Last Meeting ASP 4/16

On the last day of tech club my group and I decided to use google lit trips to help tell a story. When we got there we wanted to show on the library projector screen. But due to lack of knowledge with the administrator password. The group and I decided to download the story on separate computers. When I finished reading the book about Sam Patch the daredevil jumper, one of my group members had found a website that had learning games that dealt with upcoming earth day. Other things I saw was the students had a little too much energy, and at times were hyper and took a minute to settle down. As soon as these kids were playing games they were all very happy and zombie like while playing games. All in all this was a very interesting project that helped with honing in the skills for young teachers to get them out into the world and involve them in the community.

ASP Meeting 4/9

This week my group and I were finishing up the power points that the kids had made. We were able to use the 'library' at the school that was able to show the power points and the videos we made for the kids. The viewing for the power point was a little slow starting but as soon as the kids got that they are supposed to present their findings of different google earth places. There were some kids that did projects who were not there this week, so our group stood in and did the presentation for those absent kids. After the viewing party we took the children back to their normal ASP classroom meeting place. Then our group got out the computers and told the kids to get on pbskids.org, and let them play educational games. These games are perfect for the little kids because it helps with cognitive functioning, but pbskids.org is just games. This was our second to last meeting so we decided since the ASP teacher will not be present in our last week that the kids will get to decide if they want to do google LIT trips and we will find a book at our local library that has a book for google LIT trips.  

4th Meeting of ASP 4/2

This week we were finishing the power points. This week the weather was still very nice, but for some reason the kids were way more easy to work with. My group and I set the rules that we wanted everyone to be done with their power points today so that we can share them with the whole group next week. Some kids were expressing their objection to finish their power point, but as soon as one little boy that I was working with finished with his he was allowed to play math games and then like a thrust of energy showered over the remaining kids to finish theirs to get to those dreaded math games. Older kids were able to do all their work in one sitting and be done with their presentation way faster than the younger kids. One boy in particular was done before one of the straggler from last week. I was very impressed with this boys willingness to get the project done. The straggler during the first week was very frustrating because he was just using google earth as a joke and just being very disrespectful towards the MSU students and our hard work with this project. But by this week it took a little stern talks from all of us to get him on track and he almost finished his project by the time his parent came.

3rd Day at ASP Tech Club 3/26

On the third week of Tech Club my group and I were using power point and google earth to find a cool place for our students to research. We had posed three questions on the board, where would you like to visit, find three cool pictures of that place, and find three facts about that place. Some of the places that the kids found were Alaska, California, Disneyland, Bahamas, and 49ers stadium. This activity helped the young kindergartens with their keyboarding skills, it helped the older kids with geographical awareness. The first day of this project had a bunch of kids going to different places which caused some dysfunction with policing if the students were actually getting their power point started. Some children were very good in what they were doing staying on task. The two boys I worked with were very hyper because the weather was beautiful. I had trouble keeping them on task and I was getting flustered about the lack of respect I was getting. This meeting was very eye opening too the effects the weather has on different types of children.