Robotics for the Future!
Our unit with a contributing school starts on the 30 July and we will have blogs for each group.
Here they are and you are welcome to check on the progress each week.

Robomania Blog
The Walking Robots Blog
Wild Donkeys Blog
Handsomhippos Blog
Retarded Rabbits Blog
SuperNerds Blog
Kool Super monkey styles Blog
Cooldudes Blog
Ninja Nerds Blog
NXT Supermen Blog
The Talking Cheeses Blog
Pink Princesses Blog
Red Alien Monkeys Blog
JSK Just so Cool Blog
Blogging Boogyman Blog

Video on the Holocaust

Please ask your parents first before watching this movie. It is graphic in places and it would be your parents choice to let you see it.

Go to this link

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6076323184217355958

Bonsai

Harry's New statement: I still think the killing of the Jews was planned after WWI. Hitler started hating foreigners before the WWI and he joined a communist hating group after WWI.

Kristie's new statement: this week i thought about whether or not the holocaust was planned i think hitler planned to take over germany and create the perfect race but i do not think that he planned to massacre two out of every three jews. 

Hayden's: I think that the holocaust was planned long before the start of WWII as Hitler believed that it was the Jews that made Germany lose WWI and he stated in a speech that if war broke out he would kill the jews.

Kendall's: I still think that the Holocaust was very unnecessary, but now I think that the Holocaust was planned from the start way before Hitler started it.

Matt's: I think that what Hitler has done was utterly atrocious and that if he could see what destruction he has made he might not of done what he has done.

Bonzai

Harry's Statement: I believe the Holocaust was thought of before the Nazi party even came to power.

Matt's statement: Adolf hitler made a statement which was later published into a book called 'Mein Kampf' or 'My Fight'.

Hayden and Elliot: The Holocaust was horrific and sucked because millions died. The population went from 9.5 million to 3.5 million.

 

Kristie's statement: I think the Holocaust was very horrible and that all those jews shouldn't have suffered because of their religion. Hitler committed a very horrible crime and was obsessed with the 'perfect race'.

Kendall: I think the Holocaust was very unnecessary and so many people died from it.

The Holocaust

Each reading group in our class is going to add to the blog as we explore the cause of the Holocaust. They will be asked to explain where they are in their thinking and some of their reasons.

Today's group is Kabuki.

Today we are learning about the Holocaust. Hitler copied the so called 'Master race' from Friedrich Nietzsche, who first suggested the idea.
If you are thinking about what caused the Holocaust? Nothing actually caused the Holocaust, it was a deliberate policy by the German government, personally conceived by order of Adolf Hitler. Hitler believed that the Jewish people were vermin, therefore they were a threat to superior humans [Germans].

The Nazis wanted to annihilate the entire the European Jewish community.

I think that what happened back then was wrong and disgusting and should never have happened. Even though Hitler believed this and he thought he was right, he was not. Hitler used propaganda even before he was in power and he was successful. He made people think his way.

I think that what happened back during the Holocaust was wrong and Hitler should of been good instead of bad.

I think Hitler used really good propaganda to influence the people to make them think his way, but this is wrong because he is lying to get his own way.

I think what Hitler did to these people was wrong because those people did nothing wrong to him.

This was put together by a reading group as their task to demonstrate their understanding so far.

Animation! Here it is!

As promised a wee while ago I have been looking into the students animations and have a few examples that I believe need posting here so that others can see what they are capable of. Who would have thought that not teaching them how to do something and allowing them to explore it themselves would have created some wonderful work. This one is using I Can Animate and has some humour that only 12yr and 13 yr olds can get away with! Enjoy!

Scott

Naomi

Life in our room at the moment is full of Science Fair and fair testing.
The amount of work that the students are putting in is admirable and I commend the ones that are going that extra mile. Good luck with putting your boards together. I can't wait to see what your finished project will look like and your grasp on fair testing.

For the next four weeks in our Reading work, we are looking into the cause of the Holocaust and the recounts the survivors are able to share with us.
We are specifically looking at our reading skills and how we can learn more about our reading habits. This is going to require us to look into the skills we are needing to learn to gain more knowledge and apply what we already know.

