Sumdog

Here is a computer screen shot of the
most popular game amongst Room 13 - Dress Down

Room 13 have started using an interactive internet site called Sumdog.  Sumdog has lots of different maths games and problem solving tasks on it. You can also create an avatar and make virtual friends with people in your class or school. You have a home page that changes depending on the games you play. You can play games with your virtual friends as well as people from around the world who are online. There are different stages (which are named after animals) depending on how many games you have played. I asked some Room 13 students about their Sumdog experience:

"It's really cool and really fun. I have lots of virtual friends" - Zak

"It's a really fun game. I like it a lot" - Brydie

When the teacher signed Room 13 up for Sumdog there was a NZ competition running for all NZ Sumdog users. Sadly Room 13 didn't have enough people going onto Sumdog on a regular basis, so we weren't shown on the scoreboard. However, Room 13's Sumdog accounts still exist, so you're likely to find a few of the class laptops in use!!! Good luck with the next competition (if there are enough players to enter)!!!

By Georgie

Nikky Nakky Noo

                  Since Week One of Motec, we have been doing a radio show  called Nikky Nikky Noo. 

First we had to learn about the copyright law in our booklets on the computer because if we stole any songs we would have to pay royalties for it with the price range around about $500 to $1000 - even for a Justin Bieber song.  

Next, we started thinking of the qualities of a good radio show.  Things such as good songs, commentary, quizzes and interviews. It was quite hard to get non copyrighted songs that are the same quality as the ones on the top 10 on MTV but after a while we managed to get some songs that are up to standard.

After preparing the list of songs we're going to do, we started doing our parts in the radio show like being the host or doing the quizzes  and the other jobs like music, intro/outro, etc.

Next Zak and Max edited everything and put it together before we shared it with our teacher on Google Apps. She published it on the Parkland School  website with all the other classes radio shows.

If you want to listen go and click this link--Mapua Radio Show 
written by Jed 

Google Apps

In Room 13, all the students have a login on something called Google Apps. That's its official name but some people call it other things (for example: I call it Google Drive).
Instead of using the shared folder to save our computer work, we save it onto our Google Drive, which is a thing where you can create word documents, spreadsheets and slideshows. You can create folders to keep your work in, too.

I (Georgina) asked some of the Room 13 students for their opinion on Google Apps. Here's what they had to say:

"Google Apps is really easy to use and I can get work done on it" - Max
"You can share and edit work with other people, which is really cool"- Jade
"Google Apps a good thing to use if you want to get work done" - Zak
"You can save work without it getting lost" - Brydie

On the whole, I think Google Apps is a success. If you have any cool websites you want to talk about, please comment!!! I (and the rest of the class) love hearing all your ideas.

By Georgina