Grade 7

Week of 28 March

We began working on our final monument proposals in teams.

Weeks of 28 February; 7, 14, & 21 March

We continued brainstorming ideas for our yearlong project on monuments and memorials. We analyzed a few Philadelphia examples (Scottish Memorial, Irish Memorial, Holocaust Memorial Plaza) and Mr. Smith introduced a few additional topics for us to consider (fight for Philly transit equity, South Philadelphia Underground Railroad station) to help us think about what our final products might look like. We must build a website, a model, and a digital map.

We also explored the idea that we can use more abstract and artist designs for our memorials by starting string art projects. These projects involve identifying a design, sizing the design to match a piece of wood that we select, identifying paint and string colors, sanding and painting the wood, hammering nails that outline the design, and connecting string in patterns around the nails.

Weeks of 24 January; 7 & 14 February

We returned to our yearlong theme of monuments and memorials by beginning to brainstorm topics, people, and/or events that we believe deserve more recognition in our city. We are in the process of asking people around us and searching the internet for ideas from history.

We also began learning about our computer numerical control (CNC) machine—Carvey—because we may use it to design prototypes and models for our monument proposals. We discussed a video that compares Carvey, a tool for subtractive manufacturing, to a 3D printer, a tool for additive manufacturing. The Carvey is able to carve designs in a range of materials, such as plastic and wood. To become acquainted with the Carvey, we're designing things that are personal, primarily our own names and interests. 

We also learned about encoding color images with binary code. We discussed how three LEDs (red, green, and blue—abbreviated as RGB) can be used to produce a lot of different colors. This involves turning some lights on and others off. Or making some brighter than others. We can control which LEDs are on and off using 1s and 0s, too! 

We used the pixel widget in code.org to make different colors. We also tried to recreate some images in color using 6 bit codes, 2 bits for red, green, and blue each.

Week of 8 November

We learned about the importance of making our websites more accessible. First, we reflected on some examples of universal design in the world around us. Then, we discussed the importance of:

• using heading and paragraph tags so that screen readers can help a user understand which content is most important on a webpage and how it's organized; 

• adding descriptive alt text in our code so that a screen readers can describe an image to the user; and

• ensuring that the text and background color combinations we use have enough contrast.

All of these moves are particularly useful to users with low or no vision. However, they also are useful for other reasons. Organizing content with headings and paragraph helps all readers understand which content is important and how its related. Alt text helps search engines catalogue the images on a webpage. Contrast makes users work less hard to understand the text on a page.

Week of 1 November

After completing the practice modules for HTML and CSS paragraphs, headings, and images, we used what we learned to create an example webpage about a topic of our choosing.

Week of 25 October

We continued to use Web Lab on code.org to learn about how websites are made. We added on to our knowledge of HTML and CSS tags by learning how to insert images into a webpage.

Week of 13 September

We explored a map of monuments and public art in Philadelphia. We practiced changing the views (location, name, or thumbnail image) to help us find a monument that interested us. We selected a monument that we felt some kind of connection to or interest in and practiced adding links to a slideshow. We then shared the monuments we found with others in the class.