Posted on May 31st, 2007 by pstinson
Good morning.
Please submit your portfolio assessment sheet to me before the end of period 2 today.
CBC Radio had a caller the other day trying to figure out if he had found a giant moth or butterfly. I sent them a photo from my acreage to show what I had found (click on the thumbnail image to view the full image on the cbc website).
With that out of the way, let the mad rush to squeeze as much learning and knowledge out of the remaining school days as possible begin. Remember, it’s free (for you). And speaking from the perspective of someone who has a major deadline to meet by the end of the day, every moment is valuable, and why oh why didn’t I work on my project in the evenings instead of watching the last season of Gilmour Girls?
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Posted on May 31st, 2007 by pstinson
I have been seeing good progress made on tackling the Spreadsheet tasks put before those done the Word Processing modules. Some of you have gotten very adept at problem solving, seeming very intuitive in finding out how to perform a new task for the first time. Continue noting your critical and constructive responses to the tasks (a secret; this is potentially more important and more valuable than the actual task).
Once you are done with these two modules, you will begin the last section of this course, which will include components of several modules dealing with digital images. Images are also information, so think for a moment how the information processing cycle would apply to these tasks, from creating images to sharing them with others.
IMPORTANT: By the end of Friday, June 1, please finish your preliminary organization of your portfilio, including an index. You will have one other opportunity to submit your portfolio at the end of the course as part of your final grade.
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Posted on May 29th, 2007 by pstinson
I missed you, but that was the best conference I have ever attended. The people I met were inspiring educational leaders, the keynote speeches brought hundreds of people to tears, and the scenery was spectacular.
Here is a summary of the experience, if you are interested. Besides being a good way to reflect on what you have learned, a summary is typically required if you have received funding to attend a professional development experience.
Continue your work on the yearbook pages and online modules. I was pleased to see that most of you have kept up organized portfolios. If you are not feeling happy with where you are at, please see Mr.Stinson before the end of this month.
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Posted on May 17th, 2007 by pstinson
Hey, those of you who were in class last day (track day) saw the picture of the type of moth I found in my yard. It was about the size of my hand! It must have just emerged from its coccoon (which was about the size of my thumb), and it was drying out and flexing its wings to unfold them, just like it describes in this article. The next morning, it was still clinging to its cocoon, but it was joined by a smaller moth with similar patterns (the male?). This also fits with what it says in the article about the female sending out pheremones to attract males at night. The other interesting thing in the article is that it lays eggs for the rest of its life (which is only a week or so, since adults don’t have mouths to eat with!) How’s that for some little known facts?
Now, getting on task…
I am attending an Outdoor Education conference for the rest of this week. I’ll tell you about it when I return, or in the blog if I find any internet access. In the meantime, I need you to know to attend to the following:
- If you are working on a yearbook page layout that can be completed now, please work on this first. This includes badminton, track (upload pictures) and some grad pages (mugs are uploaded already); for the page that matches grads as kids with now, do these need to be scanned from the poster near the office, or are there suitable images in the public drive?)
- Continue the Word or Excel module beta-testing. By Friday, I need you to print out your progress, and organize it in your portfolio to be checked on Monday. If you finish these modules and your feedback (please be specific and constructive with your feedback please), and organizing your portfolio, please take a look at either the Scanning & Design module or the Digital Manipulation module (still in a draft version, but has enough content and links to work with) and begin working with the content.
Take care. I’ll see you (and your portfolios) on Monday. Please be detailed in your log sheets.
-Mr. Stinson
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Posted on May 17th, 2007 by pstinson
The person who is doing the track page layout will need to make arrangements for photos; get some this period as well as over the lunch hour and at the end of the day. Today is your only opportunity to get those memorable shots, so go to it. The rest of us (except for a couple track participants who are responsible for making up the missed time) are in the lab. Make sure the previous assignments are completed, and continue the Word and Excel modules. Make sure to record your progress in your log.
Check on the status of your Wikipedia articles as well; “Leonitis” aka Mosky had a surprise yesterday when “Nlu” (a lawyer in China) apparently blocked him from editing because of vandalism done by someone else on the same IP address. By the end of the same period, Leonitis had responded to Nlu, and access was regained.
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Posted on May 15th, 2007 by pstinson
For today,
1) Make sure you have completed and emailed the OS Assignment
2) Check your Wikipedia article against the Craik RM article, and make sure you have everything you need. Especially check to make sure your links work (and you need to at least include links to the 2006 Census and the SARM websites).
3) Continue beta-testing WORD and EXCEL modules. Continue to arrange your feedback into a document that can be submitted when you are done each module.
4) If you still need to clean a computer, please arrange to do so.
5) Remember to keep updating your log sheets, being specific in naming the activity, and including a measure of work done (eg. number of lines, number of words, numbers of cells, etc). And remember to keep printing out items for your portfolio.
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Posted on May 14th, 2007 by pstinson
Nice progress on the Wikipedia articles.
