Thank You!

Dear St. Joseph families,

First, I would like to thank all of the families that gave such generous gifts to me.  I am truly humbled by the gracious nature of the families here.

Thank you for helping to make my first year here at St. Joseph School successful.  I appreciate the help and input from all who gave me their perspective.  There were a few bumps in the road and I want you to know that I learned from all of my experiences here this year.

As the computer teacher, I have a real handle on where we need to focus our efforts for next year regarding computer skills.  I am developing a website where the students will be able to see their weekly lessons, watch video tutorials on the lesson content, and download any documents necessary for the lesson.  This will make it easy for students to access from home if they miss my class.

As the technology coordinator, I now have a good understanding of how the technology infrastructure is maintained.  The maintenance of our network is entirely dependent on volunteers.  I have truly been blessed this year to have the support of Mr. John Becker.  He has patiently helped me to learn all of the network administrative skills that I did not know.

As a member of the SJS Technology Committee, I appreciate all the time and energy our volunteers give to the tech needs we have here at St. Joseph.  I appreciate all the support from the Tech Committee, the administration, and the school advisory board for our technology improvement plans.  Please keep abreast of our progress via the newsletters.

Lastly, I would like to thank the wonderful students here at SJS.  I am so thankful for their ability to adjust to change as I know how difficult that is for all of us.  I am so impressed by the caring nature of the students here and how the upper grade students take the lower grade students under their wings.  It is amazing to see the 1st graders and how they look up with awe at their 8th grade partners for mass every week.

Have a wonderful summer and stop in to see me as we forge ahead with new technology projects all summer.  May the Lord bless you all.

Fondly,
Sandy Knight

V.I.P. Week

I am excited to experience my first V.I.P. extravaganza here at SJS this week.  I hope that many of you are able to see one of the shows.

First Grade - Students completed an Earth Day poster using MS Publisher.  We have access to Raz-Kids, a subscription website for reading.  The students have learned how to access the website, listen to a book read out loud, and how to read the book themselves.  Most recently, they learned how to record their voice when they read a book out loud and these recordings are saved for their homeroom teacher to review.

Second Grade - Second graders completed their Dinosaur PowerPoint projects, including inserting audio recordings of dinosaur sounds.  I put all of the final PowerPoint projects on a website so parents could download the files and run the slide shows at home.  I hope your child brought home the written directions with the website and password so that you can see how hard they worked.  

Third Grade - In third grade, we practiced using digital cameras to take pictures in the classroom.  Now, we are working on learning some basics in Excel.  They have learned how to enter data and create various types of charts.

Fourth Grade - Students completed the Google Earth project and have a basic understanding of how to create placemarks and create tours.  We worked on editing photos using a free website called, PicMonkey.com, and now we have started a video tour project of St. Joseph School using Photostory 3.

Fifth Grade - Fifth grade students spent a couple of weeks learning about copyright, credit, and plagiarism and apply these concepts to their own creative work.  Then, we created some animations using ABCya Animate to create a .gif video.

Sixth Grade - Sixth graders completed a unit on PowerPoint where we created a game, called TechKnow Genius, using hyperlinks in PowerPoint.  This project taught students logic flow, which is the basis for any program coding in advanced programming languages.  They are beginning a new unit using Excel to analyse the nutrition facts from menu items at various fast food restaurants.  They will format a data table, create a pivot table to summarize the results, as well as graph the data by restaurant.

Seventh Grade - Students in 7th grade just finished the unit on the parts of a computer.  The webquest can be found at http://www.zunal.com/webquest.php?w=190646.

Eighth Grade - In eighth grade, the students completed the assessments for the Diocese of Joliet.  We did a short unit on using the review features in MS Word for editing and doing peer reviews of essays.  To finish off the year, we are studying digital literacy and responsibility using an online course called, Ignition.  

Happy Easter!

First Grade - This week students in Miss Krueger's class explored a new website, www.teachyourmonstertoread.com, which is a fun way for the students to practice their early reading skills.  Miss Biernat's class did not have computer class this week so they will try it next week.  If your child would like to practice at home, please send me an email and I will respond with their username and password. 

Second Grade - Students in 2nd grade did not have computer class this week.  They will continue with their dinosaur project, which includes internet research, and learning Powerpoint.  These projects are coming along nicely.

Third Grade - Third grade students have been learning the fundamentals of creating a report in MS Word.  Many have used these skills to create their Science Solar System report.  

Fourth Grade - Students in fourth grade are learning how to use Google Earth.  We are investigating many wonders of the world.  They especially like finding the house where they live and St. Joseph School.

