Welcome to My Classes!!
All of these courses are a semester in length.
Wood Working/Crafts
This class is a combination of traditional woodworking and crafts. The class is made up of various modules, allowing each student to choose which wood project they would most like to make. Not all students will be making their woodworking project at the same time. While some students are in the wood lab, others are working on craft modules. All students will be rotating through the woodworking portion of the class. This allows smaller numbers in the fabrication lab, which is safer to monitor. Approximately every five days students will switch craft modules.
The craft modules to choose from are: leather (four coasters and a wooden coaster holder), greeting card
design, beaded key chain, Memory book pages, fly-tying, scroll saw cutting (including 3-D wooden animals and/or name plates), wooden barrel pen on the lathe or a wood bowl, decorative wood burning, stained glass stepping stones, scrapbooking, digital photography and greeting cards using cricut.
First year students will choose one of the following woodworking projects: beach chair, chess board, decorative box, plant stand, bedside table, Skateboard, Longboard or DVD holder. Second year students may choose more advanced projects: coffee table, end table, secret box, wooden vault or a custom design project of their choosing.
TIDE
This is a semester course that has a focus of design and engineering. For students graduating in 2010 or later T.I.D.E. credit in the middle school may be used to cover the computer requirement in Boulder Valley High Schools. While it does not count for High School credit it does allow the student to take a wider variety of electives in High School since they do not need to use one of their high school electives to take a computer course.
TIDE is a course designed for hands-on learning. TIDE is an acronym for Technology, Innovation, Design and Engineering. Students select activities in areas that interest them. Some of the available units are: architecture, airplane design, robotics, graphic arts (t-shirt design), laser technology, electronics, residential wiring, digital photography, hydroponics, satellite communications, engineering (bridge or tower building), computer assisted drafting, robotic design, or robotic programming, flight simulation, video editing, Sketchup, Solidworks, and Amimation Master to name a few. There are over 30 different modules for students to select from and the course may be repeated in order to complete more of the activities. Most students complete 4-6, 10 day units during one semester in addition to the group modules.
Computers
Computer Power
This is a semester course in micro computing. For students graduating in 2010 or later Computer Power or T.I.D.E. credit in the middle school may be used to cover the computer requirement in Boulder Valley High Schools. While it does not count for High School credit it does allow the student to take a wider variety of electives in High School since they do not need to use one of their high school electives to take a computer course.
Topics Covered: Computer History, Microsoft Word, Excel, Power Point, Publisher, Web Page creation, Basic Programming, Linear Programming, Graphic Creation, Internet Safety, Flash, and Key Boarding.
Students will make advanced Power Point Presentations, spreadsheets and Word documents. They will make a web site using HTML or web based page production site. The students will learn about linear programming using a graphic based program to create their own video game. Proper keyboarding will be reinforced with a variety of methods to teach and/or advance the students typing skills. Flash animations will be produced as well as making a short movie. Photoshop will be used to demonstrate the power of digital photography and how to use the technology to enhance their reports in other classes.
Desktop Publishing
This is an eighteen week course that covers using the computer as a publishing tool. We will use Microsoft Publisher extensively to make a variety of projects including a school newsletter. Movies or Music Videos will be scripted and produced using Power Director. Podcasts or Vodcasts may be produced in class also or websites. Projects may include making projects with other people using the Google products for collaboration and presenting the finished product to an audience. An example of this would be researching a country that an elementary class will be studying and making a presentation about that country that will give the content to the elementary students in a grade appropriate style to enhance their learning. The desktop publishing students will use skills they have learned in class to make this an exciting learning experience for the elementary students as they fine tune their computer skills to make this presentation. Keyboarding will taught throughout the semester to increase their typing speed and skills.
Students will create complex business publications (newsletters, flyers, brochures, posters and newspapers), publish projects for other classes (reports, time lines, and newspapers), use publishing templates, use a page layout program, employ the elements of design in published documents, place and modify text prepared in other applications within a page layout program, and publish a project on-line. Note: all writing in this course will emphasize language mechanics, writing techniques, and the 6 Traits + 1 in writing process.
6th Grade Exploratory Woodworking/T.I.D.E./Computers
This course gives the 6th grade student an introduction to all of the above classes. They will make woodworking projects, work on the exciting modules such as the Robotic Arm and the CNC Lathe, get an introduction to 3-D design on the computer, learn many more aspects of computing including Internet safety, Keyboarding, Video Game Design as well as a variety of other computer projects.