Documents

Course Description - provides the basic narrative description of the class along with the tentative syllabus. This, along with the documents below, form a complete outline of the class for the semester.

Class Rules - This covers many topic areas including: behavior, attendance, grading, homework, and more. This paper needs to be signed by both the student and their parent/guardian. This, along with the AUP below, are required each semester before any computer based work can be undertaken.

Acceptable Use Policy  is required of all students (and staff) before usage of any district computer that is connected to the Internet. All my classes will be using computers during the semester, therefore this district document is required. This paper needs to be signed by both the student and their parent/guardian prior to any computer based assignments. This is the current version from the district, posted November 2014. Also included, is the Distict's Media Release form. Since this course will include various aspects of social media, the form will also need to be completed.

Current Events are a requirement for all my classes. The reasoning is to let the student discover what's going on in the world, practice their judgment, and learn of some point of interest that's perhaps nor occurring in class. This paper discusses the format used for all classes and permissible topics unique to each subject.

Famous Artist -This is a regularly occurring homework assignment to explore professionals in the field. The PDF is an example of the formatting, and the requirements for this assignment.

Remind! is an online system that will send you either a text or email to remind you about important, class related events such as homework, grading cut-offs, and other time sensitive events for the class. When you sign up, I will not see any of your contact information, and you can unsubscribe at any time. 

Software

The software listed below are the main programs that will be used for this course. Additional programs are available, but will likely not see much usage. All the the applications listed on this page are available for free download, and most are open source.

It is advisable to follow the posted links as there are sites out there that also provide these programs, but may have infected files. None of the sites listed here will require payment for download or use of the programs, though they may have a page soliciting for donations. There may also be commercial websites listed, but in those cases, I have listed a disclaimer and the link will take you specifically to the page of the free program listed.

During the installation of any program, problems may occur and neither myself, nor the school can be held responsible. Again, please download from known sources. Every year someone just does a web search and seems to find a virus infected version, sometimes the virus is so bad that all that can be done is to reinstall the entire system.

Inkscape is professional quality vector graphics software which runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It is used by design professionals and hobbyists worldwide, for creating a wide variety of graphics such as illustrations, icons, logos, diagrams, maps and web graphics. Inkscape uses theW3C open standard SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) as its native format, and is free and open-source software.

www.inkscape.org

Blender is a free and open source 3D animation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation. Advanced users employ Blender’s API for Python scripting to customize the application and write specialized tools; often these are included in Blender’s future releases. Blender is well suited to individuals and small studios who benefit from its unified pipeline and responsive development process. Examples from many Blender-based projects are available in the showcase.

www.blender.org

LibreOffice is a powerful office suite; its clean interface and powerful tools let you unleash your creativity and grow your productivity. LibreOffice embeds several applications that make it the most powerful Free & Open Source Office suite on the market: Writer, the word processor, Calc, the spreasheet application, Impress, the presentation engine, Draw, our drawing and flowcharting application, Base, our database and database frontend, and Math for editing mathematics.

www.libreoffice.org

Foxit Reader is a small, lightning fast, and feature rich PDF viewer which allows you to create (free PDF creation), open, view, sign, and print any PDF file. Foxit Reader is built upon the industry’s fastest and most accurate (high fidelity) PDF rendering engine, providing users with the best PDF viewing and printing experience. Available in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

NOTE: This is a commercial website which contains other programs for which you need to pay. Generally, you only need the reader which is a free program, and the link below will take you directly to the page for the free reader.

www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/

Chrome is a fast, simple, and secure web browser, built for the modern web.

NOTE: This is a commercial website offering a free program. Additional plugins are available for this browser, some of which are free and others which carry a charge. Be sure you know what you add to this browser.

www.google.com/chrome/browser/

Videos

NOTE: The videos listed here cannot be viewed on the school's computers due to district filtering...

If the video appears to be fuzzy, pause the video for a few seconds, then resume playing. In my testing this makes the video notably clearer. 

Turn It In - How to register and turn in written assignments to TurnItIn.com.

Class Computers - Some adjustments you may make.

Class Website - How to register and complete Topic 1.

More Coming Soon

Equipment

The equipment listed below is available to all students for class related work. Certain items will need to be checked out, which is done by the temporary surrender of a student ID: nothing else is acceptable. Students are personally responsible for the equipment they check out.

	Graphics Tablet - Each computer has a Wacom Inturos graphics tablet (series 3 or 4) attached and available for use. These are professional tablets which require a special stylus for operation. Please note that the stylus is fragile and a replacement stylus costs ~ $80. Replacement tablet, used: $150-300.
	Scanner - An HP flatbed scanner may be available for use if the particular computer it is attached to is not in use. Please see me for access and instructions.
	Computer - Upon return of the Class Rules, and the District's AUP, each student will be assigned a particular computer for the duration of the semester. Please check your work area upon arrival and inform the teacher present if you notice anything wrong. If there is a problem, please notify the teacher and don't attempt to fix the problem yourself.