LPUMS GATE/Tech Language Arts Classes

Wildcats roared through the website competition at the Guam History Day on Saturday, March 28, 2009. On the morning of the competition at the Agana Shopping Center, three groups from Luis P. Untalan Middle School entered their category with iWeb-produced websites displayed on their white MacBooks. By the end of the competition, all three UMS groups were victorious.  

It was a sweep—UMS placed 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in the middle school website category.  The school’s winning websites were on Blessed Diego Luis de San Vitores, Francisco Baza Leon Guerrero, and Archbishop Felixberto Camacho Flores.  They competed with websites from Oceanview Middle and Andersen Middle. The winning students received bronze, silver, and gold medals. The first place group and their teacher have won a trip to Maryland in June to compete in the National History Day competition. 

Eight grader Jennifer Quemado, eight grader Jomarih Balagot, and sixth grader Maeann Picayo designed the winning website on Archbishop Felixberto Flores. The competition’s theme is, “The individual in history: actions and legacies.”  The students worked the theme into the website through their thesis and subheading, “The man who shaped modern Catholicism on Guam.” The group’s website includes numerous archived photographs and a video interview.

The project was kicked off in early March with 6 groups in Mrs. Juvy Carino’s GATE/Technology class. The class began by researching online. Many students also were dropped after school to the Micronesian Area Research Center (MARC) library, where they found more books, files, and photographs for their websites.  Additionally, Mrs. Naomi Taitingfong, the principal, recommended that the class go on fieldtrips to do their research.  The students went on fieldtrips to the MARC library and the Nieves Flores Memorial Library as well as fieldtrips to  visit landmarks like the San Vitores Shine and the Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral.

The students worked on Macbook laptops provided by the Gifted and Talented Education program and used Mac software to create their websites. They used digital cameras to photograph historical artifacts, photos, and landmarks.  Then the students edited photos using iPhoto and edited videos using iMovie and MovieMaker. On March 23, the six groups in the class competed against each other for the top three. 

UMS also sent two entries from Mr. Vince Leon Guerrero’s History of Guam class to the island-wide competition. Kimberly Hipolito won 2nd place for the Individual Research Paper category and Emleen Mold, Jeremy Kloulubak, and Marleen Ewily  won 3rd place for the Group exhibit category.

The group makes final preparations before the start of the competition. 

Guam History Day judges (on the left) questioned all groups. The first to show their website projected in front of the judges and the crowd was the group who did Archbishop Flores (from left are Jennifer, Maeann, and Jomarih).

Second to go up was the group who created a website on Blessed Diego San Vitores (from left are Trevor, Reuben, and Paige).

After speaking to the judges, the students also had to go on stage with the announcer to answer questions for the crowd. The last group to be judged did their website on Francisco Baza Leon Guerrero. From left are Ritacia, Ritanna, and Pia.

UMS sweeps the middle school group website category.

The students (and their teacher) were all smiles.

 Jennifer calls her parents (including dad in Saipan) to tell them the news.

View the winning website by clicking on this link.

1st and 5th Period: Copy the two paragraphs below and paste it to a new post. Highlight in red and correct the 30 capitalization errors and 13 punctuation errors.

The island of tinkaville

if jezebel was a ruler of a place, she would be queen of tinkaville. this land is a huge island somewhere in the pacific ocean the island would be even bigger than guam. there would be no more than 1,000 people living there. since jezebel is the queen, the islands government would be a monarchy with all of the residents being her loyal subjects. people would build nice concrete and wooden homes with lots of trees and flowers. there wouldn’t be pollution because there would be less cars on the roads and less people to create Trash and Waste.

the people of tinkaville would live happy, but simple, lives. they would follow the 10 commandments from the bible, plus any other laws that jezebel feels will make everyone live happier lives. there would be one daycare center One elementary school One middle school and One high school. once the children graduate, jezebels loyal subjects go off-island for college but come back to tinkaville to work. there would also be one police sheriff one fire department one post office one garbage collector and one hospital. the residents then work to run restaurants grocery stores movie theaters and other stores where people can buy their essentials. everything else that needs to be done with the island gets done by jezebels royal court.

Second Semester students in 1st and 5th period Only:

Click on this link to take the quiz on Edublogs. You may log in to your Edublog account to help you, but you only have 15 minutes to take the quiz.

Recently, maintenance work forced us out of the Rm. 3 computer lab. Thankfully, the 3 GATE Macbooks and 2 of Mrs. Carino’s Mac laptops allowed classes to go on … whether we had classes in the school cafeteria or in the Cooking class. With wireless internet available, the students were able to go online, too.  Pictured below are the Advanced students helping each other out to do their spreadsheet assignment on Googledocs and on Microsoft Excel. The other students used the laptops to go online and work on their blogs.

The students’ faces have been blurred on purpose to protect their identity.

Welcome to new students in GATE/Tech, 6th and 7th graders who were recommended by their team teachers. You have received the class syllabus and the Acceptable Use Policy.  You should have returned portions of those documents signed by your parents or guardians.

Since last week, I’ve been getting you all acquainted with Gmail, Googledocs, our acceptable use policy, and netiquette.  Your first assignments have been:

• 1) Googledocs assignment: two paragraphs about yourself 
• 2) 10 Do’s and 10 Don’t’s about computer use
• 3) Wikipedia assignment: List of 10 Netiquette guidelines 

You’ve taken your first online quiz, and now we’re working on setting up your blogs. If you or your parents have any questions, don’t hesitate to email me (juvycarino@gmail.com).