In grades 6-8, students continue their quest for technological literacy as skills are honed. Word processing documents have a more professional look as desktop publishing skills are acquired. Databases are created and data is disaggregated with Boolean searches provoking higher-ordered thinking skills. Forecasts and predictions are made using formula functions in a spreadsheet. Telecommunications projects with global neighbors increase awareness.
Students incorporate digital images into published work and use multimedia in authentic assessments.
By the time a student leaves 8th grade, they are literate with the productivity tools such as the word processor, database, spreadsheet, telecommunications, and multimedia and are able to collaborate with technological communities on networks in an acceptable manner. Through English classes, students worked on word processing skills while identifying subject-verb agreement. Students used their autobiographies and highlighted subjects and verbs. A reading of the Diary of Anne Frank included an Internet scavenger hunt on the Holocaust. Student production activities included a news story file, an image file, and a newsletter file, which were combined, along with other information to produce a newsletter.