Cogneeto, Global Impact, Grade 8 Registration and more!

Good morning everyone! Here are some updates about what is going on.

We are going to be piloting a new program called "Cogneeto". ( http://cogneeto.ca ) This is an online program which allows for students to create projects, offer feedback to one another, revise their own work, and eventually hand in their finished copy. We're going to be doing some testing this week to see how it works, and hopefully will be using it for our next project in ELA.

Students are working on a quick intro assignment using Cogneeto. They should have access to this on any computer with Internet access. The first part is two paragraphs, which need to be completed by tonight. Many students finished during class, but there is still a number that need to complete this tonight.

A note about Cogneeto: It seems to work best in Google Chrome. If you need to download Chrome, you can find it here: https://www.google.com/chrome

Global Impact Projects are now overdue. Students who have not completed this project can expect to be spending lunch hours with me until they are done.

Grade 8 registrations have gone home today! Please make sure that you read over all the information on your child's form. Check that everything is filled in correctly, and that they have chosen band or PA correctly, and sign the bottom. These forms are due Tuesday April 24th. Note that if you are interested in hockey academy, that you should just write that in on the form.


Thanks to all of the students for their patience while I was gone this week due to my wedding! We're back on track now, and ready to rock our way through the last few months of classes.

Global Impact Project - The Issues

We have been brainstorming a list of environmental problems in our school, community, country and world. Below is the collection of environmental issues that we brainstormed as a class, and could be used for your Global Impact Project research. 

• Wasting energy
• Littering
• Oil Spills 
• Poaching (killing animals illegally)
• Air Pollution
• Water pollution (dumping in lakes)
• Toxic Waste - 
• Water contamination, soil contamination. 
• Noise pollution
• Smog (air pollution)
• Acid Rain (air pollution)
• Over-hunting
• Light pollution
• Fossil Fuels
• Smoking
• Wasting water, leaving the tap running
• Wasting Food
• Recycling
• Over farming
• Burning plastic (air pollution)

• Blue boxes aren't being used. Mess from Blue box?
• Poaching - illegal hunting
• Taking shortcuts to save money (eg. Sometimes companies sacrifice safety to cut costs. Makes it easier to break, like oil lines)
• Gas usage: More and more people are using gas. Car pooling? 
• Convenience foods --> too much packaging = lots of waste
• Busses would help to conserve gas, pollution, etc. 
• Carpooling -->pick each other up to go places
• McDonald's & Tim Hortons --> coffee cups on the ground Maybe make their stuff biodegradable
• Wasting paper
• Library vs buying books
• Forest Fires
• Deforestation (cutting down trees)
• Air pollution (eg. smoking, cars, industry, fireworks)
• Recycled backpacks? Use technology instead of paper
• Pens that break down in compost
• Composting
• Excessive Energy consumption: Video games using a HUGE amount of power to run, leaving lights on, leaving computers running, cruising Facebook forever
• Smoking -->pollution
• War, destruction, nuclear bombs
• Drive-thru's ppl leave cars running for a long time. 
• Cutting down forests for city expansion
• Water pollution -->gross lakes, plastic in the ocean
• Over Fishing

This list is not inclusive of ALL problems facing our community. If you can think of others issues that you think about please leave them in the comments below!

Once you choose an issue that you want to try to help, start researching to find out more about it. Make sure to use the Research Jot Note sheet to keep track of your research. (You can find a digital version of that handout in the Resources section.)