This week we had a new arrival at the White Oak Middle School Media Center. Thanks to a Donors Choose grant, we received four Spheros.
The Roughneck Tech Club received a crash course in operating the robots. They quickly learned to maneuver Sphero using the iPad app. Students loved making the robot dance, jump and change colors. Some enterprising students decided to start the missions, and off they went to complete the tasks! Stay tuned for more news to come on the Sphero project!
Made with Code has a Music Mixer program that allows students to code music visually! Students can pick a genre of music such as acapella, country, hip hop, electronic, pop and rock. Once a genre of music is selected the students can add in a shape of their choice for the visual display of the music. By selecting the number of notes and speed desired, students create their first composition. Up to six sound rings of music can be coded at once. Students may adjust the notes and speed to fine tune their creations. The Roughneck Tech Club had a blast composing their songs and then combining new notes to create original music. Please enjoy a sample of their music by clicking on the picture below.
The Roughneck Book Club’s gingerbread man escaped! Our students asked anyone who had sighted him to send a postcard informing them of his whereabouts. Helpful people from across the United States sent postcards from places the gingerbread man has been sighted. As each postcard arrived, the book club mapped his sighting on Google Earth. If you click on the picture or link above, you can view all the areas he traveled. All the postcards and the descriptions of his adventures can be viewed on the Google Earth Tour Builder. Thank you to everyone who participated in ‘The Gingerbread Man Escapades!’
To celebrate Computer Science Week, Code.org sponsors an Hour of Code every year for students around the globe to learn computer programming. In our ever-changing technological world, every student should have the opportunity to learn coding. The Roughneck Tech Club celebrated #HourofCode with fun lessons from Code.org. By the end of the week, students were able to successfully write lines of code. In addition, students were able to troubleshoot any problems that occurred by finding the error in their code and editing it.
The most popular lesson this year was Star Wars! The sound effects and graphics made this tutorial the favorite!
Minecraft was a close second to Star Wars! Students loved choosing a character and programming tasks.
Flappy Birds is always fun and challenging for students!
The White Oak Media Center wishes you a thankful Thanksgiving! Make your own turkey creation by selecting the following link, Turkey Thankfulness Template, courtesy of TCEA.
Throughout this school year, the Roughneck Tech Club has been learning how to create circuits. Using some copper tape, LED lights and a watch battery, the students lit up Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night.
The students followed a template to lay down the copper tape in parallel strips. Next, students added LED lights from Chibitronics. Carefully, each light was positioned in between the parallel strips of copper with the positive and negative sides of the lights facing the same direction. The final step included adding a small battery to the circuit. Students placed the battery at the beginning of the circuit with the negative side of the battery on the negative copper strip. By folding the positive copper strip on top of the negative one, the circuit is complete; thus, lighting up the LED lights. The students secured the battery with an alligator clip. Some students experienced difficulty creating a complete circuit. Instead of giving up, they retraced their steps and found the problem. Errors included the copper strips not fully adhering to the page, LED lights not touching both positive and negative copper strips and copper strips that overlapped. By using their problem solving skills, the students of the Roughneck Tech Club proved they can adapt and overcome obstacles with some simple team work.
A special thanks to Mr. Randy Rodgers, Director of Digital Learning Services at Sequin ISD, for supplying the idea and expertise for this project.
Today, students at WOMS started the #WinterAroundtheWorld project. Teacher-Librarian, Shannon Miller, invited the students at White Oak Middle School to join classes around the globe to celebrate winter. The project is inspired by the children’s book Winter, The Coldest Season of All by Lisa Bell. The students will compose songs, draw illustrations, write poems and short stories to be included in an eBook. 
Shannon Miller Skyped with the students as they listened to the audio book and enjoyed the illustrations by Emily Brooks. Ms. Miller shared tech tools including StoryBird, Buncee and Canva to highlight ways students can share their creations. Students left inspired to begin their Winter Around the World projects.
