Ms. Nancy's Library & Technology Blog

(Photo by Steve Rawley)

It’s Thursday… time for a joke!

What do you get when you cross a snowman with a vampire?

Frostbite.

(Picture by Steve Rawley)

(Photo by Steve Rawley)

It’s Thursday, and you know what that means… It’s time for a joke!

Did you hear about the red pirate ship that ran into the blue pirate ship?

They were marooned.

(Photos by Steve Rawley)

(Photo by Steve Rawley)

Let’s title that photo “What Not To Do At the Beach.”

In addition to our usual… addition (and subtraction, division, times tables…) and all of the other math we do in computer lab, we’ve spent some time this week talking about fall and winter at the Oregon coast and Various Rules We Need to Follow. (A few of us visited the beach over Halloween weekend.)

1) Sneaker waves and riptides — please watch out for them and please be safe!

2) The definition of a “come and go” beach. Just because the sand was there in July when you visited, doesn’t mean it will be there now. So stop, look and listen.

3) The Oregon coast is not the Southern California coast, brrrrrrrrr. Bring a jacket!

Then we played on Google Earth for awhile, and studied some geography facts. Fun. (Updated on 11/10/13 to say: Geography Quest Quiz Day at our school is Nov. 20, 2013. We’re studying Asia, including the following countries:

Level 1: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia and Indonesia
Level 2: China, East Timor, India and Brunei
Level 3: Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Singapore
Level 4: Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Phillipines
Level 5: South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam

Whew! 🙂 Click here for the geography links we recommend.

Geo Quest is funded by our Student-Parent-Teacher Organization, who do so much for our school. Thank you!!!)

Today we discovered a cool programming site from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — Scratch Programming. (My technology teacher friends recommended it.) Pretty fun for the more advanced students, who already knew about it, and pretty fun for the novices like me, too!

Enjoy.

— Ms. Nancy

(Photo by Steve Rawley)

Happy Tuesday, everyone! Leave notes for me in comments if you’d like. (E-mail addresses stay hidden, in case you were wondering.)

Best,

Ms. Nancy

(Photo by Steve Rawley)

Learning: It’s heavenly.

What’s up, my students? How are you? I hope you enjoyed the long weekend. We had fun — we inhaled pounds of candy and went to the beach. Now we are all getting ready for a fast week of school, then another long weekend, playing. Four-day weekends cannot be beat.

This week in Technology we’re working on:

Typing Agent

IXL

Student Source! (The students and Mr. Bundy are receiving national attention for their work.)

Studying geography for the next Geo Quest (check out Lizard Point, Sheppard Software, I Like To Learn and Stack the Countries)

For fun, we always like Hooda Math, Coolmath, ABCya and Starfall.

And… this.

Have a great week, everyone, and enjoy the websites.

— Mrs. Rawley

I’ve linked these here before, but wanted to remind everyone about this cool service from SAG actors.

They’re all good, but I especially love Jane Kaczmarek’s and Esai Morales’ readings. And Robert Guillaume reading “Guji Guji.” ♥

Have a good weekend, everyone!

— Ms. Nancy

(Photo by Steve Rawley)

…with fall just barely started…

(Photo by Steve Rawley)

The Geography Quest at our school this month covered a whole lot of territory… literally. 🙂

Countries studied included: The Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, the U.S., Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica. Virtual travels are a beautiful thing. The kids had fun with the project.

Preview of coming attractions… in October, we tackle several Wonders of the World in a “Continent Challenge” focused on the Middle East and Asia. We will learn about Nemrud Dag, Turkey; the Sacred Mosque of Mecca, Saudi Arabia; Jerusalem, Israel; Cappadocia, Turkey; Babylon, Iraq; and Petra, Jordan. Geography Quest Quiz Day is Oct. 30th, 2013.

Here are a couple of links to help you get started:

I Like to Learn

Sheppard Software/Middle East Geography

Sheppard Software/All About Asia

Also if you like games, look into purchasing Stack the Countries (through iTunes).