Tech Club Final Day (6)

On this final day at tech club I am the first to arrive.  There are two students who have worked with us before and so after I get set up they begin working on their projects about 15 minutes early.  I am okay with this because they already know what they are doing and the others will be here soon enough.  After a while more kids come and join and we get all of them to create new projects.  They want to see how much they can finish on this last day.  Also, Mel brought a flash drive so the students could have their projects saved and sent home with them.  They got really excited about that. I have gotten a really bad cold and am trying not to work too closely to the students, but it gets unavoidable when another first grade girl comes in to work.  She gets super frustrated really quickly.  It was hard to work with her because she just kept yelling at me.  I tried to be as patient as possible, but I know I was not completely successful due to the short temper I get when I am ill. Overall though today was very successful and I truly think that digital stories was a great activity for these students to work on.

Tech Club Day 5

This week we are continuing to work on the digital stories.  We are again in the classroom where we began doing tech club.  It is nice using a classroom because there are less distractions and we aren't distracting the the other activities going on in the library.  The kids who came again this week which were here last week want to start over on their projects.  I am working with a little girl again who needs help with all of the spelling and sometime with the motor skills.  It is really difficult for these first graders to click and drag the picture onto the desktop and then back into iMovie.  They get it to the edge of the mouse pad but then aren't sure how to drag it further.  I just try to be encouraging saying they almost got it so they do not get too frustrated.  With the encouragement this girl starts to thrive.  I am glad I have two other leaders in my group as this girl takes up all of my attention.  Again the movies are going over great.  We are coming back tomorrow to finish up our tech club visits before all our finals and homework gets crazy next week. Miss Mel warns that these students we have today will not be there tomorrow as they get out of school early.

Tech Club Day 4

This week in Tech Club we decided to go back to doing digital stories.  The students that had been working on them truly enjoyed the project and were getting a lot of experience working with the laptops.  This time we had mostly a different group of students.  It was nice to be able to share this project with more students.  We knew that we had this day and two more for the students to work on their projects.  It gave an ample amount of time for them to finish them if they wanted.  This week there was mostly boys and they all made their digital stories on an online game name Minecraft.  There was also a girl who had been working on her digital story for about 6 weeks at this time and her project was getting quite large.  The program kept crashing every time she tried to view the movie full screen.  She just learned to view it in the small window instead and that seemed to fix the problem.  We will continue to work on digital stories until we are done with tech club because the program coordinator and the children really like the project.

Tech Club Day 3

This week we introduced Google Earth to the students in tech club.  We got 5 new students who hadn't worked with the tech club before.  We decided to come up with a list of places the students would search for like Mt. Everest, Eiffel Tower, their house etc.  Trying to find their houses was probably the most exciting part for them.  It was really cool for them to see their houses from the sky.  They also enjoyed looking at their school and MSU.  A lot of the students started to get bored with the project after a while. I had a first grade student again and it was hard for her just to type in the places to look up.  She didn't fully understand really what we were doing.  She thought that Mt. Everest was a really cool place to look at though, which was exciting to see. We also looked up Disney Land.  Some students stopped working on google earth for the last 15 minutes of our time together.  One student worked on educational games, the other played on Tux paint.  There was one student though that really really enjoy Google Earth and was looking up places I had never even heard of.  His father is a geologist so it was really interesting to see all the places he was interested in seeing.  We aren't sure yet what we are doing next week since we had troubles taking up the entire time.  We will get together or email each other over the week.

Tech Club Day 2

This day of tech club we are continuing the work of the digital stories.  The children have really enjoyed the project thus far and are content on working on it for another week.  We did run into the problem of losing one project because some of the computers got mixed up and a project got deleted.  It was really upsetting to a 3rd grade girl.  I think the actual digital story project has been successful because the students really enjoy it.  Some of the students did get a little bored by the end of today though, so we will be introducing google earth to them next week.  I did have to sit with one 1st grader the whole time and help her spell everything she was searching.  It wasn't bad, but a little harder with the young ones.

Tech Club Day 1

I am doing my tech club experience at Morning Star School from 4-5 p.m.  We will always have about 5-10 students, and they are subject to change depending on our activities.  The coordinator wants us just to find something fun and educational that uses involves typing.  We are allowed to use Mac Books provided to us by the school.  The first day we just observed the other group working with the kids on digital stories.  The project had already lasted a couple of weeks, but the children still wanted to work on them.  The  students would make a movie about any topic they wished to do.  Some added voice overs.  They seemed to really enjoy working with the program iMovie.  I am worried I won't be much help because I am not use to using Macs.  I think this is a great project for students to use.  I'm excited to see how well the students will be able to use this because it should be a good lesson plan when I am working in an elementary school myself.

Podcast:PBS Cyberchase Smartboard Games

Our podcast did not save on Podomatic. It was on PBS Cyberchase Smartboard games that was explained on free4teachers.com

Courtney Lambert has our notes that we took about the games.

Digital Story Telling Contextual Analysis

Common Core Standards

Grade 3 

Reading Standard 2

Recount stories, including fables, folktales, and myths from diverse cultures (including those by and about American Indians); determine the central message, lesson, or moral and explain how it is conveyed through key details in the text.

Writing Standard 3

. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences

Writing Standard 6

With guidance and support from adults, use technology to produce and publish writing (using keyboarding skills) as well as to interact and collaborate with others.

Montana Technology Standards

3.1 use digital tools for personal expression

3.2 use various digital media to share information and tell stories

Learning Objective: 

Apply the story telling of fables to the students own life by using digital tools.

Each student will create a digital story about an event in their life.  It will be in the form of a fairy tale or fable.   This will be at the end of a unit on fables, folktales and myths from different cultures.  This will allow children to realize that these types of stories are still relevant today.  Also, children will get to use technology to share their stories in a different way.  They can create the story with pictures, videos, music, and text.  If it were on paper the student would have to write the story and illustrate it themselves.  This gives them a different way to express themselves.  It will also allow for variety and give students different views on story telling in the modern world.  This lesson covers many standards from reading and writing to technology standards.  

Tech Club

What challenges do you anticipate?
 One challenge may be having an activity that will fill the entire hour.

What interests you about the placement?
It'll be interesting to see how technologically savvy these elementary kids are.

What scares you about the placement?
I'm afraid I won't be able to find activities that are fun for the children and make them wanting to come back.