Add Color to Your Posts!

Attention fourth and fifth grade students:

Add color to your posts!

If you type your posts using Microsoft Word, you are able to use color and the color does transfer to your post “as is” if you have a blog created with Blogger. https://www.blogger.com/start

Titles can be added using different colors to draw attention to your different sections that you have written.

Subtitles can be used to add additional color.

Emphasizing different points of view could be accomplished by using different colors!

What is Myspace and why are children interested in it?

According to Wikipedia, the definition of myspace is as follows:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace

MySpace is a popular social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos for teenagers and adults internationally.

The following is how Wikipedia defines social network service:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_service#Social_networks_for_social_good

A social network service uses software to build online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most services are primarily web-based and provide a collection of various ways for users to interact, such as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, discussion groups, and so on. Social networking has revolutionized the way we communicate and share information with one another in today's society. Various social networking websites are being used by millions of people everyday on a regular basis and it now seems that social networking is a part of everyday life.

Networking is a fairly common word for 5^th grade students. They understand it as a place they can go to talk with other kids. Networking means communication with others through a source like Facebook or MySpace.

UNFORTUNATELY:

Fourth and fifth grade students do not understand that they are not supposed to have a MySpace page. The legal age for MySpace is 14. This means that our fourth and fifth graders should not have these webpages. Unfortunately, one of the reasons, students get involved in social networking is because they have older brothers, sisters, friends, or family members creating MySpace pages. Therefore, they want to have a MySpace.

THE APPEAL:

Kids can go to MySpace and real quickly start building a Webpage that has music, videos, friends, email, photo sharing, groups, and more. Why wouldn’t they be interested in MySpace!!!! For teenagers, MySpace offers attraction and hours of fun.

Remember Stay Safe:

MySpace allows you to turn off “on line” so no one knows when you are online.

MySpace allows you to hide your friends so others can’t see them.

MySpace allows you to have anyone wishing to “be a friend” make a request and not be automatically added. This way no one can see your complete profile unless they are actually someone you have allowed as a friend.

CAUTION: when building profiles only share a small amount of information. Remember this is for students 14 and older not for our fourth and fifth graders! Do not give out your password to anyone.

Who's on First!

This week we had a skit written by Vivian, Jasmine, and Julliana so I thought you might like watching this skit by Abbott and Costello. Enjoy!

Publisher

We have been working on brochures using Publisher, adding images and researching facts about famous people. It is quite interesting to watch my students work helping each other and creating newspapers, brochures, plays, and books. They are interested in writing and creating without being told this is an assignment. Instead, they arrive early morning to work on their many projects. They seem to be rather fast when it comes to typing and finding research articles. Now it is time to start showing them how to build web pages.

They also went home and commented to this blog. This took exact time and effort. Many of the students do not have computers at home so they decided to go to the public library.

The 2007-2008 class is an amazing class. It doesn't seem possible that our school year is almost at an end.

Our media center early morning before the students arrive. We have 12 computers that serve approximately 243 fourth and fifth grade students. Class sizes are about 20 or more students on the average.

Our students love coming in working on various activities with their teachers and tech staff. They are encourage to create powerpoints, inspiration projects, and excel graphs besides Internet research projects. The media center staff are fantastic at creating lesson plans for many activities that aligned with the classroom curriculum and state testing mandates.

Most of our students are involved in Accelerated Reader where students check out books from a specific list. After the book has been read, the students will take a reading comprehension test. The program stores all test scores taken (passed or failed) by the student. The student receives a print-out of their history with Accelerated Reader. In my opinion, this has been a fantastic way to get students involved in reading. They can find many books that are very interesting on the list such as Bridge to Terabithia, Tuck Everlasting, Giver, Number the Stars, Twenty and Ten, Snow Treasure, and many, many, more.

Our media center may be small, but it is used constantly by students as well as adults. There is never a dull moment in this classroom.

Amazing!

I thought my students would love to see this TV that has been placed above the Gas station pump. This allowed me to watch the current news and weather as I filled up my car with gas.

I also noticed monitors as I walked the mall and grocery stores where advertisements are being played over and over. Is this something we really want…to be constantly bombarded with news and advertisements???? Is this what we really want to use technology for????

I personally like to have a peace of mind when I am shopping. It is hard enough to make decisions without the constant noise of commercials being played in the background.

What about having time to think, absorb, and just enjoy the quiet of the moment???

Monitors in stores???? Is this a good thing or not??? What do you think students?

Trees!

I never get tired of looking a trees. While on a short vacation this week, I was visiting my brother's house and took pictures of these two awesome oak trees. It is amazing how big and beautiful they are and it is not summer yet.















Websites about Oak Trees!

Interesting Facts about Oak Trees

Oak Tree

Sherwood Forest England

Flock

Check this Screencast out by Liz Davis on Flock a browser by Mozilla!





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Technology!

Please post an answer to these Survey Questions:

What are some ways your child/students use technology?

Name the technology tools that your child/students uses?

Patience at Jury Duty

As I was sitting at Jury Duty and completely bored, I noticed that people were doing a variety of things! Some brought their laptops, cell phones, books, magazines, newspapers, notes, paper, and pens. It was a group that did not know each other and had never met before. We all had one thing in common…to be here for Jury Duty.

How much technology was used this day was at a low obviously because of where we were and not knowing exactly what to bring with us. However, people were busy reading, reading, and reading. It was basically a quiet day with everyone involved in whatever they had brought with them to read. There were three televisions on so some of the people watched the latest game shows.

Technology today was TV, cell phones, and laptops used to communicate information to people. I only say one person with a ipod.

As I sat and watched people, I thought of the younger generation of students that are growing up and wondering if they have been learning patience. Can they sit, watch, and just notice the world around them without text messaging, cell phones going constantly, and ipods running? Are they able to read newspapers and books for hours at a time and amuse themselves without a lot of technology? Are they able to communicate in-person and make new friends or acquaintances at a strange place like this?

There is a skill to communicating in-person and we need, as educators and parents, to teach our students the importance of communication in social gatherings. Interpersonal skills are valuable and need to be practiced. It is also interesting that now I must clarify communication as “in-person” versus virtual, cell phones, emails, skype, and through social networks. Not only do our students and children need to know how to communicate safely in social networks but they also need to learn to communicate with their peers and adults.

As humans we still need real-time communication!