Washington D.C. Trip

The annual Ocean Tides trip to Washington D.C. is taking place this coming Monday, May 14th! While we go a bit too late to see the cherry blossoms there are still many beautiful and educational sights to behold and fun to be had. Pictured above is the Jefferson Memorial one of our many stops on the trip.
Two Mondays from now we will feature some of our student's photo's of the sights in our nation's capitol.

Providence Campus Science Fair

1^st Jean D- Geysers- How do they erupt?

2^nd Craig D- Can plants grow without soil?

3^rd Ahmahd C.- Ocean Water Pollution

Students at the Providence campus spent a very busy, productive and enjoyable month working on science fair projects. This year many of the students seemed to focus on environmental issues and concerns. Interest and motivation were quite high and the results were fantastic. The winning project was a model of a geyser that erupted on cue. Other projects included a model of the space shuttle with the study of shuttle disasters, an investigation of how to detect infrared light, a model of a solar house, a model of a wind turbine, a model and study of water pollution, an investigation about which light grows better plants, an experiment in hydroponics, an energy audit of the school, a look at composting, a model of the levee failures during hurricane Katrina, and many others.

Many students included a technology component, by creating PowerPoint presentations and displaying them using digital projectors. Students enjoyed the morning presenting their projects to the judges and guests. They were very enthusiastic and displayed a tremendous amount of knowledge about their topics.

As a concluding activity, students prepared a written reflection about the science fair experience, and compiled their materials into their end of the year or graduation portfolios. Overall, it was a very successful way to conduct an independent study of a science topic area of the student’s choice.

Congratulations to all!

Narragansett Science Fair

Here are three of the top science fair projects.
Everyone worked hard for the whole month of February and into March on their projects!

Derek L - PVC hand Built
Frank M - Potato Powered clock
Greg A - Suspension bridge theory

Another Providence Presentation

This is a presentation by another Providence student. This was filled with impressive effects and music which were unfortunately stripped from the show.

Providence Campus Project

Here is our first submission from Providence Campus.
This is the work of Silvio S. an eleventh grader. Unfortunately, while slideshare.net is an excellent free hosting site, it strips all of the effects and timing from the student power points. These look good on the blog but you are only seeing a static slide. When we view these on the projector they are even more impressive!

Black History Project #2

Here is another Narragansett student's black history .PPT. Let us know what you think about our projects! Hopefully we will be posting some from Providence in the near future.

Computer Room & Carts

Here are a couple of pictures of our computer lab and one of the carts.
See how nice and neat the power cords are in the cart in the above picture?
Believe it or not, even though I numbered the shelves (and the corresponding computers) if the students put the computers away unobserved the cart will turn into an absolute Gordian knot of chaos!
I also like the cart keys because it looks like you are setting the launch codes both keys need to be turning to gain access.
Each student is issued a certain number on both cart one and two. That is then the computer they use each and every time.
More Power Points are on the way.

Black History Powerpoint 1

I will be posting some of our students' power points here as part of the EDU 921 assignments. I will ask other students to comment on presentations and possibly to explain why they chose the historical figure they did their project on.
I (we) are using www.slideshare.net to host our power points.

How Our Students Use the Computers

Our computer policy at Ocean Tides is somewhat limited/restricted. We use a very strict web filter which even blocks many of the blogs we are assigned to read for this class. I don't know how it decides what to block. Our resident students are adjudicated, therefore they are not allowed to access emails or any type of social networking web site. This presents challenges to my integrating this blog into classroom assignments. I have been working with our network server team to figure out how we can address this.
Here is what we are currently doing:
We have a computer lab with eight computers. We also have twenty-four laptops which are divided into two carts (we call them cows) of twelve computers each -one cart per floor. This provides for enough time and resources that each student is guaranteed some personal computer time throughout the semester.
In order to prevent "digital mischief" (of the type where another student's work may "accidentally" be erased by another student) each student is assigned 1 gig of space in a personal folder on the Ocean Tides server. In order to access this folder the student must log in with their name and personal identifier (it is the student's school ID # to prevent passwords being forgotten). Anything they save automatically goes into their folder. Each teacher then has their own log in name and password access to the network from the teacher's computer. In other words we can open the students folders from our desks and put in comments, personalized tests and projects and we can also check progress on tasks.
This sounds wonderful and secure but as the internet expands and creates ISP filters/bypasses (vtunnel for example) vigilance is still required when the students use the internet.
This system is new and we are just discovering wrinkles and ruts that we are trying to smooth out.
I will take pictures later this week to show the cows and lab.
Tomorrow is career day and I have a lot of organizing to do!

Purpose and Goals

The purpose of this Blog will be to provide Ocean Tides' students and staff a place to post and share assignments and information. Comments from the public would be nice as well! Our goal is to get more of our students to maximize their exposure to appropriate technological trends on the read-write web. Social Networking websites are prohibited at our school so this Blog will hopefully encourage our students to comment on their own portfolios and generate positive peer reviews instead of just using blogs to try to check for friend requests!
As of February 26, 2007 all students will have completed a Black History power point presentation focused an historically significant person of their choice. I hope to post a few here in the upcoming days.
Students are also starting to create science fair projects.
Progress and ideas will be posted shortly!
You can check our school website by clicking on the blog profile.

Welcome!!