Kindergarten: Kindergarten students were introduced to a drawing and painting program called Tux Paint. Tux Paint is free to download and has many of the features found on Kid Pix, which is a popular but pricey children's drawing program. After spending a week getting used to the tools available in Tux Paint, students complete several project related to the Kindergarten curriculum. For the first project, students stamped out different combination of animals, plants or other objects to make ten. For the second project, students used the stamps to demonstrate their knowledge of patterns. Grade 1: Students in Grade 1 continued to work on their keyboarding skills. The majority of students are now keyboarding using the both hands on the keyboard. I encourage students to continue to practice keyboarding outside of technology time, in order to keep up their keyboarding skills. There are a number of free keyboarding practice sites that I will be introducing over the next few weeks. Grade 1 students were introduced to an excellent online kid friendly research site called World Book Online Kids. Using this site, students compared animals and also gathered animal facts. With the knowledge that they had gained, they were given a chance to "teach" their Science teacher, Ms. Isom, by sending her an electronic postcard wtih the fact that they wanted to "teach" Ms. Isom. Kids loved this project and were totally engaged in their research and writing. Finally, grade 1 students have been studying the weather. Each day in November, students from Ms. Hilsen's class have been diligently recording the weather. Students took their actual weather data and created bar graphs using an online program. Grade 3 students had a variety of projects that they worked on during the month of November. Mrs. Baniaga's class continued to work on their ABC books. This is an on-going project in which they have been building their Powerpoint and research skills. Mr. Kent and Mrs. Kluch's class completed their "Are You Smarter than a 3rd Grader" Powerpoint quizzes on the topic of the Solar System. Grade 3 students were also introduced to some ways to find information quickly on Google via Google Quick Finds. In addition, students in Mrs. Kluch's class learned how to format typed assignments with correct headings, paragraph spacings etc. Grade 5 students worked on their Author's Wax Museum Powerpoint presentations as well as typed letters to authors. 

Grade 1 students continued to work on their keyboarding skills by completing more lessons in Dance Mat Typing. Their progress so far has been absolutely amazing! In addition to keyboarding , students in Grade 1 were introduced to several educational websites. The Cool Math Games site was introduced as a place to practice Math and critical thinking skills. At the Cool Math Games site students were able to play Peg Solitaire and a slider block puzzle. They enjoyed the games and had a real brain workout in the process! Also introduced this month was the district subscribed "World Book Online Kids" website. Students were taught how to search for information on the site as well as look at satellite images of notable places on earth. 

Grade 3 students were busy with a unit on using the internet. The unit covered topics such as internet searching, evaluating websites, internet safety, Google Quick Finds and more! Kid friendly research sites such as Ask for Kids, and KidRex were also introduced. Students in Mrs. Baniaga's Grade 3 class worked on two separate projects this month. The first was a Powerpoint ABC book in which students started took the first steps to create an ABC book on a topic of their choice. Using research skills, photo editing, Powerpoint skills, writing skills and more, students are making great progress on their ABC books. As a special Halloween project, Mrs. Baniaga's students wrote, illustrated and narrated Halloween digital stories. Students really enjoyed the digital story project and learned a lot in the process. Thank you to Janie Lentin for lending a hand on this project. Here is a sample of the work that students created: eugenia photostory compressed.wmv

Finally, Grade 5 students created Powerpoint presentations on Native American tribes. By the time students are in 5th grade, they are quite proficient in creating Powerpoint presentations. Most students were able to work independently with very little instruction  

Push-in technology lessons have begun for Grades K, 1 and 3. For 45 minutes each week, students have been receiving technology instruction. So far, the first few weeks have been introductory, but after that technology lessons are built around what students are learning in their classrooms. Kindergarteners have been learning how to get their computers from the computer cart, how to log in, maximize the screen and also learning some of the terms associated with 

using the mouse (left click, double click, drag & drop). Kindergarten students used a program called Tidy up the Classroom to help them practice their mouse skillls. Using the built in mouse has been a challenge for some, but after practice many have mastered this basic skill. Grade 1 students are learning about the jobs of each finger for keyboarding. They have begun their keyboarding lessons using Dance Mat Typing. Grade 3 students have been introduced to their netbooks. They recently typed up a poem in Microsoft Word and practiced saving their work, retrieving it from the server and some basic editing commands

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Please know that I am open to any concerns or suggestions that you have about technology. In addition, if you are interested in serving on the technology committee or would like to help out as a technology volunteer, please contact me at jlin@sandi.net.

Best wishes for a great school year!

Mrs. Lin