A Week of College and Career Preparation - It Starts Today!

 

Good Morning, Happy Monday! I hope you had a relaxing Thanksgiving Holiday. Today, we are back at it, but this week looks a little different. Tomorrow we have a guest presentation in the PAC Theater. Our presenters include Kyle Wong from Pixlee and Nina Kouyoumdjian from nhastrategy.  Today, I want you to think about a few things:

1. Do a little research on Kyle Wong and/or Pixlee.  Name 3 things that you learned and what about his story or Pixlee is interesting and/or impressive to you.
2. Having read about Kyle and Pixlee, what are 3 questions you might have about either his personal business or about starting your own company?
3. Have you ever been interested in starting your own business?  Regardless, list a few personal characteristic traits you feel are important in making your business a success?

Switching gears, our second speaker will focus on college and the importance of preparing for college as early as possible.  She has a lot of experience in the field and can be of great value in answering questions you might have.  Here are a few things I would like for you to think about in relation to her presentation:

1. Why is college of personal importance to you?  What is the number one reason you want to go to college?  Name a few schools you would be interested in attending and why those schools stand out as "top choices."  Feel free to spend a moment looking at schools on the College-board Website
2. What do you know about the college application process?  Outline the process to the best of your ability for me in terms of what is required for a successful applicant!  Start with grades all the way to pushing the submit button.
3. What is your personal brand?  A personal brand is typically an impression you form in the mind of others.  What would you say your personal brand is with your friends?  Does it differ from the personal brand you have established with your teachers? boss? mentor?

Tomorrow should be an amazing opportunity for you and all Academy students to think about all of the options you have ahead of you.  All I ask you to take advantage of the opportunity!

Microsoft Blog Catch-Up

Good Morning and Happy November!!  With all of the events over the past few weeks I have been remiss in posting a blog for you to highlight all of the amazing work you have completed over the past few weeks AND demonstrate the many skills you have learned.  While i know it might be a stretch for you to remember all of the skills, I ask you to take a second to review the assignments you completed, post them to your blog and discuss the following questions.  The assignments you should post and discuss include:

• Microsoft Word Assignment #4 - Creating Tables
• Microsoft Word Assignment #5 - Personalized Newsletter Assignment
• Microsoft Word #6 - Gallery Lesson
• Microsoft Word #7 - Creating AutoShapes

Please post three images of the four assignment similar to what I have posted below:

Then, please respond to the following questions:

1. Briefly describe the purpose of each of the assignments you have recently completed? What did you set out to do?
2. What tools did you learn from completing each of the assignments - this section will be the longest and you may need to refer back to the assignments themselves to refresh your memory!
3. Do you feel comfortable using those tools now and applying them in a larger, more comprehensive project?  Did you like the independence you had in creating the newsletter or do you prefer the tutorial style assignments with step by step instructions?  Why? 
4. Which of the above was your favorite assignment and how do you think the tools that you learned would help you create really great looking word documents?

Microsoft Word Assignment #3 - Party Invitation

Good Morning!  For today's blog, please:

• Describe the purpose of the Party Invitation Assignment you completed? What did you set out to do?  What type of party invitation did you create?
• What tools were you able to use from the first assignment we completed together as a class to help you complete this assignment?  Be Specific!
• Do you feel more comfortable using those tools now?  Did you like the independence you had in creating the invitation or do you prefer the tutorial style assignments with step by step instructions?  Why? 
• What were the challenging aspects of this assignment?  Did you have any trouble?  Please discuss what was challenging and how you overcame those obstacles.  Please also discuss what you enjoyed about this assignment.

Each bullet point above should be at least a few sentences.  I would say the final blog post would be 5-8 sentences and must include an image of the final invitation you created!

Thank you!

Microsoft Word Assignment #2 - Golf Newsletter

Good Morning! It's Friday! Today kicked off the day with a lesson of edutyping and by completing the following Google Form (https://goo.gl/qaBkwg) in preparation for our first mentor meeting next Friday!!

