Congratulations!

The 3rd, 4th and 5th graders have been learning how to type this year - I guess they call it "keyboarding". Well, congratulations to the first two students who completed their certificates AND captured all the jewels in Typer Island: Matthew and Arthur - both 4th graders!! Here they are posing with their screens -

Matthew

Arthur

Middle School Computers Students Work With Scratch

For this second semester of middle school computers my goal is to get the kids both comfortable and excited about the process of programming. They each did a web page last semester so learned HTML and CSS coding. That process was fun for them (albeit a little frustrating) in that they got to see how coding can give immediate results. I think they also enjoyed getting creative with images and gifs.

This semester we are starting our programming adventure by using Scratch, a programming platform created by professors at MIT.

Creative Computers First Semester Projects

So this was is my first year teaching middle school classes and a high school "Creative Computers" class. I decided to teach them Photoshop and Illustrator. We did several long term projects in both programs.

The first Photoshop project was to create a postcard. I think these turned out great!

Lorenzo's NBA Postcard

First Semester Middle School Computers Sum-Up

Last semester in middle school computers we learned some keyboarding skills, how to format in and work with Microsoft Word, and do a little Microsoft Excel. The best part, however (at least for me!), was teaching the kids how to work with HTML/CSS and code their own web pages. Even though it was frustrating at times, as HTML is so sensitive to errors, they seemed to really enjoy it and loved the immediacy of making something happen in front of their eyes! Here are some of the webpages they created:

The Best Kid Shows of 2000 to 2008
IceCream.org
NBA Basketball Teams 2013-2014
Top Five Crossovers of the 2012-2013 NBA Seasons
Top five NBA Dunks
Mr. Woofless' Pet Shop