of our quizzes on - it is an online quiz website that hosts all of the quizzes that we take for vocabulary, plus a couple of other things that we will be doing in class.  Edmodo is much like Facebook, only for educational purposes.  However, we will NOT be using it to update our friends with what we are doing; instead Edmodo will be used to discuss what we cover in class.  In other words, we will have online discussions about topics we cover in class.

For Classmarker, I'll give you the details of your username and password, but they are fairly easy to remember, and the process for signing up is relatively easy.  The sign-up process for Edmodo is a little more complicated, but is not difficult.

After completing these two things today we'll go over a technique sheet, how you will be graded, and the process that is used when we have technique grades.

Once we complete this information we will again be working on learning new keys.  Most of you did not get an opportunity yesterday to work on the Left Shift key and the period.  That information is below, and is what we will be working on in class today:

1. For the Left Shift Key, you will use your left little finger.  But...you only use the shift keys to type capital letters with the opposite hand.  So, the left shift key is used to type capital letters on the right side of the keyboard, like the J, K or N.  The process works like this - reach and hold down the shift key with your little finger, type the key you are capitalizing with the right hand, then continue keying.  There should not be any pausing after typing a capital letter.
2. The period is on the right side of the keyboard, and you are going to use your right ring finger (or right 3rd finger).  You should space twice after a period at the end of a sentence, space once after an abbreviation, and don't space after a period within an abbreviation (for example, there is no space after the first period in "J.D. Drew").

We

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.  

Friday, September 2

1. The first thing we will accomplish today is completing the "Correct Fingers" assignment at Classmarker. I will have to give you your username and password - so this is again another username and password that you will have to remember.   Therefore, we will use Google docs after we are done with the assignment to create a password "account".
2. Google Docs - this is a great place you can use to save all your passwords for the various different websites that you will register for.  This is not something that you have to do, but as I will show you it is a great way to store your passwords.  What I really like is that I can access this anywhere there is an Internet connection - including using a smartphone if you have one. (the below picture is a link - when you click on it it will open in a new window)

3. Here are several websites that you can use to create a password. These are convenient if you just want a quick solution to a password - or if you're just tired of trying to think of a clever password!
Password BirdPass Plex Password Generator Strong Password Generator
4. The rest of the day will be used practicing the keys we have learned.  Here are the websites that you can use to practice (and you can also obviously use these at home if you wish to):
Free Typing GamesFree Online Typing Games - online tutor Power Typing lessons Typing Web tutor

All of these websites are located on the Website Resources page on the blog- therefore they are available for you to use at home if you need to practice.