We are reading 'Night' by Elie Wiesel and we will have some work related to it. He is a survivor of Auschwitz and as he was a teenager when he was there, we can make some connections to the text. This will also allow us to explore how to write essays and use the novel as a source of information.

Tuesday 28th of april 2009 Connors blog

This term we are mainly going to be focusing on science fair. In fact today we started of our projects by deciding what we were going to do it on (that was a mission!!! It took some of us one and a half hours to think of what we were going to do!) we also did our aims and key questions. Man when we did reading and it felt like only ten minutes, I only got through about five pages before Ms Cording said we had been reading for an hour and had to stop. 

                                                                       Laters Connor

Second to last day

Another day at school. First up we had Fitness. Then we had to do post Statisics test on e-asttle, we do it on our computers instead of using up a whole lot paper. In the 2nd block we Technology.
And also in the 3rd block we had a science project. We did it because we have a Science fair in term 2, So we are learning how to do fair testing and making a science fair project. Our question was what is the most absorbent paper towel. We had 5 brands of Paper towels. That was our only variable. We were all in groups and we all did the test. It turned out that Viva was the best.
Soon after the bell rang.

Sam signing off.

April Fools!

Room 2's many plans of pranks to pull on Miss Cording didn't exactly go according to plan after everyone forgot about the first one and she saw us handling the praying-mantis before anyone could make it walk around her shoes. However in second block we managed to pull off switching classes with room 1 for our P.E session. That was of course before we all ran stampeding through the school looking for a place to hide from our teachers.

The reading group working on a play of Parvana and trying hard to finish their filming. Our study of Child brides is continuing with writing explanations and watching info video's.

Probably the most interesting library session for many of us who ended up with books to shelve and endless press-ups (KRISTIE)!

Animations are due tomorrow which I think is scaring some of us. Look forward to sharing after all this hard work though!!!

Naomi

One example of our animation assignment! More to come!

Well here it is! This is the beginning of our animation examples. This one uses Pencil and aspects of iMovie and iDVD. I really can't wait to share the others we have in our class. The other software we have used is Scratch, I can Animate and Flash.

oh oh need to get a move on!

Today was very interesting. I can honestly say 99% of the class did at least 5-10 press ups the funny thing was it was in P.E. time ( The press ups were for talking). Although it was cut short because as i said before there was lots of  talking and giggling through the past lessons. The main lessons  of the day were writting, reading and maths as always, but there were a few extras as well.We had lots of fun but i think if we had talked anymore that the press up rate would have doubled instantly. No joke. 

I think a little bit of pressure went onto some people after the teacher told us that the deadline for our animation project was the end of this week. After the teacher told us it was only a joke there was a few angry but relieved faces in our room i can tell you that much for sure. 

Alexia over and out.

 

Thursday the 12th March 2009 :)

Thursdays are one of the best days of the week because we all get to go to tech in the last block of the day, I go to sewing and at at the moment i making a bag the other group are going to art but i am not sure what they are currently doing. Another thing we did today was do our statistics maths test online at the e-asttle website, we had tried to do a couple of days ago but basically everyone had problems trying to get onto the site so today we tried again and basically everyone was successful, finally!. but other than those two main things the rest of the day was pretty unsuccessful.

Kristie :)

1st blogging day of school

Typical day of school today, started with a reading test then went on to World Maths Day. Me and Jono were going hard at it, then I got the news I was doing this blog today then the interval bell rang. We came back in for middle block for some reading. We got an article about child brides and fattening them up to make them more for their husbands, sick really. Last block best block of the day if you ask me, we did more of the child bride topic and did a reflective journal. Which is a video of someone giving their opinion on the subject. 3'0clock bell just rang.... parent teacher interviews my worst nightmare...

Luke

Welcome to 2009

This is Room 2's introduction to blogging. They are a year 8 class that is multimedia based and up for a real challenge this year. Watch their progress as they start blogging and sharing their achievements. Feel free to add comments and give the students feedback.