Thank you for a great year at APEX!  This was our last week of classes for the 2018-2019 school year, but we will still have our site celebration.  Students wrapped up everything in class from the semester and were then given technology choice for programs that we’ve used over the year.  All assignments are due Monday, May 20th (please email me if you turn it in after this week). We’ve had a great year together and I will miss everyone over the summer!  Next week is our end of year celebration at APEX (more info here). Here is the outline of the schedule for the day:

• 9am-12pm: Presentations, Performances, and Talent Show
• 12-1:30pm: Picnic Lunch

Many of our resources will be left open over the summer in case students are interested in using them for fun.  Students should have access to: Google Drive, Scratch, CoSpaces, Code.Org, Typing Agent, and Adobe (depending on the course you were in).  Please be sure to pull your files from CoSpaces and Adobe over the summer as they will be wiped at the beginning of the school year. You will always have access to your SVVSD Google account as long as you are with the district.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

I look forward to seeing you all next week and next year!  I will be teaching on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday for Computer Skills, Programming, Computer Science, Graphic Design, and High School Yearbook.  I hope to see some of you in my classes next year! Have a great summer!

• Introduction to Google Classroom
• Google Slides Mystery Item
• Google Slides Challenge
• Google Slides- Animate This!
• Mid-Year Reflection
• Google Forms- First Form
• Google Forms Challenge
• Google Drawing- First Drawing
• Greeting Card- Google Drawing and Google Slides
• Google Sites- Blog
• End of Year Project

The end of the school year is just around the corner.  Wow! It’s been a great year! We have two classes left till the end of the year and then we have our end of year celebrations in class.  With only two classes left I’ve updated all student work and have given students with missing or incomplete work an updated note card with what needs to be completed (email me if you’d like a breakdown of what’s missing too).  Work will be due Monday, May 20th (my grades are due and need to be submitted the next day).  If your child completes the missing work, please have them email me so I know to go look for the work.  They need to save it in the shared folder we created at the beginning of the year where they’ve been turning in their work all year.  Please be sure they let me know it’s been turned in. All work, rubrics, assignments, examples, etc. are available on Google Classroom.  Please let me know if you have any questions. I’m here to help! Let’s finish the year strong!

What We Did:

• Today we wrapped up work from the semester
• Students then chose a project that ranged from a personal blog to display work, using Google Suite for a research project, conditional formatting with Google Sheets

What to Work On:

• Unfinished work
• Typing Agent

What We Plan to Do Next Week:

• Continue to work on our end of year project

Assignments from the Semester

Here is a list of the assignments we have done in class.  All grades have been updated in Infinite Campus. You can also have your child check his/her work in Google Drive or the various programs we’ve used online.  All information for the assignment is available in Google Classroom. Please let me know if you have any questions.

• Introduction to Google Classroom
• Google Slides Mystery Item
• Google Slides Challenge
• Google Slides- Animate This!
• Mid-Year Reflection
• Google Forms- First Form
• Google Forms Challenge
• Google Drawing- First Drawing
• Greeting Card- Google Drawing and Google Slides
• Google Sites- Blog
• End of Year Project

What We Did:

• We wrapped up our greeting card with Google Drawing and Google Slides
• Thursday students started their next project with Google Sites
• We are using Applied Digital Skills with Google to make a responsible blog
• We talked about how and why people use blogs

What to Work On:

• Please complete your greeting card if you have not finished it
• Typing Agent
• Any unfinished work

What We Plan to Do Next Week:

• Continue to work on our blog with Google Sites

What We Did:

• Google Drawings
• Creating a greeting card with Drawing and Slides

What to Work On:

• Any unfinished work
• Typing Agent

What We Plan to Do Next Week:

• Wrap up greeting card
• Begin making a responsible blog

Welcome back from Spring Break!  It’s so great to see everyone again.  After one week back we will have another unusual week where we may not see each other next week because of testing.  Remember there are College Board Testing on Tuesday and ITBS testing on Thursday and Friday. Classes will not be held next week to accommodate testing.  Please let us know if you have any questions.

What We Did:

• Introduction to Google Drawing
• We created a character for our first drawing

What to Work On:

• Typing Agent
• Play around in Google Drawing
• Complete any unfinished work

What We Plan to Do Next Week:

• Create a greeting card with Google Drawing and Google Suite

What We Did:

• Thursday: Started the Google Form Challenge
• Friday: Finished Google Form Challenge

What to Work On:

• Typing Agent
• Use the Google Suite for your work at home
• Work on any unfinished work or resubmit work for more points

What We Plan to Do Next Week:

• Thursday: Finish Google Form Challenge
• Intro to Google Drawing

Have a great Spring Break!

Thursday Students: Happy Snow Day!  As someone who grew up in Singapore and taught in the middle east in Qatar, Snow Days are very exciting for me!  However, I was sad to miss a day of class with you all. We will get caught up in the next few classes. I hope everyone was safe and warm at home on Thursday.

