Welcome Back!

Students, parents, and fellow staff members: Welcome back! Summer is done and we are in the second week of school. I am teaching three sections of Intro to Computers this fall so if your student is a 9th grader, chances are good that they might be sitting in my class. We are starting off the school year with a lot of pretesting. Students have taken pretests in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and vocabulary. Our goal of all this pretesting is to find out where students are currently in their computer knowledge and then compare it with final exams to find their growth in this class. That is our goal at least.

After that, we are diving into MS Office 2007 with units covering Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. Along with that, we will be learning vocabulary units on networking terms and common acronyms and extensions.

I am hoping to update this blog every two weeks, so hanks for visiting, stop back again, and here's to a great year!

Finish hard!

That is the message I am trying to send to students in my classes. Finish hard! You can see the finish line. It is already May with June in sight. Don't let up on your school work. Don't slack. Follow through on the good work you have done so far in class. If you haven't done so well this last month of class is a perfect time to make up some ground and get your grade back in order. Finish hard!

Students in my programming class are just beginning the Game Project and will be spending the next three weeks on it. My Desktop Publishing students are just finishing up a project on creating Teacher Stationery and will move on to the fabulous Concert Tour Project when finished. Both projects are worth a lot of points so ask your student how their project is going.

Thanks.

Heading into Spring Break!

Thanks for visiting. Student in my classes have been working hard this semester and we are coming up quickly to Spring Break. In my Desktop Publishing classes, we have been learning how to use Adobe Illustrator CS 4. More specifically, how to use it to create logos. We have created a number of logos using various "cool" effects such as reflection, glossy vector, 3-D, and more. Have your son or daughter show you their work on the class Wiki. We have also been talking about font choice and the different ways that one can use contrast with type. This week we will be having Lisa Martin from Ad Solutions visit as a guest speaker to talk about the process of logo development. Students will put their skills and knowledge together to create personal logos, as well as logo redesigns for the Big 10 Conference, the Detroit Lions, and the Sparta Football summer camp t-shirts.

Programming students have been working on the "Faces" project. It is a cumulative project covering everything covered in class so far and a few new things such as sound, video, menus, and printing. As we finish up this project, we will move on to a unit on Looping structures. This will in turn lead into some animation which is always a favorite.

As always, if you have questions or concerns, please drop me a note at todd.toporski@staff.spartaschools.org.

Thanks!

2nd Semester Off to a Great Start!

The second semester here at SHS is off and running. Successfully! I have made the transition from teaching three classes of all freshmen to teaching three classes of all upper-classmen. My Programming class is working on Unit 2, which deals with the use of variables and constants. We have made switch from Visual Basic 6 to VB Express 2008 which you can download free at home. While it is very similar in some respects, it can also be very different. I probably have more problems switching than the students. (Insert the can't teach an old dog new tricks joke here.)

My Desktop Publishing (DTP) classes have completed a Photoshop review and are learning how to use a vector graphics drawing program by Adobe called Illustrator. In addition, we have been talking about the five Elements of Graphic Design as we get ready to study logos.

The Mad Dash to the End of the Semester

Welcome back to school and Happy New Year!

We have two and a half weeks to go in the semester and lots to do. Students will be finishing this class by learning how to make Websites with programs such as Weebly or Wix. They are great tools for creating fantastic looking Websites without knowing all the ins and outs of HTML code. While we are working on our Personal and Career Websites, we will also have the counselors visit our class to schedule for classes for next year. Finally, we will finish up with final exams. The final exam for this class is completed on SAM 2007 and will cover Word and Excel. You can try the practice exam at home or school in a few weeks.

Thanks for checking it!

Now Until Christmas

Welcome back! We have just completed the Hero Project and we are headed back to MS Office 2007 for a look some of the semi-advance features of Word and Excel. Once that is complete, we will focus on a unit about Internet Safety which should lead us right into the break. After break we will be working on creating Web Sites using Wix or Weebly.

Thanks for checking in!

Sick of PowerPoint? Try Prezi.

This is our last post of the school year (unless I get bored this summer) and we wanted to give you some homework over the summer. So, if you are bored this summer try out a Prezi.

Prezi is an online presentation tool that I learned about from Steve Dembo at the 2010 MACUL Conference . If you are sick of PowerPoint, this might be your ticket. Watch the obligatory video below:



That is the same video from the Prezi site. This is a very cool online tool for you or your students to use instead of PowerPoint. Once you sign up for a free account, your presentations are housed online to edit or view; you can keep them private or make them public and share them; you can also download final copies of the presentations if you want to store them on your computer.

Here is a prezi that I created about my Dad as an example for our Hero Project in my Intro to Computers class. Notice how you can easily embed YouTube video into your presentations.

By the time students reach 9th grade they have been using PPT since 4th grade. The thrill is gone. Prezi is a great change of pace.

Finally, if you are not going to have your students use this, maybe you can. Make your own prezi or search for prezis on a subject that you might use in your class. No sense in recreating the wheel! Here is a great prezi on Math.

Good luck and have a great summer!