Table of Contents - Vol. 21 No. 7 - April 2005

1. Pearls of URLs
   This monthly item will highlight Internet sites which are considered "gems" by educators.
2. Alan November presents "Technology and the Global Work Ethic"
   Mark the evening of May 16 on your calendar and join us at Red River College's downtown campus to hear Alan, who is recognized internationally as a leader in educational technology.
3. Activity - Study symmetry using "Interactive Mathematics"
   Geri Altman, of King Edward School, shares a very powerful on-line virtual library of mathematics resources. This article focuses on how Geri used the "Pattern Blocks" activity together with Paint and Word to showcase student's creativity in designing symmetric images.
4. "Just in Time" and "Matching Game" educational freebies
   Keith Strachan, of Cecil Rhodes School, once again shares his talents in designing educational learning activities. "Just in Time" provides students in the primary grades with an opportunity to read the time off the face of an analog wrist watch and enter the time in digital format. The "Matching Game" provides grades 4 - 6 students with a "Concentration-like" activity to review knowledge of multiplication facts.
5. HOW TO ... find files fast using the Windows "Search" tool
   Brian Metcalfe shares "Basic", "Intermediate" and "Advanced Techniques" to quickly find files on one's hard drive. By establishing a standardized file naming convention, together with including a unique identifier within the body of a document, one can locate files quickly using the Windows "Search Companion". 
6. Problem Solving - The key to the future
   Try this logic problem and then share it with your students to challenge them to think and share strategies. Note how one can use the Paint program to "flip" the "Answer Key" to help users spend more time on the problem rather than being tempted to move too quickly to check out the solution.
7. Target Home Zone: AntiVirus and AntiSpyware Protection
   Brian Metcalfe introduces a new article format which will focus on technology in the home. In this issue he provides current information on how Divisional employees can still purchase Eset's NOD32 virus protection software on-line until December 31, 2005. In addition, readers who are using Windows 2000 or XP at home are encouraged to download  and use Microsoft's Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) freeware.
8. Freebie Favourites
   Keith Strachan shares his Flash-created "Just In Time" and "Matching Game" freebies with readers.

Pearls of URLs

   "Riding the Wave of Change" Conference  (Gimli - May 12 & 13) at:
     http://www.esd.mb.ca/wave/  
   Pembina Trails - Grade 6 Social Studies Online Resources at:
     http://www.pembinatrails.ca/program/library/ss/gr6ss.html
   Images Canada Web Site at: http://www.imagescanada.ca/

Present one of the fifteen most influential thinkers of the decade!!! A thought-provoking evening to mix, mingle and network.
		Alan November  on "Technology and the Global Work Ethic" DATE: Monday, May 16, 2005 TIME: 7:00 pm VENUE: Red River College (downtown campus)               160 Princess Street, Winnipeg LOCATION: Multipurpose Room ADMISSION: $10.00 WINE AND CHEESE to follow.

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by Brian Metcalfe - Technology Education

Recently, Gerri Altman from King Edward School, shared with Inner City educators, a very powerful web resource from Utah State University. Students as young as Nursery and as old as Grade 6 can utilize the on-line "Pattern Blocks" activity from the "National Library of Virtual Manipulative for Interactive Mathematics" located at: http://matti.usu.edu/nlvm/nav/vlibrary.html

This "Virtual Library" allows the user to select a button which is located at the intersection of different mathematical concepts and grade levels. Geri's students, who were studying symmetry, navigated to the Geometry section in the Grade 3-5 range and selected the "Pattern Blocks" activity from the long list of available educational activities. Each student was asked to click on the various shapes on the left and arrange them to form a symmetric pattern based on both shape and colour. Students soon figured out how to "clone" active shapes and rotate individual pieces by clicking on a corner and dragging the "black dot". If one rotated pieces correctly, the manipulative shapes "snapped" together. As the final symmetrical design got larger and larger, students clicked on the "Zoom Out" button in order to be able to see more around the periphery.

Once the on-line symmetric pattern was created, Geri asked students to press the <Prt Scr> ("Print Screen") key which captured the image and placed it into the computer's memory. Next each student started the Windows "Paint" program, and then selected the "Edit>Paste" menu items. Using the rectangular "Select" tool, each student dragged a boundary around just the actual symmetric pattern. When the "Edit>Copy" menu items were clicked, this smaller image was transferred to the computer's memory. Next students chose "File>New" in Paint and then "Edit>Paste" to place only the symmetrical image into the Paint area. The "Fill With Colour" (Paint Can) tool was used to turn the grey background to white. This image was saved before moving to the Word application to showcase their symmetric design. The design was inserted into the document and each student had to count and itemize the number of shapes.

