Earlier this semester Older Kids gave presentations on a computer topic. Some of their possible topics were famous computer scientists. Most people have heard of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, but we also had presentations on less famous—but just as influential—women like Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper.

Today we watched a recent short documentary on Grace Hopper called The Queen of Code. The film highlights her incredible contribution to the not-yet-invented discipline of computer programming, and the contribution of women to the field. It’s especially important to remember today, when not many women make careers in computer science. As we’ll see when we get deeper into coding, you can do so much more than make video games: solve complex problems, simulate the natural world, create art and music. And Grace Hopper, the “Queen of Code”, was one of the people who helped make it all possible.

Keyboarding is a critical skill in today’s world. Not just typing on a traditional keyboard at a desktop—even using a smartphone or tablet involves knowing the location of letters on a virtual keyboard.

Middle and Older Kids have been learning to touch-type and getting regular practice since the start of the year. We use a couple of sites that the kids can learn on: freetypinggame.net and Dance Mat Typing. Middle Kids start with learning basic hand position and home-row keys. Older Kids advance through the entire keyboard, capital letters and punctuation, and are expected to type assignments for class. Our goal for Older Kids is to be over 29 words per minute by the time they leave for 6th grade.

Younger Kids learn to navigate with the mouse first, but by the second half of the year we introduce the keyboard. There are a few games we use where the kids have to find the keys on the keyboard: KeySeeker, AbCya Cup Stacking, and ABCya Type Rocket Jr. They have a great time using these games to use the keyboard.

Keyboarding is one of those activities that takes lots of regular practice to become proficient. We spend a little time every week on it when possible, but practicing at home using the sites above can help even more. Doing a little bit of keyboarding every day (say 10-15 minutes) is more helpful than doing an hour-long block only once a week. You can always find link to the sites we use under the “Technology Pages” at left.

Why spend all the time learning to keyboard? Everyone today needs to type, whether for school, work, or just sending email to people. In Rivendell technology class, achieving higher keyboarding speeds means less time needed to practice, and more free time on the computer. And in Older Kids, middle school and beyond, the payoff is being able to complete homework faster! What student doesn’t want that?

Middle and Younger Kids used image processing programs to create pictures of Central and South American animals as part of our school-wide topic unit. Younger Kids used ABCya Paint to draw their own pictures. Middle Kids used Pixlr Image Editor and could paint their own, or edit pictures from the Internet and add information about the animals.

Check out their creations in the album below.

Older Kids are busy working on a presentation that they will give to the entire class. The topic for this presentation is computer-related. They can choose a famous computer scientist (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, Charles Babbage, Herman Hollerith), an important computer concept (user interface, CPU, internet, operating system), or a famous computer (Eniac, IBM PC, Apple II). Since we haven’t studied any of these yet in computer class, they have to do all original research too.

To get them thinking, we also watched some videos. One was a very bad example of a presentation, the other a unique take on presentations to get them thinking beyond just a set of slides.

In Middle Kids, we will start work on a group presentation. Kids will provide artwork and information to create a presentation on the animals of Central and South America.

Younger Kids can now independently turn on the computer & monitor, start the web browser, navigate to their favorite sites using our bookmarks, scroll down to find links, drag and drop items in games, maximize the browser window if it accidentally resizes, and even help their friends! They have come a long way since the start of the year and are now fluently using the desktop computers.

Coding (or programming) is a skill that is becoming increasingly important. In the past, programming computers was left to specialists. But today, it’s hard to get the most out of your computer, tablet or phone without having some programming skill. You can even program your Crock-Pot®!

Programming a computer requires writing “code”, which is just like it sounds: a sequence of “secret” codes that tell the computer what to do. The Hour of Code is a week-long, world-wide event that encourages students and people of all ages to try their hand at coding, and Rivendell is proud to participate again this year.

Older Kids got an introduction to coding by programming… each other! They created sequences of codes that instructed other kids, acting as robots, to stack cups precisely:



Then all the classes participated in the Hour of Code week, Dec. 8-12, with the activities at code.org. Whether they were coding along with Elsa from Frozen, using Angry Birds, or the games at Tynker, they had a great time learning the basics of computer coding.

PowerPoint may be a Microsoft trademark, but slideshow presentations are an essential skill for any student or professional. The Older Kids are learning how to create slide presentations using Google Slides. We had a presentation on presentations that you can view here. They all created a presentation on a simple machine for practice. Next semester, they will give a presentation to the whole class.

Middle and Younger kids have been enhancing their understanding of simple machines with physics-based games, like the Simple Machines game from the Chicago Museum of Sience & Industry.

Now that we know all about pixels, it’s time to start creating with them! We introduced paint and image processing programs for all the age groups. Younger Kids and Middle Kids got to play with ABCya Paint, a fun and easy-to-use online paint program. Here is a selection of the cool stuff that the Younger Kids drew:

More fantastic art work from Younger Kids and Middle Kids coming soon.

Older Kids took a step up with Pixlr Editor, also free and online but much more powerful. Akin to Photoshop, Pixlr Editor offers some drawing tools but also ways to manipulate photographic images. They all started with the same images but came up with very different interpretations!

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, only text was found on the Internet. But since a picture is worth 1000 words, it quickly became a necessity to be able to transmit pictures electronically–and soon, audio and video too.

We learned that digital pictures are stored as a grid of dots, or pixels (which stands for Picture Element). Each dot is either On or Off in the computer’s binary language. And we used a completely analog activity with pencil and paper to learn about it. Younger kids had a grid of ones and zeros, and by filling in all the ones made a picture appear. Older kids used encoded strings of numbers to decipher their pictures, and learned about compression: the practice of making files smaller without losing any information.

Next up: making more pixels into beautiful art with paint and image editing applications.