Photography

In December we are starting work with digital photography.  The primary goal of our work is to enable students to take good quality photographs with their digital cameras.  The emphasis to start with is on skills with the camera, rather than on digital editing of photographs.  The school has some cameras available for students to use with this assignment, but students may also use their own (family) cameras.  Cell phone cameras are not recommended as their quality is not usually all that great (not to mention the fact that cell phones are not supposed to be used by students in the school.)

Word Processing & Desktop Publishing

The first part of this year was working with Microsoft Word.  The first activities were formatting letters in true business formatting styles such as "full block", "modified block" and "simplified" formats.  At the end of this unit students wrote a test that involved identifiying the parts of a letter and creating a letter on the computer.

The second unit of work involved typing magazine articles.  The first three articles were copied out of magazines while the last two articles were composed by the students.  The formatting included learning about desktop publishing standards for using various fonts, and also involved creating columns and inserting graphics.  As this we finish this unit around the end of November students will be writing a test that will involve typing and formatting an article in Word.

For both of these units, students are required to complete their assignments before they write the test.  Time has been given in class to work on these, and students have also been encouraged to come in to the computer lab at lunch time if they need extra time on the computers.

Why do Keyboarding Practice in Grade 9 Computers?

If you want to enjoy your time working with computers and to make efficient use of your time, it helps to have good keyboarding skills.  Thanks to texting, instant messaging and chatting, many students have developed some rather strange keyboarding habits, while some other students have not really developed any keyboarding skills at all.  Most people can do handwriting at about 30 words per minute, so if they cannot keyboard at least that fast they find it frustrating to work with computers.  Also, poor technique tends to lead to more errors.

Throughout the year we spend some regular time working on keyboarding skills.  Early in the year that is usually 10 - 15 minutes at the start of class with activities such as timed writings and using the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing software.  The students work with these, as well as technique evaluations, are used for evaluation purposes, with approximately 10% of the mark based on keyboarding skills.  A speed rating scale is used, but speeds of 35 wpm or more earning a mark of 100% and a speed of 15 wpm earning 50%.