Why we love to learn: Paradise Valley students excited about learning through technology

Published in the February 4-17, 2015 issue of Morgan Hill Life

By Jennifer Kingman’s sixth-grade class at Paradise Valley Elementary School

Some famous people who have worked close to Morgan Hill in Silicon Valley, such as Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Bill Gates of Microsoft, and Steve Jobs of Apple, had to learn the skills of technology as we’re doing in school now. These people built computer technology that helped to change the world by making life easier for people — and we can too.

The basic definition of the word “technology” is tools that are used for getting information, communication, entertainment, education, and transportation. We at Paradise Valley learn basic computer skills such as coding. We can make fun games by telling the computer what to do using programming codes called Scratch, Tynker, and Code.org. This is fun because it allows us to be creative.

After some lessons, we can create games — such as one where we can fly the Batwing or another game where we play ping pong. We share the games so that other people can play them and have fun. We learn to customize the games by changing the background and the characters.

Last year, everyone was losing papers and we couldn’t do the daily edits. But now with the Chromebook laptops, we have digital organization and share resources. Last year when we had a writing assignment, we would do it on a home computer. But this year, we can do it in class when we want.

We can have the teacher give us feedback on a report before the due date so we can improve it by revising our assignment. This helps us learn better and get a better grade.

We love to learn about technology because it is exciting and helps us help others. It’s fun because it’s new and a change from what we previously used to do with our school work. Technology helps us collaborate and work with our friends both at home and school.

After a “junior journalist” writing workshop by Morgan Hill Life Publisher Marty Cheek, Jennifer Kingman’s sixth-grade class at Paradise Valley Elementary School wrote this column.