Edulastic by Ari R.

Edulastic 

Edulastic is a Math App that lets you take assignments in math class like in Mrs. Berry’s class. It tells you things such as when your math class, what hour, how many assignments there are, how many assignments have not started, how many assignments are in progress, how many assignments you submitted, and how many assignments are graded. Also on the left hand side it has an “E” and when you click on it, it has some more options like your dashboard, Assessments, skill reports, and Manage class. 

Here are how they work. On Assessment it tells you what Assignments are gonna be added for that class. On Skill Reports it tells you what you score on your test/tests or it tells you what other tests you will be doing in the future. When you scroll down it will tell you some details like what percent you got on your assignments you took and etc. On Manage class it lets you visit different classes. Also there is Help center”?”  if you have an issue you push the Help center “?”.

Some good points and bad points. Some good points about edulastic are streamlines the creation and collection of formative assessment data to support students learning and prepare them for standardized testing. Some bad points are the majority of the assessments and assignments are for ELA and Math, with limited resources available for other subject areas another good point’s are Benefits of the program include real-time scoring of assessments, identification of students who need intervention or remediation, access to standards  assessments, a variety of questions, opportunities for students to practice taking online assessments, and performance summaries that can be shared with teachers. Some cons about edulastic are you have to pay $2.50 per student, also the majority of the assessments and assignments are for Math and a little for ELA with limited resources available for other subject areas. So in my opinion I recommend this app ( Edulastic) because you can learn lots of things also Math teachers and ELA teachers can provide assignments so kids in those classes can use and work on assignments.

Inspiration Maps by Jace

   Inspiration Maps is an app where students and teachers can make a map that describes a character or objects in their story. Inspiration Maps is frequently used by ELA teachers like Mrs.Osborn. Inspiration Maps can be used in the classroom a number of ways like for planning, help, and create an outline.

   

      When you log onto Inspiration Maps click Templates.

  After that you will see a whole bunch of templates. Click on the one you want. Now after you choose your template, you can go to outline mode by clicking on the button that has three lines and three dots and you can click in the same area to go back to your diagram. To add a box go to shapes and click on the box on want. If you click on a box you can get an arrow by dragging on the arrow button another box. To add pictures you can go to the camera button or the camera roll button then pick on the picture you want click on the picture and you have a picture. To share or export click on the bottom that looks like a piece of paper with an up arrow and click on where you want to send it.

     Some pros of Inspiration Maps are it helps students brainstorm character traits, it helps students make connections with other characters. It helps students that need to visualize see how a character has a specific trait. It helps students connect characters to other characters like you can connect the wolf from the three little pigs to a fox from Aesop's fables by the trait of intelligence. They both get something by outsmarting other characters.

     Some cons there is no control over what the students do in Inspiration Maps, it is a little confusing at the beginning but they will get the hang of it. It starts with so many options your teacher should help.  After choosing your map you get overwhelmed with how many buttons there are just remember your teacher is there to help.

             

       

       Overall I like Inspiration Maps. It is a nice app that lets you plan. It helps me a lot with writing problems. Overall I hope I changed your mind on Inspiration Maps or if you use it I helped you use it more.

Audible by Landon F.

Introduction 

Audible is an app that has tons of audiobooks voiced by paid voice actors. Each book costs around the same as one  printed book. Schools often overlook Audible as it costs money and would be too expensive for everyone to have their own account. This is a problem that can easily be solved by having a school Audible account. 

Benefits 

A school Audible account is exactly what it sounds like, the school has one account. This works because Audible allows any number of devices to use one account at any time. Some kids are not visual learners so having an Audible option would be a huge advantage. Another benefit is if everyone had an Audible on their iPad then the school would only have to buy one Audible book and not 30 real books. This would also clear up space as no longer would there be cabinets filled with books,just audio books on everyone’s iPad. If a student chooses to read a book then there are tons of free options online as well for most books. One of the Audible competitors, Librivox, is good but the voices in the audiobooks are volunteers and are never quite as good. Librivox also has an outdated selection of books not nearly as extensive as Audible. One thing people say is a downside to Audible is a student could possibly go on a buying spree and get tons of books but they would need the Apple ID to buy anything in the first place.

Downsides

One of the downsides is everyone would need earbuds. Any good earbuds that would last for more than a year are around $10 and a school can obviously not provide those for everybody and if they bought cheap $1 ones they would not last at all. One thing people say is a downside to Audible is a student could possibly go on a buying spree and get tons of books but they would need the Apple ID to buy anything in the first place.

Features 

One of many unique features boasted by Audible is the rating section where you can read others reviews before buying or rate them yourself. What makes this unique is that there are 3 categories that you can rate out of 5. These are overall, story, and performance. Overall, is what you thought of the book, story is what you thought of the story, and finally the performance is what you thought of the voice actor and his “performance.”

