Year 11 Wednesday 25th March

Hi everyone,

Sorry I can't be there on Wednesday. Here is you work to carry on with:

1. Complete your PowerPoint presentation (on the past, present and future of either cell phone, game system or computer) from yesterday.
2. Check that your presentation demonstrates good design.
3. Post a new blog post (by going to www.cashmere.moodle.ac.nz, logging in and clicking on your user name), attaching your presentation and explaining the good design features you have chosen to use.
4. Start Internet research on your choice of cell phones, game systems or computers. Record sources of information and look for key events and dates that show how the technology has changed over time. Record in a Word document.

Year 10 Wednesday 25th March

Hi everyone,

Sorry I can't be there tomorrow.
Here are your instructions to start on: Find file in iNet - ICT - Collections - DigiTech Booklet Collection and save it in your own home drive (H:).

1. On page 1, fill in your name and form class
2. On page 2, fill in the name of the person whose collection you are doing your project on, describe their collection in as much detail as possible, identify your stakeholders and say how they will be affected
3. On page 3, fill in what questions you need to ask your stakeholders and decide how you will ask them - you may print a one page survey, or email your questions. Do some research on similar collections and record your results.
4. On page 4, fill in what your stakeholders would like in their ideal solution.
5. On page 5, fill in the problem statement, describing your main stakeholder’s problem; under constraints, fill in due date = Thursday 9th April, solution must be on my page of the wiki ; under attributes, describe the special features of your planned solution; under resources, describe what you will need to solve the problem.
6. On page 6, think about something you have planned recently and answer the questions.
7. On page 7, write a list of all the steps you will need to take to solve the problem. Then make sure they are in a sensible order. Split up the jobs so that you know when each is to be done, remembering the due date
8. Use page 8 and 9 to plan your wiki page and any other Internet resources you will use. Add extra pages if you need to.
9. Make your wiki page and other Internet resources.
10. Link your page to and from other parts of the wiki
11. Contribute to other people’s wiki pages
12. Finally, evaluate your solution on page 10 of the booklet.
13. Print out your booklet front page and hand in.

Stakeholders

The word "stakeholders" refers to all the people (or groups of people) who are affected by a problem, an issue or a solution.

Clicke here to practise identifying stakeholders and thinking about how they are affected.

A story

A monstrous shark appeared at Sumner and attacked a surfer.
People of Christchurch were scared.
The lifeguards sent out their boat with stunguns to scare off the shark.
They chased the shark and stunned it, then collected it in a net and drag it into the beach.
Everyone on the beach crowded around to see the shark and congratulate the brave lifesavers.

Post script:
The shark was taken to Lyttelton to be sent to the Chatham Islands for release.

Publishing Your Web Site

You can publish your web site by following these instructions:

1. Make sure that your web site is working correctly inside a folder
2. Right click on the folder and Send To --> Compressed folder
3. Go to home.cashmere.school.nz/mydesktop and log in
4. Under Home Pages, click on Page Uploader
5. Browse to find your compressed folder, click to Uncompress the file, and Upload
6. Click on the name of the folder and then on your main page to view it and find the URL

Note that none of your file names are allowed to have spaces or punctuation in them.

Software

Use the Internet and your brain to help you answer the following questions about software.

1. Find a definition of software - copy and paste and say where your definition came from
2. Explain what software is in your own words.
3. Make a list of different types of software.
4. For each type of software you listed in the last question, give an example.
5. Use Start -> All Programs on your computer to add to your list of types and examples. You may choose to set it out using a table.

For example, an Internet browser is a type of software. An example of an Internet browser is Internet Explorer.

Links that may be helpful are:

• Webopedia
• Software applications
• System software

Setting up a blog

To set up your blog you need to:

1. Go to www.blogger.com
2. Click on Create A Blog
3. Enter your email address (username@cashmere.school.nz)
4. And repeat step 3
5. Enter a password and MAKE SURE YOU REMEMBER IT!
6. And repeat step 5
7. Enter your first name
8. Type the letters you see
9. You may need to repeat steps 5-8 until it works.
10. Enter the title of your blog eg "Jane's Blog"
11. Enter the URL or address you would like for your blog - you may need to try different options if your choice if name has been used.

Web 2

What is Web 2?

Questions to answer - either in your blog or by eail to fy@cashmere.school.nz if you cannot access your blog.

1. What is Web 2?
2. Give some examples of Web 2, and explain the purpose of each one.
3. What is a wiki?
4. How are blogs and wikis the same? How are they different?
5. Who writes wikipedia? Do you think you can trust it? Why/why not?
6. What is Flickr useful for?
7. What is delicious?
8. If you have time, experiment with igoogle or netvibes and report on what you do.

