Mrs. Tumenas

As we finish up our preliminary projects in grades 4-7, we will be learning more about internet safety and digital ethics. This is an interview on CommonSense Media with Howard Gardner, educator and psychologist at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. It’s short video with some pertinent questions and answers from a well known expert in the field.  Click on the picture to go to the interview.

The students in 5th-8th grade were asked to talk about their hopes and dreams for the new school year. Be sure to click on the “more” tab to hear all of them. Feel free to add your own comments as well. Your student can add you as an “identity” to their account or you can sign up with VoiceThread. Comments are moderated, so they will not appear immediately.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/h-k-d/2595755975/

Keeping children safe online is a concern for all. Today Google announced the opening of their new Family Safety Center.
Click here to check out what they offer.

The following is a quote from Google:

We know how important it is to protect and educate young people on using the Internet and want to provide all of our users with a safe experience.
When it comes to family safety, we aim to:
Provide parents and teachers with tools to help them choose what content their children see online
Offer tips and advice to families about how to stay safe online
Work closely with organizations such as charities, others in our industry and government bodies dedicated to protecting young people

Google Classic from dullhunk on flickr

Welcome back! We have brand new computers in the computer lab this year! Many thanks to Kim Kisselbrock and Tom Provencher for the hours they put in to get all of the new equipment up and running. Aside from the new computers and a few new pieces of software, we are also excited to be beginning to use our own student Google Apps Domain, http://home.mybcd.org.  This will enable the students to learn more about these tools, to use less paper, and to send or retrieve their work from any computer or smartphone connected to the internet.  Below you will find a form to fill out, to confirm your permission to use the various tools and websites we commonly visit in the various classes. More information about each site and your student’s usernames and passwords for them will be both emailed to the parents and sent home with each student.

Searching for good quality, credible information online is sometimes a frustrating, time consuming task. The sheer amount of information available can be overwhelming, and then you still need to verify your sources. Many students simply turn to Google and take the top 2 or 3 links they find. I recently had the opportunity to learn more about a new search engine, designed especially for education. Sweet Search is a relatively new search engine, which is great for students to use. This is from their website:

It searches only the 35,000 Web sites that our staff of research experts and librarians and teachers have evaluated and approved when creating the content on findingDulcinea. We constantly evaluate our search results and “fine-tune” them, by increasing the ranking of Web sites from organizations such as the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, PBS and university Web sites.

SweetSearch helps students find outstanding information, faster. It enables them to determine the most relevant results from a list of credible resources, and makes it much easier for them to find primary sources. We exclude not only the spam sites that many students could spot, but also the marginal sites that read well and authoritatively, but lack academic or journalistic rigor. As importantly, the very best Web sites that appear on the first page of SweetSearch results are often buried on other search engines.

For more, including a comparison of search results between SweetSearch and Google and Bing, read this blog post.

Try it out for yourself:

Whether you are just learning how to type or learning how to do 3D object oriented programming, it takes practice. Middle school students who are struggling with keyboarding, presentations, word, excel or upper school students who are working with new google tools, InDesign or Alice- the more you practice your skills, the better you will be. Try it- it works!

This is a compilation of the results from all who responded to the survey. Click to enlarge the image.

Created at wordle.net

5Q made a Voice Thread with their grandparents and grandfriends.

They did a great job taking pictures and making short videos. you can see the larger versions of the videos here.

Students in grades 4-9 have been introduced to a new tool this fall, Voice Thread. Each class has worked in Voice Thread, talking about their hopes and dreams or goals for the year. You can check the links for the individual grades on the right to see these. The second part of the assignment for the older students is to make your own Voice Thread around a topic of your choice. Although many students are still in the midst of completing this assignment, the 3 featured below have generated the most comments thus far.