Monday, September 30, 2013

Catching up & moving forward...

The last two weeks have been a frenzy...
... we are getting all classes set up & doing basic vocabulary review

  • Desktop
  • Dock
  • Icons

Some quick-key reveiw



  • Command-W - close window
  • Command-Q - quit a program (and how that differs from simply closing a window)
  • Command-N - new window/item
  • Command-S - save

And some basic file management in grades 3-5

  • making folders
  • renaming folders
  • moving previous year's work into new folders
  • ensure pictures are in Pictures folder, documents in Documents folder
  • throwing away unneeded items

In most classes we've opened Word and saved our first document to do a little typing & formatting

In many classes we have been setting up Google Apps accounts. I will be going in to this in more detil this week, but essentially all students will have restricted @ps10.org Google accounts. No, they will not have email. These accounts will primarily be used to create documents & presentations, in Drive, students can work on from home, as well as in school. In addition, they will be able to share work with their teacher, hopefully making it easier than emailing files, using thumb drives, or printing various drafts. These are highly restrictive accounts, and easily customizable. There will be a lot of discussion in class about proper use, digital citizenship, and so forth. As the year progresses some classes will use them for class blogging projects and there may be some "emailing" which will be restricted email, not between students or outside PS 10, but solely between teacher (me or classroom teacher) and student for the purposes of learning basic email techniques and general communication around school projects. There will be a more detailed blog post about the Google Apps accounts shortly.

Thanks!



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