Mr. Boulanger, Computer Teacher

This is Jane McGonigal explaining how the skills learnt while playing video games can help you fix bigger problems in real life:

The three games which according to her will change the world are:

Evoke – http://www.urgentevoke.com/

World without oil – http://www.worldwithoutoil.org/start.aspx

SuperStruct – http://www.superstructgame.org/

Here is the list of blogs that my students in the High School PC Elective have created:

http://kaps1221.wordpress.com / Kapil

http://taraboye.wordpress.com / Tara

http://sanchit1992.wordpress.com Sanchit

http://lukeaben92.wordpress.com / Luke

http://jonathanschrier.wordpress.com Jonathan

http://fish0jens.wordpress.com / Jens

http://susu11.wordpress.com / Soraya

http://stefhg.wordpress.com / Stefania

http://colinengels.wordpress.com / Colin

http://yasserk.wordpress.com/ Yasser

Note that some of these blogs are shared with Mr. Tur’s spanish class!

Based on Still-life with Peaches painting (2004) by Russian artist Gribennikov, the 8th grade students created their own nature morte with Photoshop.The most still lives are from Annelies, Yasmine, Puneet and Tyler

Nature Morte by Gribennikov (2004) – the original

Natures Mortes by Annelies, Yasmine, Puneet and Tyler (2009)

[lesson plan = 2 classes]

Nature morte or still-life: Type of work in which an arrangement of diverse inanimate objects, including items of food (especially fruit and game), plants and artefacts is depicted. This arrangement is often apparently random and is usually within a domestic setting. The form is normally associated with oil painting, but other media have been used, including mosaics, watercolour, collage and photography. Despite the existence of still-life subjects in pre-Classical, Classical and Renaissance art, the form was recognized as a distinct genre only in the 17th century, when it reached the height of its popularity in western Europe, especially the Netherlands (where many of the conventions of Renaissance and Baroque still-life painting originated), France, Spain and Italy. (from the art encyclopedia at answers.com)

Harshita did a great job setting up her timeline on the web 2.0 website TimeRime.com. She has mapped 14 items to highlight the birth and development of the Internet.

[lesson plan = 2 periods]

For this lesson plan, 10th grade students are turning argumentative and creative to convince their parents of the benefits of staying on the Internet all night long. Designing a convincing outline with Word 2007 SmartArt was a snap and Dewi did it the best as you can see below:

[lesson plan = 1 period]

For this introductory lesson to the free 3D modeling program Google SketchUp, the students had to design a 3D flower involving pistil, stem, leaves and of course petals. The best results are from Andreina, Nicolai and Sameer.

[lesson plan = 1 period]

I received some excellent submission from our earth day assignment using the online comic creation tool Pixton but none as glorious and humorous as Camille’s:

[lesson plan = 1 class period]

My 6th graders torn through the picture of this innocent iguana using one of the following online photo editing websites: www.lunapic.com, www.fotoflexer.com, and www.picnik.com. I highly recommend them if you want to have as much fun as they did doing these:

[project length = 1 period]

After learning about the obsolescence of our qwerty keyboards, students were asked to layout their own ideal keyboard. these were created in word with tables and shading. These are from Gaurav and Himangui

[lesson plan = 1 period]

These phantasmagorical fractal designs have been created from scratch by the apt students of my high school computer elective. Starting from a circular pattern, they amplified the original on a gradient background. A beautiful rendering one of the rare occasions when I display the work of every single student in the class:

[project length = 4 periods]

The two samples below are from Javesh (11) and Amaris (12) and illustrate the great work they did for our instructional wikis. Step by step, with illustrations, you will learn how to customize your Windows start menu and how to write a research paper.

[project length = 2 & 4 periods]

Are you planning something for 2009? Are you afraid to miss someone’s birthday this year? Here are the calendars you need to help you get organized. These have been created with Publisher 2007 and turned into webpages by the ISC 7th graders. They include birthdays and also mark all the vacations for 2009.

7A

• Collin
• Gaurav
• Georgie
• Gijs
• Lynn
• Morgan
  
• Sophia
• Dheeraj
• Tyler
• Wael
• Debbie
• Dimitri

7B

• Chris
• Conor
• Dimitri
• Donovan
• Juan
• Marco
• Mateo
• Paola
• Pavan
• Prateeksha
• Angel

7th grader Collin did a fantastic job trying to convince his parents to buy him a new computer in this writing assignment. The following is a screenshot of his persuasive blog entry:

[project length = 1 period]

These fabulous trees representing the structure of the US Library of Congress website have been drawn with Paint (would you believe it?) by Rachel, Yasmine, Bernice, and Kevin. Great workfrom these four 8th graders.

[Project length = 2 periods]

These frightening Halloween posters were created by my diligent ghouls from 6th grade.

[Project length= 1 class period]

Today you can admire the artistic works of Soraya, Morgan, and Camille from grade 7 and Annick, Claire, and Isabel from Grade 8. This name tag assignment completed using PowerPoint 2007 also includes psychological results from the Big 5 personality test.

[lesson plan = 1 period]

In this assignment, 8th graders had to translate one point of the syllabus into a one-slide image based explanation. The creativity of Namrata and Chiara both landed them on this online portfolio.

A car won’t make you cooler, but being able to design a logo in Photoshop is a great skill to have. 8th graders test their mouse pad with this logo reproduced with multiple layers and layer styles. Sandhya and Stephanie’s work are showcased here:

[Project length = 2 class periods]

More extra credit work by Dimitry in Photoshop

In this assignment, students exploit their addiction to the game Desktop Tower Defense v1.5 and create a strategy to get high scores. This is achieved in Microsoft Excel and demonstrates the capabilities of the students to use the program to create maps and grids with keys. Our top strategists are Katinka and Michelle:

[Project length = 2 class periods]