After completing the above, please complete and posting your completed (2nd) MS Word lesson to Google Classroom and our Blog!

• Questions are:
• What was the purpose of this assignment? What did we do and how did we do it?
• What new tools did you learn or what tools were you able to practice while completing this assignment (you might want/need to look at the assignment handout to pick these things out). This portion of your blog should be specific.
• What type of article could you write about a personal experience, academy or school event that would be interesting to your classmates AND would you feel comfortable formatting it similar to a newspaper style article now that you've learned some of the new skills/tools taught in the previous lesson(s)? Why or why not? What challenges might you foresee?

So that there are no misunderstandings, remember that you are going to post each assignments in two locations. On your blog you will have to submit them as images so you will need to take a screenshot of your project and post it at the top of your blog. The file you submit in Google Classroom should be the original, Microsoft Word, document so I am able to see each of the steps you took to complete the assignment.

Moving on to Microsoft ... WORD!

Good Morning and congratulations on completing your first MS Word 2013 lesson.  Now it is time to post your work to our Blog! Below are a series of questions.  Please respond to them thoughtfully and thoroughly!

• What is Microsoft Word (feel free to look up on Google and find a definition or use your own experience to describe it)
• What was the purpose of the first assignment we completed (what did you set out to do?)
• What new tools did you learn or what tools were you able to practice from completing this assignment (you might want/need to look at the assignment to pick these things out). This portion of your blog should be specific.
• How will you be able to use these tools to help you create better work in High School?

As a reminder you are going to post these assignments in two locations. On your blog you will have to submit them as images so you will need to take a screenshot of your project. Please take a screenshot of the main page of the document created so that as you discuss what you were working on, your audience will be able to see some examples.

In addition to posting on your blog you must also post these assignments in Google Classroom. In Google Classroom you should post your final version as a Microsoft Word document so I am able to see each of the steps you took to complete the assignment. Again, please simply go to Google Classroom and upload your original Microsoft Word document.

Google Mapping!

Congratulations on completing our Google Apps Unit!  We are now ready to move forward and work with Microsoft Word!  Before moving forward, however, I want to take a moment and reflect on our Google Map Assignment.  Now a days, it's hard to imagine going anywhere new without an electronic mapping device!  Google or Apple Maps to be specific.

• Discuss the assignment we completed on Google Maps.  What was the purpose of the assignment and what needed to be done in order for you to successfully complete the assignment?
• What did you enjoy about the assignment?  Name 2 or 3 aspects of the assignment that you really enjoyed working on.
• How would a tool like this be helpful in planning a trip that you wanted to go on?  
• How would a tool like this be fun for documenting a trip that you went on?  What would you be able to document?
• Do you feel like this was a fun final Google Apps Assignment?  Why or why not?

Creating a Google Site and Adding Your Calendar, Form and Video

Good Morning, Happy Friday and Welcome to the last day of our Quarter 1 Progress Period.  Today is a great opportunity to look and reflect on your grades, make sure they are exactly where they need to be and brainstorm how you are going to continue on this positive path and/or where you need to focus your efforts to ensure the best grades possible in each and every class.  That said, today is also a great opportunity for us to wrap up our Google Sites assignment with a simple blog post.  Below are a set of questions, but as always, feel free to add some of your own thoughts and insights in addition to your responses to the posed questions.

• What was the purpose of the assignment you just completed? What was the task and what needed to be done in order for you to successfully complete the assignment?
• Describe Google Sites to your audience.  What did you really love about using this tool?  Name 3 things that would motivate you to build your own Google Site.  What are some things you disliked about using Google Sites?
• Did you find the assignment easy to complete? Did you have any trouble? If so, what was the biggest challenge?  Do you feel you know and understand enough about Google Sites to help a friend or family member create their own attractive website?  What questions would you have if you were going to help someone with something like this?
• Take a moment and look around the internet for a website you really like.  What website is it (include the url)?  Name 3 things stands out and/or catch your eye?  Could you incorporate these details into your own Google Site?  Why or why not?  What make them interesting/important elements of the website?

