Hour of Code (By Jay )

The Hour of Code is a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify code and show that anybody can learn the basics. At Canyon Creek, students learned all about programming by using certain blocks to make our characters move.

Tynker.com uses games to help students world-wide learn about computer programming. A student in Mrs.Christie’s class,Gabriel, says “It is fun and teaches us all we need to know about programming”. Tynker created educational games about programming so kids, experienced or not, can learn about programming.

Kids across the world, during the week of December 8th-14th, go to websites like http://hourofcode.com to learn about computer programming. It gives students the chance to know if they want to be a computer programmer. Do you?

BrainPop (by Gabriel)

Brainpop was invented for kids in school to learn many things, such as math, history, science, social studies, technology, health, arts and music.

A lot of countries us Brainpop. 25% schools in the United States use Brainpop. As well as Mexico, UK, Israel, France, Spain and several other countries use Brainpop.

The other countries has adapted to the videos by changing English, to their language. If they did not know our language, they would not be able to understand what they were saying.

Brainpop was invented by Avraham Kadar,because he wanted to show mental concepts by using animations.

Teachers and people are using Brainpop to help them learn new subjects, and to show English for kids who don’t speak English, as a second language. Also, it can be used to review a topic before they take a test on that subject.

Brainpop has a lot of awards, such as the 2013 Featured Movie App, The Learning Award, The Learning Magazine Award Of Excellence, and a lot more awards.

We have used Brain Pop a lot  of times to help us learn the European Exploration.

    

Denim Drive Advertisment

The Denim Drive is a sevice project sponsored by the fourth grade.   The students made Powtoons and Blabberize to show on the morning broadcast to announce the event.  The Denim Drive started on October 6th and ends on October 17th.  Watch the videos below for more information.

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Engagement + Learning = NGDC Fun!

Students in Dusti Cerda’s classes are piloting the Galaxy Note as part of the RRISD’s Next Generation Digital Classroom.  So far, they have experimented with logging into the device and trying a variety of activities on the devices during the week.  This student was thrilled to be logged and was using her device to collect data for her Fantasy Football team.  Looks like she got a touchdown! 

These students are playing Kahoot.  Kahoot is a  game-based response system. It provides teachers with  quick formative assessment so they can check for understanding in real time.  It is highly engaging and the kids LOVE it!

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Picture Me with Word Clouds

Fifth graders created word clouds using an internet based program called Tagxedo.  Word clouds are visual depictions of text. These "clouds" give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. The student wrote descriptive words for themselves.  These lists of words and self photos were then transformed into word clouds using Tagxedo.    The descriptive word clouds end up making the shape of their face.

We've Got Mail!

Third graders spent time in the computer lab this week learning about their gmail accounts.  All students in grades 2- 5 have email accounts provided by the RRISD. The students are only able to send and receive email  from RRISD staff.  The students were very excited to sent their teachers emails!

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Next Generation Digital Classroom

Congratulations to Mrs. Cerda who has been selected to pilot the Next Generation Digital Classroom! Through the Next Generation Digital Classroom strategic design and implementation, Round Rock ISD intends to create “incubator classrooms” at each school designed to foster the integration of new teaching and learning with the help of mobile/tablet technology. Mrs. Cerda's class will be piloting the Galaxy Note tablet. We are confident this initiative will greatly benefit our students and keep us moving from a first class to a world class district!
More information about the NGDC can be found here.