Grade+7+&+8

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**VIDEO GAME DESIGN MODULE**
Game Maker 8 is a free download here. It allows students to design and run their own video games. Game Maker 8 is available on several of the Windows PC's in the lab.

LESSON SUMMARIES

 * The Internet Makes Your Feelings Public**

The Internet connects people from all over the world. Behind every bit of data is a person who chooses to share it with everyone else on the web. This data could be a bit of writing about thier personal feelings. Once they put it on the Internet, that information is entirely public. It immediately becomes a part of their digital footprint.

[|We Feel Fine.org] is a web-based tool that searches blogs on the web, gathers people's feelings, and brings them all to one location. Anyone in the world can look up how people feel according to emotion, age, gender, location, or weather.

Posting how you feel about something on the Internet has its positive and negative sides. What you post can be seen by anyone who comes across it, but at the same time it lets you get in touch with people who feel the same way. Before you post something on the web, think: Is this something I want //the whole world// to know? If the answer is no, then maybe you shouldn't post it.


 * What is the Internet?**

There are many parts that make up the Internet. The Internet is...

An **//Infrastructure//**, a collection of physical parts that make up a greater whole. All around the world, there is a giant network of servers, cables (T3, Fibre-Optic, and Telephone), satellites, and wireless towers that make up the superhighway that connect computers to each other, allowing the Internet to exist.

A **//Protocol//**, a series of commands. When you access the Internet on your computer, you send commands to get data from other computers. How do our computers know where this data is, and where it is going? Each device on the giant network of the Internet has a unique I.P. (Internet Protocol) address. Just like your house has a unique address, your computer has a unique I.P. on the Internet. When you type in a web address, it acts as a pointer to the I.P. address of the computer where that data is stored. Then, your computer accesses that data and brings it back to your I.P. for you to see.

A web of interlinked **//Data//**. When we surf the web, we explore a series of files called web pages, which are linked together. "Hyperlinks" are pointers to other web pages that allow us to navigate from page to page. It is called the "World Wide Web" because these pages are stored on computers all over the world, and are all interconnected.