Geri indicated that the Grade 5's used these web on-line activities for symmetry and patterns while the Grade 4's used it for expanding patterns and tessellations. Her Grade 2's move from concrete to abstract as they create designs using pattern blocks, reproduce the pattern with paper cut-outs and glue and then use this web site's interactive mathematical activities. Thanks for sharing Geri!

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shared by Keith Strachan - Cecil Rhodes School

Following up on last month's Flash-created "Money Matters" freebie, Keith Strachan shares two new "freebies" which can be downloaded from the "Freebie Favourites" at the end of this newsletter. "Just in Time" was designed for the Primary Grades - Grade 1 to 3. Educators at Cecil Rhodes wanted an activity that concentrated on the basics of converting an analog display to a digital format. In this "freebie", students can click on any of the four buttons on the left to produce a random display on the wrist-watch. Students enter the digital time in the "H:MM" format and click the "Check Time" button to gain feedback in both textual and graphical formats.

"Matching Game" was requested by a Grade 5 teacher who wanted a different way for students to review their multiplication facts. Students can review the 1 to 9 times tables in this "Concentration" game format. Each time the user matches a multiplication problem with the correct product, the two selected tiles disappear revealing a hidden image. Keith indicated that the only problem with the game is that it uses facts up to and including 10, which do not exactly fit the curriculum (since the facts up to 7 are studied in grade 4 while the facts up to 12 are part of grade 5 and 6). Unfortunately the size of the array, that was created to play this memory game, provided some limitations. THANKS Keith for sharing your time, talents and treasures with other educators and readers!

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by Brian Metcalfe - Technology Education

Are you the type of user who can't remember where, on your hard drive, you saved important files? For example, perhaps as a educator you have created an exceptional lesson plan or activity which you used successfully during "I love to Read Month". Knowing that this activity file was integral to the success of the lesson, you save the file to your hard drive so that you could use it again next February. Unfortunately, a year later, when you go back to retrieve this file, you are not able to find the file because you have no recollection as to where you have saved it or in which folder it might be located. On the other hand, there are other Windows users who, although they have a reasonable folder hierarchy, are fearful that they won't remember in which folder they store a file, save the same file in two or three different locations on the hard drive so that they increase their chances of finding at least one copy of the file for later use. Both of these types of users can benefit from knowing how to use the Windows "Search" tool.

To activate the Windows "Search" tool or "Search Companion" one needs to:

- Click on the "Start" button in the lower left corner of the screen;
- Move up and chose the "Search" menu item;
- Select "For files or Folders ..."; and
- Click "All files and folders"

Basic Technique: Now, one will be presented with the "Search Companion" panel, as shown below:

Using these search categories, one should be able to retrieve any saved files provided the user can remember some aspects about the activity or file.

For example, the teacher who could not recover the "I Love to Read Month" activity, recalls that it was created using Microsoft "Word". By entering the "*.doc" (without quotes) in the top field, the "Search Companion" will locate all Word files since they all end with a ".doc" suffix or file type. To narrow the search even further, the second entry in the "Search Companion" is instructed to locate only those Word files that contain the word "read" somewhere within the actual document. The third entry in the "Search Companion" is configured to now search the entire C: drive ("Local Hard Drives (C:)") although one could narrow the search even further if one was able to identify a specific folder to search. When the "Search" button is clicked, the process begins and files that meet the specified search criteria are listed in the right pane where the user can double-click on each file name to open them and examine their contents. Once the "lost" file is recovered, one would be wise to save it in a descriptive folder such as "I Love to Read" or "Activities" or "Lesson Plans".

Intermediate Technique: The remainder of this article will describe how the Windows search process can be adapted to help a teacher speed up retrieval of student work. Recently, Hanhsong Vuong of Sacré Coeur School, asked if I could help him speed up a  search process. As a Grade 8 teacher, Hanhsong asks that each of his students use Word to create a document which outlines his/her goals for the current term. This document is printed and attached to the Divisional report card. What Hanhsong wanted was a faster process to locate a particular student's term goal report so that the file(s) could be printed as required.

I discussed this need with Patrick Logan, Kenn Olson and Richard Rider to come up with a rather effective way to located the files that Hanhsong wanted to print. With a little organizing, a specific file-naming convention, and consistent terminology in all reports, the following steps worked quite well.

1. All student goal reports must be located in the same folder. e.g. "C:\reportgoals"
2. The contents of each student's Word report must start with the title which identifies the full name of the student and the term e.g. "Bob Jones - Term 2".

