Dear Carmody 7th & 8th Grade Elective Computer Class Students and Parents.

October 11, 2006

1. Welcome to this Wednesday's and Thursday's Carmody Fall Parent-Teacher Conferences. Each day they will take place between 3:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. in the PC lab, room 110. Remember: do not wait outside the room but go into the room immediately check out your child's electronic portfolio (word processing documents, typing tests, etc.). In addition, I also suggest that you observe your child taking a typing test. A special reward of 20 bonus points (one floating A) will be issued to any student who accompanies their parent(s) to the conference with Dr. Data.
2. The PC Lab is still not having access to the school server which means that students can't do the following:
• Save their work to their school server folder
• Print out their work
• Can not access the Internet to access their daily assignments
The PC Lab will soon be complete rewired for Ethernet use with new switches and Ethernet wires, but it still might be a while before reinstallation. So please be patient in this matter as it still might be several weeks before being fixed. But all classes are in a daily routine that works and believe it or not, we are keeping up with the curriculum inspite of all the networking problems.
• Dr. Data is printing out the daily assignments by hand (at considerable expense) so that your child can work as normal
• Student assignments are viewed daily to insure that there are being completed
• No timelines of how many more weeks we will teach without the school server, but I believe we have established a daily routine that works and we are indeed maintaining are curriculum schedule that is outlined at: http://www.kuzmich.com/carmody/claris_syllabus.html#Required for 7th grades and at: http://www.kuzmich.com/carmody/business/Lesson_Plans.html for week 8.
• Dr. Data is imputting daily assignments and tests before leaving school every day inspite of network errors that imped accuracy for grades and attendance. And with the Carmody Parent Portal, we will overcome!!
• Therefore, the Carmody's Parent Portal via Infinite Campus is very important to be sure that your child is getting credit for all assignments and tests completed. Strongly suggest that parents check it daily after 4 p.m. if they are concerned about their child's classwork habits. Daily classroom grades are posted daily for your perusal. That should make a huge difference in being well informed about what assignments/tests need to be updated for better grades.
4. Notes: 7th grade is basically finishing the word processing unit of instruction with assignments at: http://www.kuzmich.com/carmody/claris_syllabus.html#Required . The entire semester's curriculum can be found at: http://www.kuzmich.com/carmody/Curriculum_Preview.html#August
   • 7th Grade Scale for Typing Proficiency and Spring Break Assignment #16 - B-38
   • Typing Your First Carmody Middle School Paper: Hints! and Backward Words - Assignment #17 - B-30 and B-31 Carmody Middle School Fee Schedule - Assignment #18 - B-32
   • Final Korean Penpal Letter due Thursday, October 20th and preliminary draft on Friday, October 12th. - Assignment #18 - B-34 and B-35: http://www.kuzmich.com/carmody/penpal_908.html

   Special 7th Extra-Credit Assignments:

See Dr. Data for the following assignments. The CSAP assignments are worth 75 extra-credit points per assignment and the others are worth 25 point per assignment. Any of them can be done at home or in class. Here are three CSAP web sites to introduce you to some of the kinds of supplemental CSAP activities used in my web-based instruction. The CSAP extra-credit assignments can be done over and over again. Just pick a different topic and start writing again and earning more extra-credit points!
• http://www.kuzmich.com/carmody/csap.html
• http://www.kuzmich.com/carmody/csap1.html
• http://www.kuzmich.com/carmody/csap2.html

Your Favorite Words, Crossword Puzzle , Crossword_Puzzle2 , Practice Activity, Hello, My Name Is .........., Definitions , and others.

6. 8th graders are completing week 8 as the first week of a twoweek instructional unit on spreadsheets on how their relate to running a teenage business at weeks 8 and 9 at: http://www.kuzmich.com/carmody/business/Lesson_Plans.html. Week 10 will cover PowerPoint presentations and week 11 will cover newsletters. Beginning in week 12, we will concentrate on web pages in three segments: 1) HTML, 2) GUI and 3) Dreawweaver.
7. 8th grade curriculum is focused on doing spreadsheets for their businesses. The daily assignments can be found in week 8 at: http://www.kuzmich.com/carmody/business/Week8.html. The entire semester's curriculum is found at: http://www.kuzmich.com/carmody/business/Lesson_Plans.html

Special 8th Extra-Credit Assignments:

• First Spreadsheet - Assignment #2. Printout First_Spreadsheet_Original with answers only. Then print out the First_Spreadsheet_Formula with formulas instead of answers. Do not submit your assignment until it has formulas for every bold answer.
  
• Clarisworks Spreadsheet : Parts 1 through 6 - Assignment #3
• Class Party: Printout Class_Party Original and Class_Party_Formula
• Clothing Purchase" Printout Class_Party Original and Class_Party_Formula
• Baseball batting averages: Class_Party Original and Class_Party_Formula
• Math roots/squaring: Math Table Original and Math Table Formula
• Bowling: Math Table Original and Math Table Formula
• Magic numbers: Math Table Original and Math Table Formula

Hope this information is helpful. And hopefully, it may motivate more parents to visit with Dr. Data during parent-teacher conferences on Thursday, October 12, 2006.

Thank you.

Till next time,

Dr. Data