Access Your Student Documents From HOME

GOOD NEWS!!

Students can now access documents saved at school, from a home computer!

An example - you start working on a project for LA in the library computer lab at school. When you get home from school you'd like to (maybe even have to!), continue working on your LA project that is saved in your school account in your LA Folder which you created in MY DOCUMENTS. Following the instructions below, from home you will now be able to reach your school computer account and your My Documents/LA Folder...where you saved your work from school. You can open it at home, work on it some more, then save it/"Upload Files" and place the updated document back into My Documents.

INSTRUCTIONS -
Instructions on connecting to your school documents from a home computer can be found on Walsh's main page. Look for the gray menu bar at the top of the pageselect STUDENTS and then My Documents.

If you work on one of your school documents from your home computer and make changes, make sure to use the Upload Files button at the top to put the changed document back in your My Documents folder to be available for you to use the updated version in the future at school.

LINK:
https://docs.framingham.k12.ma.us/

What a HELPFUL new feature!! Thanks to the FPS IT Dept. for making this possible!!!

"Pop Art" Class With Mrs. Kelley

Is that a foot-long Tootsie Roll? Did I see a box of Irish Spring Soap that would fill up your bathtub, and a bag of Hershey's Milk Chocolate that would feed the the whole 7th grade? If you've seen these extra-large items that are on display down in the office lately, you know what I'm talking about! And you can check off on your checklist that you've seen all of these oversized items with the 2 1/2 foot long pencil which is made of papier mache, just like all of the other cool items that Mrs. Kelly's 7th grade classes have just completed!

Hands down THE favorite art project in 7th grade is the POP ART papier mache project.

The students learn about the Pop Art movement of the 1950’s & 60’s, as well as learn about artists such as Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg. Students choose a well-known product that they will then reproduce in class. Because the students select what product they want to replicate, they become so invested in this long-term very hands-on project.
 

After they select their product, students begin to construct the 3-D sculpture by using papier mache. They experience the challenges of good craftsmanship; font; design; images; and logo design, in addition to color mixing and detail-oriented painting. This project requires the students to put forth a lot of effort. With all this creativity and effort, they learn some great things from an interesting period of US Art, and are very proud of their end results!

 

Come by and check out some of the student projects in the front office at Walsh. All of the students seem to love working in this type of medium and, we think you'll agree, the extra-large love and quality shows in their work!

 

Great job!!

Check this website out for more information about POP ART -

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/popart/

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Google Docs

Good news for anyone who doesn't have the Power Point program loaded on their computer - it's called Google Presentations, and it's a FREE part of a series of program applications that you can use when you sign up for a Google GMail account.

If you've looked into buying Power Point, it can cost over $75 for the Student version, or over $200 if you buy the whole Microsoft Office package (that includes Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Publisher).

Google Presentations works the exact same way as Power Point does, so you'll be familiar with its layout and how to set it up.

Google Docs (short for documents), has other features that you'll appreciate too. For example, you can make your own web-page with Google Sites, which is quite easy to use. You can also make your own Blog, if you'd like, using Google's Blogger program.

http://www.google.com/sites/help/intl/en/overview.html

You can also upload files from your desktop or create word documents, spreadsheets, forms, and Power Point presentations right in Google Docs. Google Docs has a unique sharing feature that can come in really handy when you and a friend are both working on a school project together, as it allows you each to work on the same document while working separately from your own homes! Kind of like working on a Wiki (Don't know what a Wiki is? Stay tuned, we'll be introducing that cool techno-tool to you in a future blog post!)

http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/

Walsh Skateboarder Mike Hanley Teaches How to do a Tre Flip

You've seen these guys around school...you know, the ones who bring their skateboards to school so they can meet up after school and ride together.

Some afternoons they bring a camera with them and take videos of each other skating.

Here's a video where Mike Hanley teaches you how to do a Tre Flip. I like how he breaks it down step-by-step, so that you can better understand how to do it. The camerawork is good and steady too, so you can better see where to place your feet on the skateboard. I also like that Mikey shows messing up his Tre Flip, too. Like anything that you want to learn - it takes practice, practice, practice...and, that means messing up lots of times!

http://www.youtube.com/user/BreakFastClubSkate#p/u/2/feNM64Woj7o

Here's another video where Mike, Duarlys, EJ and Gabe show you some of their skateboarding stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRgn4jpEGWk&feature=related

Free Rice.com

Everyone here at Walsh knows of the devastating earthquake that hit the country of Haiti, and many of you joined in and contributed to the fund raising efforts that the Student Council and Guidance Department led earlier this month. We all are proud to know that as a group we collected $2000 that has been donated to the Haitian Health Foundation.
http://www.haitianhealthfoundation.org/

Some of you might be interested in continuing to help out this poor country that has a long ways to go toward recovering. The site http://www.freerice.com/ is a wonderful site that provides vocabulary, math, language, and geography game-quizzes that you can participate in. The best thing is, for every correct answer that you get in these game-quizzes, ten grains of rice will be donated to poor countries of the world. Right now most all of the donation efforts of this site are going to Haiti...so, that's how you can continue to help out. These game-quizzes are geared so that if you get a wrong answer it doesn't take away any of the rice that you have gained. They show you the correct answer and then will bring it up again later to see if you have learned it.

The rice is donated through the United Nations World Food Programme. The site doesn't ask you to sign in/log-in, or ask for any personal information. It just knows when people are playing and records totals for you, then adds it to their daily totals, which you can check out by clicking on "Totals" at the top of the page. The month of January 2010 the total came to - 1,451,006,720 grains of rice, and I know some Walsh students contributed about 15,000 to that number!

Some Walsh students sit down every weekend and play until they've reached 1000 grains of rice. One rainy weekend a couple of students reported that they just couldn't stop playing and reached over 100,000!

You can learn lots more by going to the Frequently Asked Questions/FAQs....section at the top of the site.
(aha!...so, that's what FAQs means?!)

Free rice.com.....give it a try.
Post your totals in the "Comments" below...let's see how we all do this week.

You can use your computer for some good and....you might even get a little bit smarter!