Thanks for your thorough, thoughtful response.  Don't forget to post a picture of your Google Site.  You can choose to post any of the 3 assignment pages you'd like :)  Lastly, if you still have not submitted your blog (it says missing under the "Blog Address Submitted" Assignment) please click on this link: http://goo.gl/2hX0hS and complete the required form.

Academy Community Building Fieldtrip

Oh my!  What a week!!  I can't believe this is my first day on campus since LAST Friday!  I will say though, even though it was hard to be away, this week demonstrated the power of this program!  Tuesday we visited Hidden Villa Farm and spent the day developing community, building trust and participating in a wide range of activities including a hike through the farm itself and into the hills.  On Wednesday, the Juniors were dropped on Ocean Beach looking over the Pacific Ocean before hiking 5 miles up and down and along the coast through million dollar neighborhoods, on Baker Beach and eventually under the iconic Golden Gate Bridge!  Although challenging at times, it was nice to see the friendly encouragement and overall positive attitudes as we confronted the challenge at hand!  Finally, yesterday we saw what happens after 2 full years together in the Academy.  Our senior beach day showed the comraderie that our students have developed as the participated in our 1st annual Academy Olympics, ran along the beach and played some highly competitive teacher vs. student volleyball!  Honestly, looking back on the last three days, they were fantastic!

Today I would like you to take a few minutes and reflect on your activity.  Below are a few questions you can answer, however, feel free to also include any other thoughts/feelings that come to mind.

• For your reader, please describe the activity from Tuesday in a few sentences.
• What was the goal of the trip was?  Do you feel it was accomplished?  Explain why or why not?
• Thinking back on the day, how would you rate your participation?  How do you think your level of participation alone can help you succeed at M-A and in life in general?
• What was your favorite aspect of the day at Hidden Villa?  Talk about a favorite moment or activity you participated in.
• What are three things you would say you learned about yourself or your classmates during Tuesday's activities?
• Restate your goals for this school year and how you plan to accomplish them - think about the dream-boards you created.
• What, if anything, would you have changed about the day at Hidden Villa?  What do you think would make a successful "community building" day?

Again, above are a series of question you can/should respond to but feel free to add any additional comments about your experience.  Thank you for a thorough and thoughtful response.

Finding and Saving an Image in Google Images

Good Morning!  Today we had a simple assignment in which you used Google to find a specific image.  Having completed the assignment and posting to Google Classroom, please also post the same image here, to your blog, and respond to the following questions:

• What was the purpose of the assignment you just completed? What was the task and what needed to be done in order for you to successfully complete the assignment?
• What new tool did you learn today? Did you know you were able to control these settings when searching for an image in Google? Was the assignment easy to complete? Did you have any trouble? If so, what was the biggest challenge?
• How would understanding how to use these tools be helpful to you? How could you use the tool for school? For your daily life? Can you think of a time or place where people would use these tools and how could it help them/ensure higher quality work?

Thanks!

Using Google Translate to Translate Text

Today you are responsible for posting a blog focused on our "Using Google Translate to Translate Text" assignment.  The questions I would like you to respond to are below:

• What was the purpose of the assignment you just completed? What was the task and what needed to be done in order for you to successfully complete the assignment?
• What new tool did you learn today? Did you know Google Translate existed before today and was capable of translating text so well? Was the assignment easy to complete? Did you have any trouble?
• Do you think Google Translate is a helpful tool? How could you use the tool for school? For your daily life? Can you think of a time or place where people would use a tool like this and how could it help them?  Have you ever been in a situation where you couldn't communicate with someone else and something like Google Translate would have come in handy?

