Week of February 29 - March 4, 2016

Tuesday HW
1.  Literature Circles reading and note-taking for Thursday meeting.
2.  Math quiz on Wednesday March 2 -- Unit 4, Lessons 4, 6 and 7. (Rounding, Adding and Subtracting Decimals)
3.  Finish your rough draft for a formal letter to the editor of a newspaper about conserving energy.  We have introduced the formal letter format in class, students have a printed note with the characteristics of formal letters, and we brainstormed the structure and subject matter of the paragraphs in class yesterday and today.  We also had more than 20 minutes in class to work on the draft.  Students can make up the name of the editor and the newspaper.  These are less important details.  The main thrust is to follow semi-block style and to come up with real ideas to pitch to the editor.  The rough copy should appear in the Science booklet.  The good copy will be typed in class using Google Docs.
3.  Log on to aw.tdsb.on.ca.  Visit Google Drive and open the "Shared With Me" folder.  Add your comment to the Google Doc titled "Monday HW".  Fourteen students tried it out yesterday.  I encourage families to have a look together and give it a go.  See bottom of post for further information.

Monday HW
1.  Math HW:  MMS Lesson 4.6, pages 52-53 on adding decimals.
2.  Math quiz on Wednesday March 2 -- Unit 4, Lessons 4, 6 and 7. (Rounding, Adding and Subtracting Decimals)
3.  Log on to aw.tdsb.on.ca.  Visit Google Drive and open the "Shared With Me" folder.  Add your comment to the Google Doc titled "Monday HW".  See below for further information.

Today I introduced the Google Apps for Education to our class.  We logged in and opened the Google Drive associated with the email account that the TDSB has already created for students.  the email accounts follow a pattern:  firstname.lastname@student.tdsb.on.ca .  If your child's name is Bart Simpson his school email is bart.simpson@student.tdsb.on.ca which is all in lower case and with no spaces.  This online account will allow us to use Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, Forms and Drawings both individually or collaboratively at school and at home.  The log in instructions take some getting used to.  Bear with us if it doesn't work on the first few tries.  We will learn to endure the process I hope.

We introduced login names and passwords back in November.  At this point in the year I expect students to have memorized their student numbers (which I typed out on stickers for the inside cover of their agendas) and know how to update their unique passwords, which only last 42 days.  We have practiced a simple system to change them each month to ensure that they don't expire.  Password changes or simple forgetting are the single biggest barrier to using this system.  Fixing the problem takes more than 10 minutes which are often not available in class, so it is best that students stay on top on this.

The key gateway is to type aw.tdsb.on.ca into the address bar of the browser, then log in using the login name and password used at school.  From there, students arrive at the AW homepage where they can access the Google Apps -- a button near the top right corner.  Since these are Google products, I imagine that the Chrome browser might work best rather than Explorer, Safari or Firefox.  You are welcome to try any other these based on your comfort level at home.

Two features are really important to know:
a) I can see who has made any comment in this forum.  It is easy to track back to the original poster of any inappropriate remarks.  All student signed an online code of conduct at the beginning of the year and I expect them to abide by it.  If the shared drive is a space for silly remarks the user(s) will be dealt with individually and may be excluded for some, or all, of future online collaboration.
b) I would respectfully ask parents to supervise their child's use of the internet during these times at home.  Responsible digital citizenship isn't learned in one day and must be reinforced with ongoing scrutiny as students learn the values that foster a safe, respectful and useful online community.  Please review these ideas with your children and reinforce the necessity of keeping their account number and password private so that they alone are accessing their accounts under their own names.

I look forward to seeing how much we can use this collaboration space in our class as the year progresses.  We're taking it slow but it shows much promise!