Hardware

Computers need hardware!

Questions to answer in your own blog:

• Why do computers need hardware?
• Find a definition of hardware - copy it and say where the definition came from.
• Explain the difference between hardware and software in your own words.
• Hardware can be split into four sorts: input, output, processing and storage. Give an example of each sort of hardware.
• What special hardware do networks need?
• What hardware is used by other sorts of DigiTech?
• Take a photo - not of a person - with a webcam or digital camera. Add the photo to your blog post or your user profile (go to dashboard to edit your profile).
• Record your voice using your headset. Email this file and your blog URL to your teacher fy@cashmere.school.nz
• If you have time: use Photostory 3 to make a video clip and add it to your blog post.

Accessing school email from home

To access school email from home, go to home.cashmere.school.nz/mymail

Answer these questions in your own blog:

• What is CC? What is BCC?
• How do you attach a file in CHS Mail?
• What formatting options do you have in CHS Mail?
• How can you make folders and move emails into them?
• What is the draft folder for?
• How do you add friends to the address book in CHS Mail?

Year 10 DigiTech Blogs

Last Friday, my Year 10 DigiTech class made blogs.
They can be found by clicking here:

• Scott
• MrDuck
• Ami
• Kate
• Hayden
• Atanisha
• Jesse
• Ashleigh
• Ashley
• Jonty
• Emma
• Katrina
• Jack
• Nikita
• Jonathan
• Michael H
  
• Oliver
• Jackie
• Harley
• Josh
• Kira
  

Actv8 Activities

Choose one or more of the following activities to do.

Digital technologies

1. List all the examples of digital technologies that you can find in the magazine.
2. Choose one example from your list and research its history, uses and future.
3. Make a poster about this piece of digital technology.

DigiTech careers

1. List all the careers involving DigiTech that you can find in the magazine.
2. Choose one career from your list and research the qualifications needed, the pay rates and what people do in this job. You might find this web site helpful.
3. Make a poster (or presentation, or web site) about this career.

Competitions

1. Make a table for each competition in the magazine, showing what the prize is and what you have to do to enter.
2. Decide which competition is the hardest, the easiest and the most fun.
3. Have a look on the Actv8 web site and see if there are any current competitions you could enter.
4. Pick one competition and work on an entry for it.

Further Studies

1. Make a list of all the places you could study and all the scholarships you could apply for.
2. Choose one of the places to study and find out more about it.
3. Present the information you found in a way that you can then share with the class.

Articles

1. Pick an article that interests you.
2. Summarise its content.
3. Analyse its layout and presentation.
4. List further questions that you would like to ask about the content.

Actv8 Magazine Acitivities

I am creating student activities based around the Actv8 magazine which we get boxes of at school every now and then. Thinking that there is a lot of learning to be done in each issue, I have written some tasks to choose from. Normally, I would type them up in Word and store them somewhere on my computer, and then have trouble finding them. I thought that tagging my files would be helpful, and then thought I could do that on my blog. The downside is that the tasks will be unavailable when the network is down, which is partly why I was writing them in the first place! So this solution to my problem is only a partial solution.

Homesick Creek

By Diane Hammond 2005

ISBN 0-385-50944-8

This is a five star book.

Themes of love, family, friendship, faithfulness, privilege and parenting are treated in a very sensitive fashion.

The plot is skilfully unfolded with layers of complexity unfolding gently without any sense of being rushed or any of the confusion that can occur when a story is written in a non-sequential manner.

Sections I particularly enjoyed:

“Bunny had got out of the habit of leaving town. There wasn’t anything beyond Hubbard that she really wanted. She wanted Vinny to give her grandchildren and be around to care for her when she got old. She wanted to have enough money for a new deck and decent wallpaper in the bathroom and a washing machine that didn’t walk around during the spin cycle. She wanted to have a wine cooler with her mother, Shirl, in the afternoon sometimes and to get on a later shift at the Anchor. She wanted to be the wife of someone who planned to stick around. Those weren’t the kinds of things you could get over in Sawyer.” Page 17

“…four months ago she had found a rat in the toilet. The property manager had told her just to put something heavy on the toilet lid and give it an hour. That was when Anita knew she might as well stop waiting for her real life to begin, the life that included a nice yard and a man who could maintain it. This was her real life, right here, right now, waiting in a piece-of-shit dump for a rat to die in her toilet.” Page 42

“You know what you end up asking yourself?” Fanny said. “How little can I live with? You ask yourself how little can I live with, and how much do I need. And the answer keeps getting smaller, and your marriage keeps shrinking. In the beginning it fits fine, you know, roomy enough to keep you warm, and you can move all around in it. Then you have the kids, and when your husband stay away from you, you’re mostly glad, because They just get in the way, and who gives a shit about sex when you haven’t had two minutes to yourself in five years? And all that time your marriage is getting smaller and smaller, except you don’t notice because it hasn’t occurred to you to notice, and why should you? You just pull it down and stretch it out, and if you feel a draft now and then, you ignore it because you don’t have time to deal with ti anyway. By the time you do, your marriage is this little tiny thing that doesn’t cover shit and you’re freezing to death out there in the cold.”

