Week 24

Welcome to Week 24 of Keyboarding!

Great job everyone on last week's Keyboarding Benchmark #3! I'm really proud of how everyone is making an effort to relax, and slow down while typing so that you are able to perfect your keyboarding technique and increase your speed and accuracy. I know that I will be awarding many well-deserved A's and B's at the end of this semester! Remember, you should be finished with lesson 16 by Friday to keep up with the class.

You are now ready to begin your second semester graphic art project, your self-portrait. You will begin this project by taking your photograph with the built-in camera on your computer. Using the Photo Booth application on your iMac, take a photograph of yourself. Drag this photo to your desktop so that you are able to find it quickly. You will use this photograph of yourself as your model for your self-portrait graphic art project. For complete details of the project, grading rubric, and a review of how to use graphic art software, we will visit the link to the self-portrait graphic art project below.

This week you will:

• continue your Keyboarding Online lessons
• begin your self-portrait graphic art project
  

In your student agenda, please write down your Week 24 Learning Objective:
We will begin our self-portrait graphic art project.

Ms. Kline's Week 24 Key Vocabulary:

• assistance

Week 23

Welcome to Week 23 of Keyboarding!

We've had a lot of fun so far this semester. We've begun our new, more challenging keyboarding lessons, and learned about copyright and fair use and how to legally and ethically use resources we find on the Internet by visiting the websites creativecommons.org and jamendo.com to find resources.

Now that you have spent an entire semester learning the basics about keyboarding, you will concentrate on perfecting your form so that you can increase your keyboarding speed. This semester, slow down and concentrate on proper keyboarding body position and technique. You will find that as you slow down and perfect your technique, you will actually begin to type faster, because you will be more fluid while typing, and you will make fewer errors while you type!

This week you will:

• continue our Keyboarding Online lessons
• take our Keyboarding Benchmark 3 exam

In your student agenda, please write down your Week 23 Learning Objective:
We will take our Keyboarding Benchmark 3 exam.

Ms. Kline's Week 23 Key Vocabulary:

• responsibility
• flexibility

Week 22

Welcome to Week 22 of Keyboarding!

What a fun way to begin a new semester, with an awards ceremony and treats! Great job starting on the new lessons, I can see that everyone is going to be very successful this semester!

This week will be very interesting. In addition to continuing our keyboarding lessons, we will explore two websites that will help us to find music and artwork that we can download and use legally and ethically in our own projects!

This week you will:

• learn about copyright and fair use
• learn how to legally and ethically use resources you find on the Internet
• visit creativecommons.org and jamendo.com to find resources
  
• continue your Keyboarding Online lessons

In your student agenda, please write down your Week 22 Learning Objective:
We will learn about copyright & fair use of Internet resources.

Ms. Kline's Week 22 Key Vocabulary:

• effectively
• efficiently
  

Tech Tip Tuesday - Add a Folder or Application Icon to the Dock

For today's Tech Tip Tuesday, you will learn how to add a folder or application shortcut to the dock on a Mac running OSX.

Many times I am told by students or teachers, in a very distressed voice, that they have lost their applications and documents because these folders have disappeared from the dock.

Never fear! The dock is a place for your shortcuts. It is easy to accidentally remove these shortcuts when you click on an icon, and accidentally drag it from the dock. It is just as easy to add the items back to the dock.

To remedy this situation, open the Finder window by clicking on the finder icon in the dock:
To replace the Applications folder:

1. Select the Macintosh HD on the left side of the finder window
   
2. Drag the Applications folder back to the dock, on the right side of the dashed line

To replace the Documents folder:

1. Select your user name on the left side of the finder window
2. Drag the Documents folder back to the dock, on the right side of the dashed line

To add other application shortcut icons to the dock:

1. Open the application
2. Control+click on the icon
3. Select "Options"
4. Drag to "Keep in Dock"
5. Click on "Keep in Dock"

To remove icons from the dock:

1. Click and hold the icon
2. Drag the icon above the dock
3. Let go of the icon
4. The icon dramatically disappears in a puff of cartoon smoke!

Week 21

Welcome to Week 21 of Keyboarding!

What a wonderful treat it was to see everyone present a graphic art project to the class. It was very clear that you worked very hard on these projects. Well done!

Today we will be holding our classroom awards ceremony. Each class will honor the top five students based on their keyboarding skill. These five students will each receive a special prize. Three additional students will be chosen at random using Ms. Kline's station number tokens. These three lucky students will also receive a special prize, regardless of their grade in the class. Everyone in the class will receive cookies to celebrate a very successful 1st semester...yay!

Don't forget to check the "Wall of Fame" for your name. What part of the WPM (Words Per Minute) target did you hit?

• 15-19
• 20-24
• 25-29
• 30+

If you reached 35 words per minute or higher, you are on the "Top Keyboarding Students" list. These students have reached very high speeds. Our top student, Kevin H., is typing at 75WPM, amazing!

This week you will:

• Begin your lessons 12-33 in Keyboarding Online, in earnest

In your student agenda, please write down your Week 21 Learning Objective:
We will increase our keyboarding speed and accuracy.

Ms. Kline's Week 21 Key Vocabulary:

• hardware