March 30 - April 2

Mrs. Somer's class started reading Wonder last week, which we will continue again this week.  They meet their blogging buddies and had a great time introducing themselves through words.  Thursday will begin our first blog on the book.  If you haven't had the time to read Wonder yet, it is a fantastic book about differences told from multiple perspectives.

Mrs. Leanna's Communication class will begin a unit on digital citizenship this week where they will be doing some role playing.  Then they will each create a project using Thinglink on a variety of topics that focus on digital citizenship.  I'm looking forward to working with this group of students on an important topic.

March 23 - March 27

This week the 7th graders are working on their writing assessments.  Students are busy gathering information and putting that into a six paragraph opinion response.  Teachers will be reviewing these in a few weeks and focusing on the six traits of writing to help our students become better writers.

Mrs. Somer's class is starting to do a class reading on the book Wonder by R.J. Palacio.  The students will be reading the book and then blogging with students from New Glarus.  This will continue until we have finished the book, hopefully at the end we'll be able to skype and discuss the book.

Mr. Weiler's art class has their Oaxacan art sculptures on display this month.

Mrs. Leanna's class just finished their brown bag projects about themselves, take a look at them while they're here.

European Videos

Mrs. Grau's class worked on videos about European countries last week.  This week the students were able to view each others videos, here are a few examples of what the students created.

March 16 -March 20

This week students have been practicing for the Badger Exam that they will be taking later in the month of April.  So, part of the week was preparing the students and making sure they were comfortable with the feel of this new test.

To accommodate our testing situation, I'll be spending more time in the classroom with the students instead of having them come to the library.  Mrs. Grau's class finished up their video projects on European countries this week.  We learned that rendering a movie is not as easy as it seems.  I was so impressed with how hard the students worked on their movies and the end result paid off, they were fantastic!

Mrs. Murphy's class came in on Wednesday to work on their interactive story.  Students were captivated by the story and tried to figure out the mystery.  Ms. Horne's students were also in on Wednesday to pick out independent novels.  It was great helping these students find the perfect book.

African Wix Projects

Mrs. Honn's students finished up their African websites and man was I impressed with the great work they did.  Students worked hard to make sure they had all of the criteria they needed but many went above and beyond to add things like videos and photo galleries.  Students were able to view their fellow classmates website to see some of the challenges that countries in Africa are facing as well as the beauty and positives that are happening.

Students Samples:

Republic of the Congo

Liberia

Madagascar

Chad

Uganda

Digital Learning Day!

March 13th is Digital Learning Day and Mrs. Serkowski's 7th grade Computer Applications classes have been working on creating some awesome presentations about how technologies have advanced over the years, some of their favorite technologies today, and technology innovators.  Below are a few students samples of their completed videos.

The video presentations ran throughout the day in the library for Digital Learning Day. Students could also take a look at a Digital Museum that was created with technologies from the past.

Students are able to see how telephone evolved.

It's hard to believe that this is how we stored data....No iCloud!

Students were amazed that the keyboard hasn't changed.

Many students have never seen records before.

The fact that phones and cameras are not combined was a new concept to many students.

March 10 - March 13

The school writing assessment is taking place in the library this week.  Students will be researching and writing a persuasive essay.  Eighth grade students will complete the assessment this week and seventh grade students will be completing their assessment in a couple of weeks.

Mrs. Grau's class will be in on Friday to continue work on their video project on Europe.  Students will be downloading their citations from Noodle Tools and then turning their citation page into a jpg so that it can be loaded into their movie.  Students will also learn how to properly render a video.

March 2 - March 6

Mrs. Serkowski's classes are working on making Animoto videos on a technology related topic to share with the school on Friday, March, 13th, otherwise known as Digital Learning Day.  A variety of topics have been chosen, a few topics have been Netflix, Amazon, Steve Jobs, Pinterest, and YouTube.  The students are researching how and when the companies were formed, the pros and cons, and how they've helped other companies develop over the years.

Students spent a few days doing research and were introduced to the Animoto program on Tuesday, they'll finish up the projects by Thursday and be able to few all of the videos on Digital Learning Day in the library next week.

Mrs. Grau's class will be in the library Wednesday through Friday where they are studying a European country which they will then use the program Photostory to make the a video representing their country.