GRADE 6 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

One of the main foci of Grade 6 Information Technology is the acquisition and maintenance of keyboarding skills. Students will be expected to touch type at 20 words per minute by the end of the year. The other focus is on the mastery of the skills that they will need to be successful with technology throughout their middle school career at TAISM. This includes word processing, an introduction to spreadsheets for graphing and calculation, how to search for and verify sources of information and the effective use of various presentation software packages. Students will also learn the basics of computing and gain an understanding of the social factors involved in information technology.

GRADE 7 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Students in grade seven will use technology to create and disseminate various media. The students will learn to manipulate digital images, correcting for poor lighting or composition. The students will create digital audio recordings after capturing various audio tracks, and combining these tracks using specialized software. These audio and visual skills are then combined as the students create movies from the still pictures and overlay an audio track. All of these skills are designed to give students alternative ways of showcasing their understandings and learning throughout the rest of their middle school careers.

PUBLICATIONS

This elective course is a collaborative journalism class whose primary goal is to produce both the high school newspaper and the all-school yearbook. Both publications should be accurate, thorough, consistent, journalistically sound, technically correct records of the lives, emotions, and activities of the TAISM elementary, middle and high school students and staff. Students will develop and utilize skills in photography, layout, design and journalistic writing. Journalistic writing skills will include how to write news articles, feature stories, sports stories, editorials, columns, and headlines. Students will have strict deadlines for the production of their publications and may need to work at school after hours in order to do so.

COMPUTER LITERARY

This is a semester-long course whose aim is for students to gain a set of information technology skills that will develop the necessary skill set for academic success in the High School.  Students will learn and practice the following set of software: MS Word, MS Excel, Audacity (audio files), Photoshop, and Powerpoint.

DIGITAL ARTS

The purpose of this course is to explore a variety of digital media.  This course is designed for students who have either already have taken the Computer Literacy course, or who have ‘placed out’ of the course through a demonstration of the technology skills to the High School technology teacher.  Digital photography, digital video and digital audio will make up the bulk of the material used in this course.