Fifth Grade - Real or Hoax:  Evaluating websites.  Check out www.thedogisland.com to test your critical thinking skills.

Sixth Grade - Sixth grade students have been working on keyboarding using, www.techconnect.glencoe.com/techconnect/keyboarding/start.htm.  They are keeping track of their speed progress in a Excel spreadsheet.  We will be starting a Powerpoint project to further their knowledge of this ubiquitous tool.

Seventh Grade - Students in seventh grade started a guided-inquiry webquest to learn about the parts of the computer.  They will investigate computer hardware in many different ways, including opening up the older teacher computers we just replaced.

Eighth Grade - Eighth grade students have completed three out of four of the Diocese of Joliet Technology Assessments.  We have completed the multiple-choice general knowledge, the Powerpoint (via the composer project), and the Word assessments.  Next week, we will finish up with the Excel assessment.

Easy Way to Read Blogs

I have always used Google Reader to keep track of all the blogs that I read.  With children in middle school, I was tracking 20+ teacher blogs alone.  I set Google Reader as my home page in my browser and it showed me the list of blogs and if a blog had been updated since I last looked at Google Reader it would have the entry in bold.  Google announced that they will no longer be providing Google Reader as one of its features so I have read about an alternative called Feedly.  I am going to give it a try and you may want to as well.  See below for more information.

How To Subscribe to New Blogs in Feedly

When Google announced that Google Reader will be closed on July 1 my recommendation to you was to give Feedly a try. Feedly is a great service for reading your favorite RSS feeds on your iPad, Android device, or in your web browser. Feedly will import all of your Google Reader subscriptions for you. If you want to subscribe to more blogs after the import is complete, follow the directions below. These directions work when you're using your web browser to read Feedly. (Click the images to view them full size).

Step 1: Sign into your Feedly account then click "add content" in the upper left corner.

Step 2: Search for a blog.

Step 3: Add the subscription to a category folder.

This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers

NBC News features St. Joseph School on 3/14/2013

Chicago Churches Pray For New Pope

Local Catholic churches are doing what new Pope Francis asked -- praying for him.

Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/video/#!/multimedia/Chicago-Churches-Pray-For-New-Pope/198102981#ixzz2NcBIbKCt

March already?

First Grade - Students completed the Mitten Math PowerPoint work and they are able to move text and objects around on a slide, change to a different slide, save the file to the network, and print the slides on one page to the color printer.  This is all in addition to the math practice they had while navigating within PowerPoint.  Now, we are starting to learn about the lifecycle of a frog with the intention of creating a PowerPoint slide from scratch.

Second Grade - Second graders completed the Penguin Math PowerPoint and worked on navigating within the program, edit text boxes, drag and drop clipart, save to the network, and print the six slides on one page.  We started a new project with researching some facts about dinosaurs and then we will create a four slide PowerPoint presentation.

Third Grade - Students are beginning some research on exploring space and gravity.  They weighed themselves and entered the data into a website that calculates how much they would weigh on the different planets in the solar system.

Fourth Grade - Fourth grade students have been using Excel to analyse data from Valentine candy heart packages.  They created column charts from their individual data, then we created a spreadsheet of all the students' data for practicing sorting the data alphabetically and numerically.

Fifth Grade - Students spent several weeks learning about keyword searching on the internet.  Then we started a fun project learning to edit photos in a free program, PAINT.net.  They experimented with their school picture and changing the coloring to create a Andy Warhol pop art picture.

Sixth/Seventh Grade - Sixth and seventh graders have been learning about false information that is published on the internet.  They learned how to apply a set of criteria to evaluate how trustworthiness of a website.  This past week we started working with a new website to assess their keyboarding skills.  Check it out at http://www.techconnect.glencoe.com/techconnect/keyboarding/start.htm 

Eighth Grade - Eighth graders have just completed a joint project combining technology and the music curriculum.  They researched famous composers, created a PowerPoint slideshow, and gave a presentation on their composer.  The PowerPoint slideshow was created using very specific instructions and counts as the 8th grade PowerPoint assessment for the Diocese of Joliet.

Valentine Websites

Fun Valentine Websites - #15 was a bit hit with the younger children

1.    Valentine Sudoku

2.    Valentine mouse skills

3.    Line up the hearts

4.    Dress up the heart

5.    Valentine unscramble

6.    Valentine typing

7.    Valentine puppy jigsaw

8.    Valentine drag-and-drop

9.    Valentine match

10. Valentine tic-tac-toe

11. Write in a heart

12. More heart writing

13. 'I love you' in languages Afrikaans to Zulu

14. Valentine Day games and stories

15. Valentine coloring book

16. Valentine Day poem generator

17. Valentine rebus game