Tutorial 

When you first enter the Audible website you should see this

Next you are going to want to click the sign in button in the top right corner even if you don’t have an account and this screen will appear

Next either create your account or enter your pre-existing account information and now you see this

From here as I have highlighted you can view your library, books that are already bought. If you don’t have any books you can shop by clicking browse and add to your wish list which you can also view here on your home page. Audible originals are books suggested by Audible which are usually their highest rated books. Thank you all for reading and I hope you consider getting your own Audible account. If you want an Audible account it costs $15 per month and if you don’t want to just listen to the free books then you must purchase them off the Audible store. I would definitely recommend Audible to all audiobook readers out there for it is so worth the money for higher quality and a giant library of books.

Photo Editor by Aidan H.

How to use the Photo Editor App

Do you know how to use the Photo Editor App? If you said no this is the blog for you. Because in this blog I’m going to explain in full detail, how to use the Apple Photo Editor App.

The app looks like this:

Once you open the app, go into your camera roll and pick the photo you would like to edit. Once selected, pick the option “classic editor” or “pro editor.” For everything stated in this blog, MAKE SURE YOU PRESS APPLY WHEN YOU’RE FINISHED.

 

Your first option in classic mode will be the option enhance. If you click on this, you can pick an option and it changes the camera quality after the fact pretty much. 

Next option is the effects menu. These change the filter. 

Your third option is the crop option. As you would think, this gives you the availability to change the size of the picture chosen. It has preset things for cropping. All actions can be undone. 

The next option is adjust. From clicking on this you get the option to change the brightness, exposure, contrast, warmth, saturation, vibrance, highlights, shadows, tint, and fade. To change any of these click on adjust, click on what you want to change and drag the ball left and right to change it. 

Orientation is next. With this you can switch the photo to be upside down, to one of its sides, etc. The next one is text. It kind of speaks for itself. You can add text to your photo. 

Draw is the next option. You can change the size and color. Then, draw! 

After that, you have the sharpness option. When clicking on this drag the ball in the center left to right to change the sharpness. 

For blur, select the size you want, then drag over whatever you want to blur. 

For focus, you click if you want a circular focus or linear focus. Then pinch and drag both fingers to change the size. Closing your fingers closer makes it a smaller size. And opposite. 

The vignette option, it is almost the same as as the focus option but instead of blurring outside the lines it’s making a black cover. 

Stickers is self-explanatory. You can add stickers by selecting them. You need to download sticker-packs though. 

With frames, you can(obviously) add frames to your picture by selecting the frame you want. 

The whiten option obviously whitens the image. But you select a size and drag over what you want whitened. 

With the red eye option, select a size, and drag over something red. It will change the red to another color. Usually purple. 

The slash option puts the image in black and white and you can drag over something to give it its color back. This is useful mainly if you want to focus on a person or object. 

The meme option adds text to the top and bottom of the image in bold letters. Obviously, you can make a meme with this tool.

In my opinion, this app is very nice, but there are a couple of issues. First of all, I think downloading the sticker packs is a little too extra. Second of all, I once in a while, but not very often get kicked off of the photo editor app. Other than that, very nice app.

There are also a lot of nice things about this app. First, it’s free. A lot of photo editing apps cost money. Second, it’s fairly simple to use. You don’t need to do a whole lot to make your pictures well edited.

Well, that’s my thoughts on the app. So ye.

STEAM Friday by Hannah

STEAM Friday

STEAM Friday is a time for kids to be creative. Here at Columbine Mr. Solseth puts on a STEAM Friday. On these days kids have an objective they have to complete within a certain amount of time. In this case it was a 20 minute build time. Then it had to stand for 3. Their objective always changes whether they are doing the S in science the T technology the E in engineering the A in art or the M in math they always have to build something with one of these prompts.  

      

        Today I went and sat in on Mr. Solseth’s 1st hour class. They were doing a steam Friday project. Mr.Solseth puts this on every Friday.The class had to make a  tower with a flag on top in 20 minutes. It had to be at least 30 cm high with 5 marshmallows, 1 tooth pick, 1 sticky note, and 10 index cards.They could only manipulate the index cards and the sticky note.Their secondary goal was to have to highest tower. Mr. Solseth was going to drop a heavy book near it to see if it could stand.

       The first thing they did was design their flag then stick it on the toothpick. Next they thought of an outline of their tower, then try their best to recreate it. Then after they knew it could withstand the book drop they should build it taller and sturdier.

     They had to let it stand without falling for 3 minutes. After the book drop they only had 4 standing. The highest was a total of 49cm tall. The school record was 63cm tall but was not beaten until later that day. 

    In all the STEAM  Friday was a success everyone worked together to build  amazing towers. Alana Lasley(6th) said, “Well STEAM Friday’s help us find new ways of doing things and we learn that not everybody can succeed but the ones who do find different ways when their first ones fail.”

To add on Brooke Davidson says, “ I like how we can build stuff.” Finally we interviewed Mr.Solseth and he said that he started doing STEAM Friday so kids will know how to problem solve and so that 5hey could be more creative with their building. In all I do think that everyone is a fan of stem fridays so thank you Mr. Solseth.

Jace (6th grader) working on building his tower and balancing the index cards.