Tool School

Parents, community volunteers, and high school students came to the elementary school last week to participate in Tool School. Tool School is a career exploration program for third grade students organized by Gail Cherry. It ties into the third grade science unit on simple machines. You can read about it and leave comments on the third grade Tool School Blog. Students wrote the entries in computer class and hope to get many comments from Charlevoix and all over the world.

Computers Help Us

Second grade students just started a three week project. This week they brainstormed ways computers help people and then wrote a rough draft of a paragraph about it. Next week they will type it in Microsoft Word, and the week after that they will spell check, format the text, and add clip art.

Computer Disaster

This week first grade students are listening and responding to the book Arthur's Computer Disaster by Marc Brown. In Microsoft Word they are writing about what they think Arthur should have done in the story. They get to change the size and font and add a clip art to the document before printing.

I Spy

Last week second grade students created I Spy pictures. Each child brought something to computer class for the picture and helped arrange the items. They wrote sentences to go with their picture. You can see their work by clicking here.

Computers Are...Wordle

Wordle is a web site where you enter text and it makes it into a "cloud." Words that are entered more often are shown larger than words that don't occur as much. Here is a Wordle cloud made from a project I did with fourth grade. Students had to think of things to finish the statement "Computers are..." I copied and pasted their results into Wordle, removed their names, and out came the cloud! If you are going to print your cloud, please keep clicking Randomize until you get a white background.

Wrap Yourself In Ribbons

A few weeks ago our office staff received new computers. Yesterday, teacher laptops were reimaged. All of the computers now have Office 2010. This includes the updated versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Publisher. Our previous versions were from 2003. Instead of menus and toolbars, the programs now have tabs and ribbons. The transition will seem hard at first, but you can do it. Remember, the right click is your best friend and will help you do a lot of things that used to be done by clicking a button on the screen. Scott found this great site to help you locate tools in the new version: Learn where menu and toolbar commands are in Office 2010 and related products. Scroll down to choose the application you want. Point your mouse to the old tool and it tells you where to find it in the new version. Click the tool, and the interface shows you where to find it! Take deep breaths, be patient, and before you know it we will all be humming along like there was no change at all. Good luck!