Thanks for your thorough, thoughtful response and, by the way, Happy Friday!

Creating a Google Calendar and Adding Events

Good Morning and Welcome to our 2nd block day of the school year!  Today we are going to complete our 5th Google assignment which will require us to work with Google Calendar!  I'll be honest, some of you may still be able to remember all of the upcoming events and activities you have coming up in your head but I think my brain has come to rely entirely on technology and, yes, when my calendar tells me to be somewhere, I go!

For today's blog post please respond to following questions:

1. What was the goal of today's assignment?  What task, specifically, did you need to complete.  Remember, this is primarily for your audience.
2. What was your impression of Google Calendar?  Do you currently use it?  Would you use it?  Why or why not?  Would it make a difference if you knew you could sync Google Calendar with your phone?
3. What would be the three most persuasive reasons you can think of why you (or someone else) would use Google Calendar?  What type of events would you imagine people would list in here?
4. What is your impression of the Google Apps unit as a whole so far?  Do you find it interesting?  What do you think of all the different tools Google offers you ... and for FREE!!

Lastly - for today - please make sure you have completed the following:

1. Ensure all 5 of our assignments to date have been successfully submitted in Google Classroom
2. Ensure you have responded to each blog post to date (open my blog @ http://compapps1617.blogspot.com/
3. Make sure you have submitted your blog address.  You can do that at: http://goo.gl/2hX0hS
4. Be sure to have completed lesson 4 in Edutyping
5. Have extra time?  Use this opportunity to navigate Naviance and/or complete work for one of your other classes.
6. Remember - field trip permission slips are due today!

Creating a Folder and a Form in Google Drive

 

Having completed your first Form in Google Drive, please respond to the following questions:

1. Describe the assignment you just completed? What was the task and what needed to be done in order for you to successfully complete the assignment?
2. What new skills did you learn from completing this assignment? Was the assignment easy to complete? Did you have any trouble?
3. What would this tool be good for? How could you use the tool for school? For your daily life?
4. Do you see value in this Google Application? Do you think it is useful for people in their everyday lives? Can you think of someone you know who could use the application? Explain who they are and why it would help them with their life, job, etc.

Remember, to successfully complete each assignment in this class you need to submit it in Google Classroom and then post a 5-8 sentence response to the questions on this blog and ensure you have a picture posted on your blog that demonstrates the quality of work you completed.

Composing Mail, Attaching a File and Organizing Messages in GMail

Good Morning!  On Friday we completed the assignment entitled: Composing Mail, Attaching a File, and Organizing Messages in Gmail.  For those of you who successfully completed that Friday - good work!  I am going to take a moment to run through the assignment at the beginning of class but it will then need to be posted in Google Classroom and here on your blog of course.  On the blog, you are also responsible for answering these questions quickly (similar to our previous assignment).

• Briefly explain the assignment in your own word for the person who may be viewing this assignment.
• What simple task were you expected to do to successfully complete this assignment?
• What tools were most interesting to you?  Which would be helpful for you?  Did you learn anything new from completing this assignment?
• When you write an email, what are some of the most important aspects you should be sure to include?  In addition, as you answer this question consider how writing an email is/should be different than writing a text message?!?!

As an FYI - here is a quick reminder of what we will be working on today:

1. Review of GMail Assignment
2. Ensuring you posted blogs for 
1. Your Recipe Card Assignment
2. Your Composing Mail, Attaching a File and Organizing Messages in GMail Assignment
3. Ensuring you have completed Edutyping Lesson 3
4. If you have additional time, this is a great opportunity to log back into your Naviance account and play around - see what you learn :)

That's it for today!  Thanks!

Using a Template in Google Drive

Good Morning!! Hopefully you are your partner had a productive start to the week and you have made amazing progress on your Recipe Project. For your blog this week, please use the paint app to take a screenshot of your final Gogle Document and post the image at the top of your blog. A reminder - to post your google document as an image you will need to:

Instructions for how to post your Document as an image on your blog.