3. Each student's report must be named using the student's name and the particular term.
    e.g. "Bob Jones Term 3.doc" or "MaryAnn Ripley Term 3.doc"
4. Invoke the "Search" process by clicking on Start > Search > "For Files or Folders ... > All files and folders (as shown below):

5. The top "Search Companion" field will be used to locate all the report files that contain the particular student's name as part of the file name. In this case "Marg" was inserted but "Smith" could just as easily be entered.
6. The search is narrowed to a particular term by entering, for example, "Term 2" in the second "Search Companion" field. Since all reports include a standardized title at the top of the actual contents which include the term number, this second search string helps isolate the particular term report.
7. By clicking on the drop down list box arrow at the end of the third "Look in:" field, one can speed up the access by focusing the search process to only look in the "C:\reportgoals" folder.
8. Next click the" Search" button and the requested file (e.g. "Mary Devonshire Term 2.doc") is displayed in the right panel for examination or printing.
9. If one wants to print this file, one can simply right-click on the file name in the right panel and then select the "Print" option.

Advanced Technique: If one wishes to utilize this "Search Companion" feature on a regular basis, one can define this previous search process as follows:

1. Once the above "Search Companion" criteria have been established (as illustrated in the above screen capture), one should save this mechanism by clicking on the "Search Results" menu items of  "File>Save Search".
2. In the "Save Search" window, navigate to the location where all the reports are located and make certain that the "Save in:" field points to "C:\reportgoals" folder.
3. By default, one will be prompted to save the "Filename As:" "Files named Marg containing text Term 2.fnd". I do not use this specific file name but choose to name it more generically such as "Student & Term Locator.fnd".
4. To make this "built-in" search mechanism easy to use, I close all open windows and return to the desktop where I create a short-cut icon to access this newly defined search. to do so, I right click on the open desktop area, and then choose "New>Shortcut".
5. In the next window, I click the "Browse" button and navigate to the "C:\reportgoals" folder where I click on "Student & Term Locator.fnd" and click the "OK" button.
6. I click the "Next" and "Finish" buttons to complete the creation of the desktop shortcut..
7. From now on, whenever I need to find a particular report, I can double-click on this "Student & Term Locator.fnd" icon. I can simply change the student name in the top search field and enter the respective term value in the middle field. When I click on the "Search" button, the "Search Companion" automatically retrieves the file(s) and displays them in the right pane where I can double-click on them to view them in Word or right click on them and print them as required.

How is that for finding files fast?

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by Brian Metcalfe - Technology Education

I believe that we cannot predict reliably the occupation that our students will be engaged in when they graduate. When many of the children, who started kindergarten this year, graduate from high school in 2017, there will be new jobs based on technologies that will emerge within this span of 13 years. Regardless, I feel confident that although we are unable to forecast what their job opportunities will be when they enter the work force, I feel we can be certain that there are at least two tasks at which all students must be proficient. For students to be successful, they will need to be able to think and communicate.

As a former Mathematics and Computer Science teacher, I tried to challenge my students to think. Each Monday, I would post a "problem of the week" which would challenge students to think in a variety of ways. Often I encouraged students to share their strategies by verbalizing so that others could emulate their problem solving processes.

Recently, I came across the "Brain Food" web site at: http://rinkworks.com/brainfood which presents a wide variety of "puzzles for the brain to gnaw on".

To illustrate the types of problems on this web site, I include the following "four men puzzle" which I think can be an interesting challenge. Divide your class into teams and see which team can come up with the solution. Better still, ask them to dialogue about the questions and the processes they went through until they reached the answer as the analysis process is, in reality, more important than getting the correct answer. 

Four Men Puzzle

Problem:
There are four men (call them #1, #2, 3#, and #4) standing in front of a firing squad in a line. They are all facing the same direction such that #1 is at the back of the line, and #4 is at the front. #1 and #3 are wearing black hats, and #2 and #4 are wearing white hats. Between #3 and #4 is a brick wall. So #1, at the back of the line, can see #2 and #3. #2 can see #3. Neither #3 and #4 can see anybody. The men know that two of them are wearing black hats and two of them are wearing white hats. The commander of the firing squad offers a challenge. The challenge is that he will let all of them go if only one of them correctly names the colour of his own hat. The men cannot see the hat on their own head and are not allowed to talk amongst themselves. He gives them five minutes to ponder the problem. Which of the men knows for sure the colour of his hat?

After 1 minute:
Question: Which one of them calls out?
Question: Why is he100% certain of the colour of his hat?

Don't look at the answer below until you have struggled with this problem for at least 5 minutes.

The following "freebies" are shared with our readers. One is encouraged to download the resources to your own computer in one of two ways. In most cases, one simply needs to click on the link and the browser will ask if one wishes to "Open" the file and view its contents or "Save" the file to the local hard drive. The "Save" option allows users to download the "freebie" and store it in a particular folder on one's local hard drive for later use. An alternative way of downloading "freebie" files is to navigate to the "Freebie Favourites" page with one's browser and if clicking on the link, as noted above, does not prompt one to save the file to one's own computer, one can right-click on the "freebie" link. When one right-clicks to download a file, the browser will prompt one to "Save Target/Link As". Left-clicking this option will allow one to navigate to an appropriate folder on one's hard drive and save the filename for later use.

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