Laptop Care

Learning Outcomes

Content

Students will...

1. know how to take care of their laptops according to the 1:1 laptop program handbook.
2. use basic graphic design skills.

Technology skill(s)

Students will...

1. create a Pages poster.
2. make a Blogger blog post.

Laptop Care

As a whole class, click through the following slides to learn about how to care for your laptop.

Project - Design a Poster

Create a poster using Pages on your MacBook to teach other middle school students about laptop care.

Pick ONE topic from the list below.

1. Always carry your laptop safely.
2. Always zip your laptop case completely before you leave class.
3. Keep your laptop away from liquids and food.
4. Store your laptop in your locker safely.
5. Don't crowd your laptop in your backpack.

Before you begin designing, look at the posters below. All of them were made with Pages on a Mac. These posters look good because the creator followed a set of graphic design rules.

NEED PHOTOS?

1. You can use any of these photos taken by Ms. Dowd. (Give Ms. Dowd credit!)
2. Or search Creative Commons at search.creativecommons.org. You will learn more about this site as you go through BootCamp.

Click through the following Poster Design BootCamp slideshow for some graphic design tips and tricks for well designed posters. (If you have trouble viewing the slides, click here to open in a new window.)

Now take some time to think of a creative idea for creating a poster for ONE of the topics above. Feel free to sketch your idea on paper.

When you're ready to start creating your poster in Pages, look through this Getting Started in Pages slideshow for how to begin and a few other help items. Note: It's important that you convert your document to Page Layout in order to design a poster. See the first few slides for instructions on how to open Pages and do this.

(If you have trouble viewing the slides, click here to open in a new window.)

Now get started in Pages and keep these poster design tips in mind! When you are finished, look through these tips again and ask yourself if you followed them.

1. Begin on paper
2. Only use photos you have permission to use
3. Limit number of photos
4. Cut photos from background
5. Use consistent colors
6. Only use two fonts
7. Shapes are fun
8. No paragraphs

Share your Learning (Put your Poster on your blog!)

The activity for this lesson is to share your poster design on your blog. When you are finished with your poster, do the following:

1. Take a screenshot of your finished poster. (Command-Shift-4 and then draw a box around your poster. This will create a screenshot saved on your desktop.)
2. Make sure you are logged in to your SAS Google account and then go to blogger.com.
3. Create a new blog post.

Blog post title - Laptop Care

Labels - Copy and paste ALL of the following core labels into the label area of your blog post.

gr6, homebase, bootcamp, math, pe, rla, science, ss

Now copy and paste YOUR elective class labels separated with a comma. Don't copy them all.

art, band, chinese, choir, cooking, dance, drama, french, it, japanese, spanish, strings, support, teched, video, learning

Blog body - Include your poster image and a few sentences about what you'll do to take care of your laptop and why it's important.

Publish!