Tech Club 12/6

I think if we asked the Whittier kids, they would say this was their favorite day of tech club so far.  Since it was our last day with them and since we made them do a bunch of typing the week before, we decided to give them the option of making music on Garage Band or painting on an online program.  Everybody chose Garage Band, and they all really enjoyed it.  Even though I was not super familiar with the program I was able to work my way around it OK and the kids were pretty good about figuring stuff out to.  Obviously we had them wear head phones while they worked on their creations, but at the end of the hour they got to share their songs with the group.  It was obvious they were very excited about and proud of their work.  A few of them were asking about where to get the program so they could have it at home.  It was a really fun last day of tech club, and was probably the most focused I have ever seen them.

Tech Club 11/29

We wanted the kids to practice typing this week, so we had them play typing games on learninggamesforkids.com.  This was a new site we hadn't used yet so there were some unexpected issues (it  could get really slow, some of the games were boring for the kids).  We only had 4 students this week so it was pretty manageable, which was good because there was a lot of whining and complaining about having to do typing games which is obviously none of their favorite thing to do.  However, it is also something they definitely need to work on so I am glad we had them do it.  I did differentiate for the one 4th grader we had in the club, she was kind of beyond the games the rest of them were playing so to practice her typing as well as her English knowledge I had her create some online mad libs and had her read them out loud to me as well.  It was kind of rewarding because I did feel like it helped solidify some concepts for her (verbs, nouns, plurals, etc.)

Tech Club 11/15

Last week at tech club we introduced the students to Xtranormal.  We had them all create a story on Xtranormal about whatever they wanted.  We had a very small group this time so we each worked one on one with a student.  The 3rd grade girl I worked with was really into the activity--in fact we were rushed towards the end of the hour to get her video published so she could watch it, she spent a lot of time trying to pick her exact characters and voices that she wanted to use (much to my amusement one of her final choices turned out to be Mitt Romney).  All of the kids seemed to have a pretty good time making them and could navigate it pretty well on their own.  I think it is something at least the little I was working with will use again, she was excited to write the website down and go home and show her video to her family.

11/8

This last week we taught our tech club students how to copy and paste and to insert photos into word.  I was surprised by how excited some of them got about it, one of the girls was copying and pasting the entire time and was proud to show Nick and I her finished product.  However, a lot of the kids were pretty bored with it too.  We had them at least work on it for a little bit and then let them play on pbskids.org which they love so much.  One of the girls was playing with Garage Band and she was creating some pretty darn good music, which we played for all of the students near the end of the hour, it seemed to be a pretty good moment for her.  It has been hard from keeping these kids on track and doing what we want them to do, they seem to be pretty used to doing whatever they want.  One of the little girls is pretty active and I have a hard time keeping her from crawling all over the place or trying to leave the classroom. Each week I have had to give her the option of staying on her computer or going back to the gym to join the rest of the after school program, and she usually calms down after that.  Next week I want to try to get there early to get the word exercise opened on each of their computers so they are ready before the kids are able to branch off into other stuff.

Tech Club 11/1

This week was the last week for the 1st cohort, so we kind of collaborated together.  We tried to have the kids type stories about their Halloween on Microsoft Word.  There was quite a range of abilities in the club so while some were able to type up a little story others needed a lot of assistance and focused more on short phrases or single words.  I helped some of these kids, I would ask them a question, such as what their costume was, and have them type it for me.  Sometimes we would chat back and forth so I could have them read what I was writing.  It was interesting to me to see how some of the kids who were so good at playing games online struggled greatly to type and spell.  It made me think that some more typing and spelling kind of activities would be very helpful to them.  They did, however, seem pretty uninterested in the activity, I even had to send one of them back to the gym who refused to participate and wanted only to play games, so we are definitely going to need to try to spice it up a little bit and make it more engaging and structured.

Tech Club 10/25

For our first day at tech club, we observed the students from cohort #1 on their last day of tech club, and joined in on some interactions with the students.  Whittier elementary school has a very popular after school club from what I saw, there seemed to be 50+ students participating.  Tech club, however, is just one part of the after school program, and only students who want to go to tech club have to participate, so there are only a small number that we will be interacting with.  It sounds like it is often the same students each time, with sometimes a few extra on any given day. Yesterday there were 3 girls and 2 boys who came into the library for tech club.  There wasn't a specific plan for this day, the kids were allowed to play the instructional game of their choosing, and most of the students went to pbskids.org to play games.  While it seemed like the kids were pretty interested, sometimes it seemed as though they didn't really know what they should be doing and seemed to seek some kind of guidance.  For this reason I am hoping to provide pretty specific instructions for activities each week so the kids know what they should be doing and to help keep them interested in their activities.  I also think it will be important to establish some regular rules for the students to follow. There were a few times that students had to be told and retold to turn the volume down on their computers, things like that that will be easier to address right away and hopefully just one or a few times instead of every day.  In general I think this tech club will be relatively easy to manage with the large space we are provided, the individual laptops, and small number of students attending.  They seem like really good kids who are pretty funny, I look forward to seeing what we come up with together.

Digital Story assignment

This was my first time ever using iMovie, and that is probably going to show! I really did find the tool very interesting and yes, I could have spent hours messing around with it learning about all the different things it can do.  I am also pretty unfamiliar with using macs so it was hard for me to try to make a movie in a 2 hour period.  However, I am glad I learned about iMovie and definitely feel like I can apply it in the future in my high school english classes.
The digital story I attempted was a trailer for a book.  I think it would be a fun alternative to a book report for students, in which they can incorporate what they have gleaned from a book into a trailer about the book to show to other students.  It would probably be used in a class of mine in which I have the students choose a book from a list I provide, so that everyone makes a different trailer about a different story to present to their peers.  Of course their movies would be a lot more informative than mine was, definitely longer, and would actually incorporate some plot points. I was going to try to do this myself and put in some voiceovers to read the quotes I incorporated but I simply ran out of time.
I like the idea of using this in my class for something like this, it definitely wouldn't replace all essays as writing will be a big emphasis of mine but I think it would be a fun assignment to keep students interested and  allow them to apply their analytical skills creatively to what they are reading.