Welcome to Computer and Technology

Second and Third Graders Are Excellent Keyboarders!

The Second and Third Graders are excellent keyboarders. Their fingers are small, but they are FAST! Many of the children are consistently finishing drills with words per minute rates in the mid 20's; that is awesome! By the end of the year, I expect many of them to be approaching 40 wpm.

Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Graders are Learning Important Outlining Skills

In Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Grades, we are outlining chapters from Mr. DuJardin's history books. Outlining skills are critical in high school where the sheer quantity of information that must be assimilated is mind-boggling.

Students with effective and efficient outlining skills will be rewarded in high school and beyond not only with better grades but also with increased free-time. Outlining is an extremely effective method for sifting through long chapters and pages of notes to create a concise representation of the important thoughts and concepts.

Learning the skill of outlining can be difficult: You must have patience, you must put forth effort, and above all, YOU MUST PRACTICE. It is worth the effort!

Learning to Keyboard The Second, Third, and Fourth Graders will spend the vast majority of their time in Computer and Technology this year learning to keyboard. Keyboarding is a gateway skill to most everything the students will learn in this class while at The Anthony School. Unfortunately, keyboarding is not an extremely exciting activity for many of the children. Please encourage them; encouragement is our driving force while we keyboard.	Playing with Flash Animation Why is my child drawing all these stick figures?! We are exploring and experimenting with Flash animation this year. Students are able to bring their illustrations to life through animation. Many of the early projects are simple, but they will grow in complexity as students begin to understand the mechanics required to generate impressive animations.
Outlining! The Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Graders are practicing (and, in some cases, learning) outlining skills. Outlining can be tedious (they let me know this vociferously!), but effective and efficient outlining skills will both increase students' grades and decrease students' study time.	Manipulating Photos with Photoshop We are beginning to manipulate photos using Photoshop. Many of the manipulations, at this point, will be used to further our experiments with Flash animation; however, later in the year, we will begin to manipulate for effect and utility.
What is Paratyper? Only the single most fun way to reinforce our developing keyboarding skills! When we begin a game of Paratyper, an animated transport plane passes overhead and begins to drop parachutists. Each parachutist has a series of letters attached to him. We must type the relevant letters before the plummeting parachutist falls off the screen.	Why are they playing with Photobooth? What's the deal with Photobooth? It's fun! iMacs have iSight cameras built into the monitors. It is an experiment in fun when we play with the cameras and Photobooth. We have used the pictures as backgrounds for our title slides in 'About Me' PowerPoint presentations, and we are experimenting with animating a series of photos taken with Photobooth using Flash.

Mr. Nolen's Computer and Technology Class 2007-2008

Computer and Technology

Helpful Links

Second and Third Graders Are Excellent Keyboarders!

Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Graders are Learning Important Outlining Skills