Sun West Computer & Digital Technologies Middle Years 6-9 Guidebook - please use the table of contents to navigate this guidebook. Also, we invite you to share resources you think would be suitable for this guidebook with any of the author's of this guidebook.

In an effort to incorporate Blended Learning Strategies into my PAA 6/7 class I investigated multiple interface options including Moodle and Class Notebook. After consulting the Technology Coaches, a decision was made to use OneNote Class Notebook, as the grade 6/7 class had just been introduced to their Sun West email and having one access location was ideal. OneNote is an extension of the Sun West email and thus could be accessed from anywhere. In addition, OneNote Class Notebook allows me to see all student work. Students only have access to their own work and work in the shared workspaces. Google Sketchup was used as the CAD program. This program is available for free download, thus students could have the program at home.

Today we start a three episode arc on the rise of a global telecommunications network that changed the world forever. We’re going to begin with computer networks, and how they grew from small groups of connected computers on LAN networks to eventually larger worldwide networks like the ARPANET and even the Internet we know today. We'll also discuss how many technologies like Ethernet, MAC addresses, IP Addresses, packet switching, network switches, and TCP/IP were implemented to new problems as our computers became ever-increasingly connected. Next week we’ll talk about the Internet, and the week after the World Wide Web!

Today we’re going to talk about how computers see. We’ve long known that our digital cameras and smartphones can take incredibly detailed images, but taking pictures is not quite the same thing. For the past half-century, computer scientists have been working to help our computing devices understand the imagery they capture, leading to advancements everywhere, from tracking hands and whole bodies, biometrics to unlock our phones, and eventually giving autonomous cars the ability to understand their surroundings.

This site provides lessons developed to help students understand the Inuit culture.
Lesson 1
- Lesson Question: How do Inuit on Baffin Island live, and how does Arctic life resemble and differ from ours?
Lesson 2
- Lesson Question: What can Inuit life on Baffin Island teach us?
Lesson 3-4
- Lesson Question: How does a short book about the Arctic (such as Michael Arvaarluk Kusugak's NORTHERN LIGHTS: THE SOCCER TRAILS or his BASEBALL BATS FOR CHRISTMAS, both from Annick Press, Buffalo, NY) illustrate Inuit life, social interaction, and environments?
Lesson 5
- Lesson Question: How does Inuit culture reflect beliefs, issues, and events relevant to societies past and present?
Lesson 6
- Lesson Question: How does Inuit culture compare to my own culture?

Today we’re going to talk about confidence intervals. Confidence intervals allow us to quantify our uncertainty, by allowing us to define a range of values for our predictions and assigning a likelihood that something falls within that range. And confidence intervals come up a lot like when you get delivery windows for packages, during elections when pollsters cite margin of errors, and we use them instinctively in everyday decisions. But confidence intervals also demonstrate the tradeoff of accuracy for precision - the greater our confidence, usually the less useful our range.

In which John Green teaches you about conflict in Israel and Palestine. This conflict is often cast as a long-term beef going back thousands of years, and rooted in a clash between religions. Well, that's not quite true. What is true is that the conflict is immensely complicated, and just about everyone in the world has an opinion about it. John is going to try to get the facts across in under 13 minutes.

A variety of student activities and teacher resources for using the concept of 'making connections' as a reading strategy.

Ideas for integrating food into the classroom from guest blogger Sarah Anderson.
*Making personal placemats
*Narrative Writing
*Research Paper
*Mapping Foods
*Podcasts

Students in grades 4-6 engage in a series of activities (both inside and outside the classroom) designed to inspire a sense of environmental stewardship. Each of the activities is intended to have children explore their profound connection to nature and experience the power of individual and collective action.

Students explore the daily choices, they, their families, their school and their communities make; the impact of those choices on nature; and the role they and others may take in protecting nature.

The activities are fun, hands-on, and thought provoking. Students have opportunities to share what they are learning with their fellow students, family, and community and to create their own “class foundation” to collectively act on their concerns and passions.

The resource consists of 16 cross-curricular lessons on a range of issues from which teachers may select according to the dictates of their time and curriculum.

Using a "Thirty-Second Look" activity, students will look closely at and describe the painting A Centennial of Independence. The students will read their ideas and note line, shape, and other details. Then students will create a favorite outdoor memory inspired by the painting, using crayons and the elements of art to guide their work. They will also make connections to the theme of "teamwork."

Directions for this age old strategy game that gets your students thinking creatively and critically:

With your friend(s) take turns making line segments to connect the dots. When you can complete a square, put your initial inside it. The winner is the person with the most initialed squares.

Hank wraps up the Crash Course on ecology by taking a look at the growing fields of conservation biology and restoration ecology, which use all the kung fu moves we've learned about in the past eleven weeks and apply them to protecting ecosystems and to cleaning up the messes that we've already made.

A list of things you should consider when planning for your students, including: learner profiles, elements of PeBL, curricular expectations, strategies, communications, assessments.

This form of painting became popular during the Cultural Revolution in China (1966-1976). Images depicting people's every day lives became a natural focus under the regime of Chairman Mao. Artists in places like Hu County in Shaanxi Province (near Xi'an), where these painting were made, were discovered and became popular. This particular series of Peasant Paintings, by a mature, female artist named Dong, were done in a studio production method.The peasant paintings depict festivals and daily routines: preparing food, doing laundry, traditional parades (lanterns, dragons), animals and fish. Some tell stories with symbolism. This curriculum resource will provide potential lesson topics and areas of discovery and a set of images for teachers of art, Chinese culture & history at elementary, middle and high school levels. The paintings may serve as supplementary visuals for K-8 teachers of science, and geography.

This assignment is based on an integration of current events with an examination of indigenous cultures in North America. There are two final products involved – a presentation and a fullclass discussion.

Students will focus on how one artist tells the story of Joseph using continuous narrative. By observing and discussing visual details such as color and movement found in the painting, students write about what they think is happening. Students are encouraged to use the actions they observed in the painting to create and write a new story with a new character, and then illustrate them in their own continuous narrative.

This amazing video will clearly explain the PeBL philosophy at Sun West School Division. The who, what, when, where, why and how of PeBL are addressed and articluated clearly for the parent and community audience. Topics include the continuum of learning, transfer of responsibility, personalized learning, the three pillars of PeBL. This resource will clearly explain everything you need to know to get started embracing PeBL at home!

This graphic addresses the considerations (where, when, who, how, what and why) of PeBL, as well as the learning environment and the transfer of responsibility.