COMPUTERS/BUSINESS
CURRICULUM GUIDE
| Business/Mean Jeans | Excel/Stock Market | Employability Skills |
| Filmmaking | Front Page/Yearbook | MS Word/Publisher |
| Animation/Claymation |
Business/Mean Jeans Manufacturing: Back to top
This course is designed to teach the fundamentals of managing a variety of businesses. The entire class is turned into the town of Pettisville, Ohio. Each person is assigned a business to run and daily activities to complete. All businesses in the class interact with each other. The students will learn bookkeeping, record keeping, how to write checks, balance a checkbook and make deposits along with paying bills and conducting business.
Excel/Stock Market Simulation: Back to top
Required to take 2 Trimesters to be in this course.
This course begins with the students becoming familiar with the spreadsheet program Excel. Spreadsheets are reports that are used for business and financial applications that analyze data in a table format. The students will learn how to set up spreadsheets by analyzing the data and creating the formulas needed.
In the second half of this class, the students will compete with schools all over the state of Michigan in a Stock Market Simulation over the Internet. They will invest in real stocks and monitor them on a daily basis. The will learn the basic concepts about the stock market and how it affects the economy, Dow Jones Industrial Average, Stock Splits and Price per Share. The students will research companies and read financial statements to try and make informed decisions.
Employability Skills: Back to top
This class is designed to provide the students with the skills to become employable. The class concentrates on goal setting, personality inventories, research into possible careers and what type of education is needed to accomplish these careers. They will be given information on effective interviewing and compile answers to the most asked interview questions. The students will compile a portfolio which will include: resume, reference sheet, cover letter, follow up letter, work journal, interest surveys, application and all assignments completed. The purpose of the course is to show the students the options available post graduation. The programs MOIS and Bridges are used to facilitate the learning and information process.
Front Page/Yearbook: Prerequisite- .5 Computer Back to top
This course has two components. First, the students will be exposed to Front Page, a web design program. The concepts that will be taught are: creating the initial web page, adding pages, formatting text, adding images, using themes, using templates, creating and editing hyperlinks, adding elements and components and tables. The students will start with a single page and build upon it until they have developed a website with multiple pages and links.
This class also has a Yearbook component. The students will help design, compose and assemble the school yearbook. They will be responsible for completing each page, selecting pictures, writing captions, soliciting advertisements, arranging and designing advertisements and all jobs that guarantee a successful yearbook.
This course is designed to teach the filmmaking process. This process includes: Development, Pre-production, Production, Post-Production and Distribution. Students will brainstorm film ideas, develop a script and storyboard, plan out shots, learn the digital camera, learn their script lines, and act in their own movies. They will learn different camera angles, how to shoot effective shots and film short movies. The movie will then be edited down on computer using a digital editing program. Titles, transitions, and music will be added in preparation for recording the final production onto videotape.
MS Word/Publisher: Back to top
This course is designed as an introduction to computers class. MS Word is a word processing program that will show the students how to write letters, do outlines and reports. Students will learn formatting and editing techniques along with copying, pasting and cutting of text. This course will familiarize students with dropdown menus and toolbars and this knowledge can be transferred to all other Microsoft programs.
MS Publisher is a desktop publishing program. The students will learn to create flyers, business cards, newsletters, and all documents, which require manipulation of space. There are a variety of templates and wizards to assist the user in formatting creative documents.
This course
teaches the fundamentals of animation. The
concept of animation is to draw the same subject in a variety of cels, moving
said object slightly in each frame. Much as a flipbook, the Disney Animation program will string
the cels together to give the illusion of movement.
Claymation
uses the same concept except the students will create a three-dimensional
subject in clay. This subject is
then photographed digitally, moving the object slightly in each picture.
The picture will be loaded into the Picture Works program which will
layer them together to give the project movement.