The Dirty Dollar

by Gerald Hammond (2002)
ISBN 0-7278-5842-4

This was a feel-good book about a young woman who went from rags to riches via a stint of swimming for a life in the midst of the Florida Everglades, complete with crocodiles in mid-breeding season. A non-challenging but satisfying read, with a strong main character who had what it took to grab life with both hands.

Seduced by Moonlight

by Laurell Hamilton 2004
ISBN 0-345-44356-X

This one surprised me and I nearly gave up. Trying to get my head around the Seelie and the Unseelie, sidhe, mortals, fays and hybrids, Kings, Queens, Princes and goblins and starting part way through a series was not a good idea. However I persevered and enjoyed some of the lyrical descriptions of wings, eyes and other body parts.
From a review by Alisa McCune it appears that this is not the best of the series so perhaps I should follow up on the earlier ones. However two of my requested books arrived at the library yesterday and will keep me busy added to term starting again on Monday.

Sugar Skull

by Denise Hamilton 2003
ISBN 0-7432-4539-3

Sugar skulls - I knew nothing, but now I do.
The past history of Eve Diamond and Silvio was also new to me.
It is weird reading a series backwards, at times it seems pointless when you know what is going to happen next, but it does fill in the background.
I finished reading this two weeks ago at PPTA Conference in Auckland, and can't remember much about it, but I did learn stuff, and I did enjoy it, and now it is due back to the library. It is much easier to write about books when they are fresh in your head!
I marked some pages but am a bit vague about why now.

1. On page 23, Eve writes "I felt acutely aware of my own dishabille." Is that spelled right? Having now researched it I see that is in fact correct, although it comes from the French déshabillé which is why I was confused, I guess. (I studied French all my time at high school.)
2. On page 47, Eve is avoiding police on a hillside and peeking into a cabana through windows that open onto a bathroom. She sees through the bathroom to a bedroom and observes "a man's black Speedo racing suit crumpled" at the foot of the bed. It strikes me as unlikely that anyone could be so sure about this observation in these circumstances.

New resolutions: to make notes about each book as I finish it, even if I don't have the Internet on tap, and to write pencil notes on pages that I mark.

Renfield Slave of Dracula

by Barbara Hambly 2006
ISBN 0-425-21168-1

Renfield is mad and he eats flies and spiders to maintain his strength.
This book is a "re-imagining of Bram Stoker's classic novel - told from the point of view of Renfield himself - exploring the chilling circumstances of his madness, his devotion to the Vampire Prince, and the mortal fear that feeds his need for revenge." As Dave Roy says at the start of his review, having not read the original Dracula made me wonder whether Renfield would make any sense. I suppose there are subtleties that I missed because of this lack of preparation, but I still found the book intriguing.
I loved the fly-spider theme as it developed from page 1 (20 May: 7 flies, 3 spiders) onwards.

Red herring: "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly. I don't know why she swallowed a fly. I think she'll die!" - see a delightful animation of this children's song.

And an explanation: I am not reading these books as fast I am posting comments on them - I have a pile that I have read and not recorded that I need to process before they are overdue.

Adverbs

By Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) 2006
ISBN 978-0-06-072441-2

A weird concept this, with separate vignettes about people who may or may not be the same people. After all, sharing a name does not make two people identical! There is also an on-going thread of song lyrics, taxis, volcanoes, and birds (especially magpies). Having read a section in Creative Journal Writing by Stephanie Dowrick yesterday on free association, this book serves to illustrate the concept in an intriguing fashion.

A quote to explain the title:
"It is not the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are none."
Each chapter has an adverb as its title, descriptive of the particular love story. Reminiscent of Love Actually, but less soppy.

Wet Grave

By Barbara Hambly (2002)

ISBN 0-553-10935-9

This “novel of suspense” is another instalment in the life of Benjamin January. Sequentially, the first few pages precede and the bulk of the story follows A Free Man of Color. Tales of piracy and hurricanes, of love and slavery, of treasure and illness, of mosquitoes and alligators, of fire and flood – a good holiday read. Characters also sympathetically described, and relationships drawn with a fine brush. As a teacher, I enjoyed my first meeting with Rose Vitrac, who tutored Artois and encouraged his pursuit of understanding of scientific principles.