Each eighth grader student got his/her own blog on 9/17/08

To Eighth Grade Teachers around the country and around the world ... here are the 16 Blogs from EduBlogs for our 16 students in grade 8 ... please send me a link to anything similar at your school so that we can get started with a school-to-school project or wiki ... thanks ... Steve Bergen 11/19/08

ACC | AQF | DSHR | JKL | JLA | KEP | KMO | LCR

LCV | MAN | NJLF | NPD | NTH | ONT | RKC | TAM

As of the 8th of December at 8:08 AM, grade 8 students at four schools will get an invitation to our NING which involves eighth graders from Belgium, Germany, Storefront and Poughkeepsie NY. Students must create an account on our NING network as your homework assignment and complete your profile. Click here to signup and apply for an account. Click on the graphic below once you have an account and want to login. If you want a copy of the 3 page blank profile to fill in by hand before you type it online, click here.

Related videos? from Mr. Neal at FIS and dog Chloe or from Mr. Bergen to students at FIS

Everything below is from 07-08 (and less important)

Click here to see Mr. Navasky's blog at readingfool.wordpress.com

17 Web pages updated

ACC | AQF | DSHR | DTW | JKL | JLA | KEP | KMO | LCR

MAN | NJLF | NPD | NTH | ONT | RKC | SJA | TAM

here are some of our guidelines at our school regarding posting writing on the Web
1) pictures are fine, as long as there are no names of students next to them
2) initials are fine, but we will not use first or last names due to Internet Safety considerations
3) e-mail between teachers is probably initially best and can lead to e-mail between students

Launch date 9/20/07 Thursday Mr. Bergen

Our second project will involve Mr. Ivey at Stoneleigh Burnham School in Massachusetts ... his 7th graders have started a discussion amongst schools around the country on the subject of whether or not girls are smarter than boys ... Stoneleigh Burnham is a girls school, grade 7-12 ... Mr. Bergen

Here is a SAMPLE e-mail that each Storefront student will send today to Mr. Ivey: 
Hi Mr. Ivey and all the students at Stoneliegh Burnam

I am going to introduce myself and tell you more about Storefront and Harlem and Mr. Bergen.
I will also include a few thoughts about what I think the defintion of SMART is.
My initials are SBB and my e-mail address is sbergen@cstorefront.org
(students at Storefront use the format of 09ABC@cstorefront.org where 09 is the year of graduation)

Anyway, I am the computer teacher here at The Children's Storefront and since I know that you call Mr. Ivey by his first
name, you can call me by my first name (Steve) or by my last name (Mr. Bergen) ... either is fine, even though our school
has a rule that you call teachers by their last name.

Anyway, I have only been at this wonderful school since August. There are 17 students in my 7th grade computer class which
I call CP7 for Computer Profiency 7. We meet once a week on Thursdays at 10:30 or 11:30.

Today is the first day my students can use our e-mail system. They will also have Web pages which they may launch today (11/29) 
or perhaps in 7 days. But they will definitely be sending an e-mail to Mr. Ivey today (11/29) by 12:33.

Yes, I am a big fan of the number 33 because I have been a big fan of all Boston sports teams for 25 years. I used to
live in Massachusetts and was the computer teacher at Concord Academy in Concord MA from 84-94 and at Noble & Greenough
School from 94-2002 before coming to NYC. I still love Larry Bird (#33) and the Boston Red Sox, Boston Celtics and
of course the New England Patriots who will win the SuperBowl in February.

In terms of "definition of smart" I think that this is way more complicated than any of us can imagine. I grew up in the
1960s and hated the fact that everyone then thought that your SAT score tells the world how smart you are. I love the 
writings of Howard Gardner who has influenced many people in the last 10 years to understand that auto-mechanics are 
incredibly smart since they have "mechanical aptitude" and guitar players are incredibly smart since they have "musical
aptitude." I think it is crazy to think that "math skills" and "reading comprehension" have become our standard 
definitions of what it means to be smart.

I taught at a girls' school here in NYC called The Chapin School before coming to Storefront. I loved helping students make
Web pages, Photoshop skills and Spreadsheet skills and had many really smart girls complete wonderful projects. But I never
thought that girls were smarter than boys even though I could make some observations about girls in general having somewhat
different learning styles than boys. In sports, it is so hard to even make intelligent comments about whether Larry Bird
is a better player than Kobe Bryant and we have hundreds of statistics. So how can we make intelligent comments about whether
one sex (females) is smarter than the other sex (males) when the definition of "smart" is so broad and so open-ended and involves
everything from "how smart are you when fixing a car to playing a musical instrument to navigating around NYC to going on wilderness
survival in the woods of Massachusetts."

Anyway, we at Storefront look forward to getting to know all of you at Stoneleigh Burnam. You can click
here to see many pictures from our school. My favorite
is here with me and the first Red Sox fan I met
here back in September (there are not too many; most are Yankees fans). Our main Web page is at www.thechildrensstorefront.org.

Steve Bergen, Thursday morning 11/29/07

Here are some of our CP7 Web pages

  1. 09AQF ... click
  2. 09DTW ... click
  3. 09JLA ... click
  4. 09KEP ... click
  5. 09RKC ... click
  6. 09SJA ... click

Questions that you will be quizzed on later in the month

  1. How many bytes in the word HARLEM? how about in NEW YORK CITY?
  2. 1000 bytes is called a _________ (spelling counts)
  3. 1,000,000 bytes is called a _______ (spelling counts)
  4. 1,000,000,000 bytes is called a _______ (spelling counts)
  5. What is the least amount of typing time you need to do per week?
  6. How many words in the JV TYPING TEST which allows you to be EXEMPT from the requirement?
  7. What is the exact URL of our school's Web site?
  8. What do you add to our school's Web site to get to the section for those of us in grades K-8?
  9. What does URL stand for?
  10. Name 5 words of HTML and explain what each means?
  11. What does HTML stand for?
  12. What are 3 safety rules regarding our laptops?
  13. What are some of the things that you are NOT allowed to do in the computer lab during free time?
  14. Who wrote the words "During recess or after school, you can create, you can paint, you can write, you can research, you can learn, you can study, you can get smarter, you can practice your typing but no games except if a specific teacher gives you permission"
  15. Why did Mr. Navasky name his Web site "reading fool"?
  16. Who wrote the book that Mr. Navasky describes as "one of the saddest stories I know"?
  17. What word did Mr. Navasky use to refer to "a concise poem dealing pointedly and often satirically with a single thought or event and often ending with an ingenious turn of thought"?

We will have our first computer test on 10/23 ... some of these questions will be on the test ... answers will be posted on Monday, a day before so that you can study

Click here for answers and explanation