To me, one of the most interesting aspects of this activity comes from interactions from other editors. Yesterday, one of you (Basketball5) had his article marked to be deleted by an overenthusiastic 19 year old from India fourteen minutes after the last edit, but it was then rescued by an advertising copywriter from Ontario six minutes later who commented “It’s a place, stupid!”
NOTE: That was probably a bit harsh for a person who is contributing as a volunteer, and usually people are a little more polite about these things). Anyway, four minutes later, the 19 year old sent a welcome message to the Basketball5, the creator of the Birch Hills RM article.
ROBOTS! Some of you may see changes made in your history by robots. Although this was foreseen by one of you, robots have not taken over the world yet. These “bots” are programs designed (by volunteers) to make changes to articles automatically (For example, going to articles and automatically removing images that don’t have copyright information included, finding common spelling mistakes, or removing dead links (links to external websites that don’t work).
Please finish your article before the end of the week, and make sure to compare it to the Craik RM article as the basics required.
Today, we are going to begin to explore the wonderful world of OS…
ASSIGNMENT (Quick, skim this!) Then answer the following questions in a Word document and email it to Mr. Stinson. When you are done, continue with the Wikipedia article and then return to beta-testing the Word and Excel modules.
- What part of the computer does the operating system control?
- What is the operating system on a PC? On a Mac?
- Basically, what is the purpose on an operating system (OS)?
- Why does the computer chip in a washing machine or your watch not have an OS?
- What was the original OS for PCs? How was it used in telling a PC what to do?
- Why is Windows called a GUI?
- Why is it recommended that you update Windows regularly (or have it done automatically) if you are hooked up to the internet?
More advanced, but important. Summarize the following in point form (diagrams may help):
- What are the six core tasks of an operating system?
- How does the OS begin working when you turn on a computer?
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Posted on May 14th, 2007 by pstinson
I hope you were especially thoughtful of your mothers on the weekend. This year, my wedding anniversary fell on Mother’s Day, so that called for a nice meal out. Steak, barbequed ribs, no dishes after…
Right. The Wikipedia article writing is looking fine. Progress for RMs 134, 434, 231, 370, 290, 460 has already been posted, as well as 161, 122, 73 and 244. Only 79, 588 and 400 are left.
Once you are logged into Wikipedia, and have uploaded your first attempt at an article, I want you to check out the links at the top right of the page, beginning with “My Contributions”, then “My watchlist”. If you have no articles under “My watchlist”, go back to “My contributions”, click on your article, and then click on “watch” if this has not already been selected.
Let’s leave “Preferences” alone for now. However, if the next two links to the left are blue, click on them and take a look. If they are red, please leave them alone for now as well.
If you feel your article is completed, please do a final check on it by comparing it to Craik No. 222. Also, browse other RM articles to see how yours compares, and for ideas on other relevant information that coudl be included.
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Posted on May 14th, 2007 by pstinson
The comments to the Wikipedia activity we started last week were, how do you say, sparse? Irrelevant in some cases? Nonexistent for some? I’m wondering if either some people were having a bad week, or the activity was not well designed or delivered, or not appropriate to the course.
To sum up the responses of those who commented so far, the activity doese not seem very relevant to a few of you, therefore it does not seem engaging, interesting, practical or useful. Ouch.
It is also a possibility that everything is on track in terms of progressing through a new experience and making sense of it, and this week will put everything in perspective. That’s worth waiting to see, in my opinion.
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Posted on May 8th, 2007 by pstinson
Questions to Think about before beginning:
- Why do people write and edit articles on Wikipedia?
- Who writes articles for Wikipedia (what kinds of people)? Where are they from?
- Why are we creating articles and learning to edit in IP30? And more importantly, what possible benefit can you get from this experience? Here are some ideas.
NOW that you know your assignment (from yesterday, to create a stub article about an RM), let’s use some of the resources that are provided by Wikipedia get a better idea of what is going on. Go to Wikipedia, and select “Questions” from near the top of the screen. Then skim through the sections titled “Welcome”, “Tutorial” and “Cheat Sheet”. An additional source of information is Wikipedia: How to edit a page.
Read what you need to get yourself started.
THEN, if you haven’t done so already, go to an existing RM article, click on “edit”, and then view the code. Copy and paste this into Word. Then replace all content that doesn’t apply with new information that you get from other sources. OR, use the (template currently not working: go to the public drive/IP30 folder) I created to help you out. To see what this template would look like as an article, you can enter parts of it into Wikipedia:sandbox, the place where you are allowed to experiment.
To find out what division your RM is in, try the SARM website (from the main page, click on About Sarm/Members, and then click on one of the 6 division links and see if your RM number is listed). The Saskatchewan Government also provide a map that you can use to find the names of any communities in the RM, as well as the names and numbers of surrounding rural municialities.
For statistical information, try Statistics Canada’s 2006 Community Profile Census site. For other information about the RM of possible, you’ll have to search the internet or other resources.
FINALLY, copy and paste your article into the place where your article will live. Preview before saving, and then fix/update as needed. Once it is saved, you can still edit and change it if you find mistakes or have new information to add to it. Please fill in the edit summary box before saving new changes.
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