Kalona Elementary Tech Club and Arnie Abrams ideas - a great match!

I found this webinar to be very interesting! I wish I had seen it before we started our after school tech club - because much of what we figured out to do with the kids he had presented in such a pleasant format. We may use some of his handout for when Tech Club starts up next year.

Our Tech Club was made up of 24 4th and 5th graders who met every other Monday night for 8 weeks. There were 2 adults - myself and the elementary librarian. We also invited 3 kids from last year's Tech Club to help out. It was so much fun and so much work!!

We worked on taking images - the nitty gritty. Then we taught them some simple editting techniques and they eited photos. With that info they did a short project where they took pictures to teach a skill and made a wordless slideshow in iPhoto.

Then we showed them how to manipulate the images and mix it with video and they made an iMovie about a place in the world they would like to travel to.

Finally we taught them how to do podcasts with pictures and they did enhanced podcasts of their favorite nursery rhyme.


We also had a year 2 Tech Club. This was a group of 8 kids who met on the alternate Monday nights. These were kids that had been in the club last year - so they were all 5th graders. They worked on creating a movie that could be given to new students and Kindergartners to show them about our school.


For this one we used storyboards, had production meetings, did lots of brainstorming and team trouble shooting. We simply ran out of time. It is a shame - but these projects take LOTS of time if you want to share them with the general public. So - next year I think the year 2 kids - even though they will be different kids - may start where last years kids ended. We shall see