Students of room 18,

I was glad I had an opportunity to visit your class a couple of weeks ago and share my experience with Scratch and computer programming. All of you accomplished a lot in just a couple of hours. You surprised me with the broad range of projects that you elected to do. I think you can begin to imagine the limitless potential of computer programming. You should spend some time browsing the programs on the scratch website and see how they were written. One of the big attractions of Scratch, aside, from its simplicity, is the collaborative ecosystem that has been developed. You can learn from the scripts others have developed, just as they can learn from you.

I was really overwhelmed by you letters of appreciation. I am pleased to hear that some of you have already created your own scratch accounts. I hope you will upload projects that you create on your own. Add me as a friend on the scratch website and I will look at them and review them. I hope you all have a great summer.

Keep on scratching!

Mr. Becker

Here is the web-page that I created for my presentation.

http://www.geocities.com/barrybecker4/scratch_intro.html

A big thank you to Mr. Becker for working with our class all day!  Mr. Becker joined our class to introduce students to computer programming using MIT’s free software Scratch.

Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create and share Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.

I encourage all students to download the Scratch program, create some games or programs, and then post them to our online gallery.

This link will take you to the page Mr. Becker created for our class.  

Here is a video about Scratch:
 

Click here to view the embedded video.

Learn more about Scratch and how to use it here.

I look forward to seeing everyone’s projects!  I will try to post some pictures and videos this weekend.

I am really excited about introducing our two newest features.  I am pleased to reveal to you two new video sites dedicated just to 37Stars.

The first video site is 37stars.fliggo.com .  This website is another spot where I will upload videos of our students, learning tutorials, and any teacher-made multimedia content.  

This will duplicate the 37stars.blip.tv and YouTube.com  channels I set up earlier.  I like these services, but I like even more the idea that we now have an entire video site dedicated just to our class.  Just like videos on YouTube, you can copy and embed these videos in other websites and blogs.  I have uploaded all the previous videos to this site.  Please check it out and let me know what you think!

I am even more excited about the possibilities of this next site: 37videos.fliggo.com .  

This video site is an online video sharing site just for the students and families of 37Stars. Here are a few of the cool possibilities I have imagined so far:

• Students who create videos for class for projects, now can upload them to our site. 
• Parents who take video of field trips can now upload those clips to share with everyone else on our class.
• Students who take video of field trips can now upload those clips to share with everyone else on our class.
• Students who make videos on their cell phones now may upload these videos to share.

Both of these sites are completed moderated and only people that I approve can upload or comment on videos.  These are great places for our students to learn more about internet safety and internet etiquette.

Do you have videos from a field trip?

Do you have videos from a class project?

Do you have videos that you made on your cell phone?

Have your parents sign you up for an account today and begin uploading your videos!

I hope that you (parents and students) love our website! There is more and more information on it as the year progresses. I thought I would make a quick tour of the website to help you find your way around.

Please select “fullscreen” on the video to really see everything that is going on.
Here is a tour of our class website.

Math Snacks Videos

I found a site full of interesting and helpful math videos.  This site was created by two teachers.  The videos on this site are similar to some of the videos students will make for their science projects and similar to the math videos I would like students to make in our class as well.

The videos on this website are set up as a podcast.  You subscribe to them and as new videos appear they will automatically be updated on your computer.  You can use iTunes or another “pod-catching” application.

Click here to go the “Math Snacks” website.

One great site for pictures is flickr.com.  flickr.com has a way to search for pictures that photographers allow you to use for your work as long as you give them credit.  This is called a Creative Commons Attribution License.

When you go to flickr.com, make sure you do an advanced search. 

Advanced Search on flickr.com

In the Advanced Search, select “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content ”.  

Check these boxes to search only for Creative Commons content

When you select a picture to look at.  Look at the right sidebar and scroll down.  You will see a label that tells you what kind of copyright the picture has.

This label show the copyright information for the photo on this page.

This link takes you to a page with the Creative Commons copyright information that will tell you what you need to do to use this photo.

Read this to find out how to use this picture legally.

By reading the license above you know that as long as you give credit (you attribute the photo to the person you took the picture) you are okay to use this in your project.  If you use these, legal pictures and correctly give credit to the photographers, we will be able to post your videos and slideshows on YouTube.  If you don’t, we can only use the videos and slideshows in our class.

For our science slideshows, you need to identify where in California your biome and ecosystem are and show that information graphically on a map.  I have found a helpful site with lots of different kinds of California maps.  The maps that will be most helpful to you are “outline maps” or the maps with only a black outline of California.  You will be able to add the information you need on the computer.

http://www.netstate.com/states/maps/ca_maps.htm