"Questions are more important than facts"

Basic Rules for Room 33  -- Computer Lab

• No Food or Drink is allowed in any computer room with the exception of water. The water containers must be stored on the counters at the left or right of the class. Computer damage may result if these rules are not followed and the student may become liable for repair costs.
• If you are not meeting your full potential in the classroom, entertainment media (Ipods etc. ) will not be allowed until you earn it through increased efforts, which should in turn mean higher grades. No entertainment media are allowed during instruction time (peer or teacher ). This is a learning environment in which entertainment is only a small element. No work environment  (whether paid or volunteer) will allow use of mp3 devices and cell phones to take the place of what needs to be accomplished in the workday. So to instill this  reasonable and responsible attitude in class it will be necessary for students to take a vested interest in your own education by adhering to this rule.

Class Operational Procedures 

• Students must ask permission to leave the room for any reason. If permission is granted then the student must sign-out on the sign-out form near the Teacher's desk before leaving and sign in when returning. This is to insure the student’s safety so the Teacher will know where all students are in case of emergency. This will also dissuade truancy and hallway loitering. A student who is gone from class for more than 15 minutes (repeatedly) will be marked absent so as to elicit a call home the Home School Liaison

• Students are expected to seek help in the following order:

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1. the provided network resources ( word docs, pdfs, urls, tutorials etc)

2. the online software resources provided by software vendors (e.g. Microsoft or Adobe help files )

3. other internet sources where appropriate

4. fellow students (compulsory when in team settings)

5. and lastly the Teacher.

This is to help students build their confidence and skills incrementally so they become independent life-long learners who can seek out and find the information they need to accomplish any task. These skills are assessed in this class. They are also essential marketable skills needed for success in the 21st century.

• The new policy of the Brandon School Division for assignment completion is before the end of the final assessment for a unit, meaning before a test or summative final project. In accordance, an incomplete projects will receive a mark of zero. However, a student is encouraged to ask the teacher for a make-up project, which will always be more challenging that the assignment missed. This allows for students to make up for lost marks whatever the reason and become increasing successful as the semester progresses.                     top

Basic Requirements

Basic skill set needed to be successful in 10G and 20G computer courses

In order to ensure a student’s success in both these courses, an average, to above average reading and retention skill set is required by the student. Most of the instruction and research will be text-based due to the nature of the computer medium; inherently a visual and highly text-oriented. While there are hands on projects and creative assignments students will have a heavy component of independent research. top

Basic computer skills

            The ability to navigate in a Windows network environment including creating and organizing folders, saving files to appropriate folders and finding assignments in network share folders. Use of Microsoft Word and Cyberschools Email will be required to varying degrees throughout the courses. As well the following will be used to accomplish tasks as needed: Adobe InDesign and Acrobat, MS PowerPoint, Digital Cameras or handy cams, Scanners and associated software, and audio and video editing software. A lot of secondary learning will take place as an adjunct to the curriculum                                                                                        top

And affinity for technology and the ability to stay on task

Many students have previous experience with a computer as a toy more than a tool. They have not used it to accomplish clearly defined work tasks and consequently may stray into the more familiar habits of surfing or playing on the PC. This can cut into the precious few hours we have in the course, since productive use of class time is essential to success in these courses. Off task activities must be kept to a minimum. This is the reason why the Brandon School Division forbids checking, reading and composing email and playing online games and have instituted content blocking filters through the Merlin Servers in Winnipeg. These courses are meant to provide students with the ability to be effective, efficient and literate on a computer not to waste time. Information and communication technology skills are essential to make sense of the media intensive society we now live in. ICT skills are built up over a long period of concentrated focused effort. They cannot be accomplished by entertainment alone ( game cubes, cell phones, PSPs, and surfing the internet --Youtube, Facebook, MSN). In fact these in vogue technologies are often times detrimental, distracting individuals with endless entertainment possibility for no intrinsic value or keeping them off task for inordinate amounts of time. The adage in room 33 at Neelin is ' take what you can get from the computers that makes you smarter, more efficient or makes you money and leave the rest.'

Ability to work independently and in a team environment

Course work and most assignments have to be done in-class on the licensed school software. Not all students have access to a PC at home or to this expensive industry standard software. Thus instructional time is skewed in favour of independent ‘hands-on’ work on the computer. This therefore means a high degree of self-directed and independently learning is required. Students entering the course need to be highly self-motivated and willing to develop the aforementioned skills. Thus to be successful in this course, punctuality and attendance are crucial. Missed project time will have to made-up by the student at the discretion of the Teacher. Missed instructional time is detrimental to success and will require independent, self-directed learning.                                                                      

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Learning Activities

The teacher, as needed, will give students a demonstration with verbal explanations. More detailed information is always available in the form of tutorials, web links on the shared drive, text resources and handouts and guided research on the web files.

Students are encouraged to collaborate to solve problems. The teacher is available to prompt, answer and suggest solutions as needed. Problems presented often have many "right" answers and individual expression is encouraged.

Each exercise includes a list of criteria that allows a student to demonstrate his/her level of proficiency.

Team dynamics is a large component of many ICT courses as they are the most important skills that can be developed for success in later work or educational endeavours. Team assessment by the Teacher and the other team members will figure greatly into all projects  in addition to self-assessment.

In-class presentations of projects by different team members will build confidence and show understanding of information technology tools and issues as well as development of skills within the ICT

Students who feel they need more time to work on projects are encouraged to work before school start, at lunch time and/or after school in room 33. Arrangements can be made on a daily or weekly basis.                                       

The classroom is open every day at Lunch hour (12:20 -1:20) for any student that requires a computer to complete any assignment in any of their courses at Neelin High School.