• Complete your assignment and review to make sure it is complete 
• Select the "prt sc" button on the upper right of the keyboard 
• Open the "Paint" App. You can find this by typing "paint" into the field in the bottom left where it says "search the web and windows" 
• Hold down "ctrl + v" on your keyboard to paste the image you just captured 
• Save the image to your desktop 
• Post the image on your blog 

It is very important that your final document in Google Drive is only 1 page max!

Please respond to the following questions after posting the image on your blog.

• Explain the assignment in your own word for the person who may be viewing this assignment. 
• What were you expected to do to successfully complete this assignment? 
• What were 3 different tools (or more if you want to be extra thorough) that you had to work with in Google Docs to successfully complete this project? 
• What did you enjoy about this project? What was challenging? Did you enjoy working with your partner or would you have preferred to work alone? 

For the time being, once done with all of the above, you may use any additional time before we move on to complete homework or classwork for another class or work on something quietly at your own computer!!

Thanks and looking forward to a great block day and seeing some amazing recipes!

Fundraiser Ideas

Good Morning! Today we are going to work towards completing our first assignment of the year! To leave in good standing today, be sure you have completed the following:

• Complete our first Google Apps assignment - Creating & Sharing a File in Google Drive
• Complete this blog post: Your blog for today requires you to post the image of your fundraiser ideas document. To do this, you will have to take a screenshot of your document. See below for instructions for how to complete thisAfter you have posted the image at the top of your blog, give your blog an appropriate title and respond to these questions: 
• What did you think of this first assignment using and sharing google docs? What was easy for you? Were there any challenges you faced? What did you enjoy about the project? 
• Name three things you learned while completing this project. If you already were familiar with the skills taught, then describe what was reinforced for you by completing the assignment. 
• Lastly, discuss a variety of ways (3 minimum) that you could use this technology as a student, as an adult in the working world, or that others around you could benefit from knowing how to use google docs and have the ability to access the work anywhere and/or share it with anybody!
• Please also make sure you have completed your first lesson in edutyping - "Home Row, Space Bar, and Enter Keys."

Thanks and have a great 2nd day of school.

Instructions for how to post your Document as an image on your blog.

1. Complete your assignment and review to make sure it is complete
2. Select the "prt sc" button on the upper right of the keyboard
3. Open the "Paint" App.  You can find this by typing "paint" into the field in the bottom left where it says "search the web and windows"
4. Hold down "ctrl + v" on your keyboard to paste the image you just captured
5. Save the image to your desktop
6. Post the image on your blog

Back to School

Good Morning and Welcome back to M-A! SOPHOMORES!!  This place is looking a little different than it did when we left in June!! Today we are going to begin our year long blog. This blog will not only provide a good opportunity to use technology, but is a great way to track our course throughout the year, your thoughts on a variety of issues and general information and, well, just a fun opportunity to learn about each other. Each day we will begin with a new topic. Your blog will consist of your opinions, information and more and will be updated (typically) 4 times each week. For today the question is simple. 

• How did you prepare for the first day of school? 
• Did your preparations begin just today? This morning? Perhaps it began a week ago. 
• How do you feel today as school begins. 
• What are some things you are hoping to achieve this school year? Even though it's August, this isn't a terrible time to establish an academic new years resolution. 

With each blog post, you are required to include one picture that represents your post. Obviously, given that today is our first post I will be going over just how you can do this!

Welcome Back!! I am excited for a great 2015-2016 School Year!

Agenda for today:

• Log onto your computer
• Log into Google Account and access Blogger (http://compapps1617.blogspot.com/)
• Register for Edutyping @ edutyping.com - license id - menloa46
• Username is Student ID
• Temp Password is 123456
• Register for Google Classroom
• Review Syllabus
• Begin Assignment #1 - Creating and Sharing a File in Google Docs