What We Did:

• We started our Google Forms Challenge
• We learned how to include photos in our form and as part of a multiple choice answer
• We also learned how to put videos into our forms
• Students can also separate their forms with headers and section breaks

What to Work On:

**Always be sure to check Infinite Campus for current grades and assignments.  As mentioned previously, you always have the opportunity to turn in work late or improve your grades by adding to a past assignment.  Please let me know if/when you have done this, so I can take a look at your assignment (I will not be randomly searching Google Drive for updated/turned in work).  Please let me know if you have any questions. Assignments, rubrics, exemplars, etc. are always available in Google Classroom.

• Typing Agent
• Work on any previous assignments that need to be completed or updated

What We Plan to Do Next Week:

• Wrap up our Google Forms Challenge
• Share our forms with each other and take the questionnaires
• Take a look at our data collection

What We Did:

• We worked in Google Forms
• Students did a first project in the program
• It was a basic five question form
• Next week we will send it around to our classmates and look at the sharing options as well as how the data gets collected

What to Work On:

• Typing Agent
• Look for ways to use what we’ve done at school at home-- integrate Docs, Sheets, Slides, and now Forms into your work at home

What We Plan to Do Next Week:

• Share our First Form and look at the data collection
• Begin the Google Forms Challenge

Thank you for coming to conferences!  It was so great to touch base with those of you who came and talk to you about how your child is doing in class.  If you ever have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. It’s easiest to get ahold of me via email ([email protected]).  From there I can either answer your questions with a reply or we can set up a phone call or meeting.  If you were unable to make it to conferences I will be sending home your child’s mid-year reflection home.  You can download a free QR Code Reader on your phone or tablet and you can view their reflection. You can also have them login to Drive and show you their reflection.  Their work is also always available to see online. They know how to get to it and show you. Rubrics are sent home regularly when work has been graded. Google Classroom is also a great place to take a look at what we have done.  It has assignments, rubrics, examples, and in some cases how-to videos. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks for all of your support at home with what we do here at school.

What We Did:

• Grit Scale
• Intro to Google Forms
• Creating a form together

What to Work On:

• Typing Agent
• Any previously unfinished work

What We Plan to Do Next Week:

• First form-- a quick project
• Google Form Challenge

** Parent-Teacher Conferences are next week.

Class schedule - 8:30-2:00

Conferences - 2:15-4:30

• Students will be dismissed at 2:00. Please pick up your students promptly!
• Conferences are on a first come first serve basis.
• Please limit conferences to 5 minutes when others are waiting (may be longer for parents with multiple students who have the same teacher).
• Conferences for students in Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd will be scheduled.  You will receive an invitation to sign-up from your child's teacher.

What We Did:

• Shared our Slides Animate This Project
• Mid-Year Reflection
• What you have learned
• Your favorite project
• What  you want to learn more of
• Wordle/Word Cloud
• QR Code Reader

What to Work On:

• Typing Agent
• If your child was absent this week, we will catch him/her up in class next week.  We did reflections, which I’d like to work with them on in class. If there is any previous missing work, then please work on that at home.  Thanks!

What We Plan to Do Next Week:

• Intro to Google Forms

What We Did:

• Animating with slides
• We worked on animating in Google Slides-- it is similar to stop motion
• Students will create a presentation with 100+ slides that will move around and animate when it is presenting

What to Work On:

• Typing Agent

What We Plan to Do Next Week:

• Students will get about 10 minutes of class time to complete their animations
• Present presentation to class
• Reflections

What We Did:

• Thursday: wrapped up Google Slides Challenge, digital escape room
• Friday: wrapped up Google Slides Challenge, presented to the class, began Animating with Google Slides

What to Work On:

• Typing Agent
• FINISH your Google Slides Challenge (rubric, assignment, tutorials, etc. are all in Google Classroom)

What We Plan to Do Next Week:

• Animating with Google Slides

** Friendly Reminder: Work can always be redone or turned in at a later date.  Students can always work to learn more and earn more points as they redo their work.  They must let me know their work has been updated and I will take a look at it again (i.e. I am not going to be digging through their folders and work to see if it’s been updated).  Please let me know if you have any questions :)

What We Did:

• Google Slides Challenge
• Students are making a more complex slides presentation
• We learned how to hyperlink other slides within a presentation

What to Work On:

• Typing Agent
• If you are unable to finish your powerpoint at the end of next class, please work on it at home.  The assignment, tutorial videos, and rubric are all in the Google Classroom

What We Plan to Do Next Week:

• Wrap up our Google Slides Challenge

What We Did:

• We shared our Mystery Slides presentation
• We started our Slides Challenge
• Students are making a longer presentation with a topic of their choice
• We learned how to use hyperlinks to link our slides together

What to Work On:

• Typing Agent
• Find ways to use Docs, Sheets, and Slides at home

What We Plan to Do Next Week:

• Keep working on our Slides Challenge