Prairie Interview

College Community

In December the Creek Squad went to Cedar Rapids Prairie and taught the eighth graders about Google sites. This was a wonderful experience for the Creek Squad because we got to teach students of our age group. It was a fun filled day, doing what the Creek Squad does best... Teaching about technology.
I had a lot of fun and met a lot of nice people. We were welcomed and treated very nicely by the Prairie School. I really enjoyed the experience and hope that it will happen again.

~Moriah Jonhson

Teaching people my own age was an experience that I will carry with me. It was really cool to get a feel for what other students want to know about computers.

~Rachel Beckler

When Creek Squad went to Prarie middle school, I had a lot of fun, and also learned a lot! Plus, I realized that some schools don’t have a lot of new technology to work with. I am a strong Apple person and I had to test my patience when Prarie’s Jr. High didn’t have Apple products. They did, however, have Google App accounts, thank goodness :)

For some reason, I wasn’t expecting that they were going to need a lot of help. I had to use a lot of patience to help people too. I wasn’t used to that, because in the Creek Squad, we’re all advanced and when we do need help, it’s always just a small thing that someone knows right away, and something that’s we’re very quick to get.

Overall, I had to use more “people skills” than I normally do :)

~Lauren Judge

Creek Squad went on a “field trip” to College Community. We taught the 8th grade class some basics for Google Applications. Miles, Gene and Ahren presented examples on the board to the class while the rest of us, Bailey, Lauren, Moriah, Cooper, Garrett and Trevor walked around for one-on-one help. As I said, we taught them the basics. We taught them a little bit about Docs and Forms, but the bulk of the presentation were about Sites. The students were instructed to make websites for their reading projects. We taught them how to make, name and personalize their websites and embed forms on their sites. Overall, I think everyone learned a lot. The students at Prairie learned a lot about Sites and the Creek Squad learned a lot about how to teach and how work well with other students. It was super fun and I really wish that we could go back soon.

~Bailey Mooney

Secretary Training

The Creek Squad recently went to Oxford, IA to train some of the secretaries in our schools on Google Docs, so they will be more knowledgeable and to have an easier way to manage their events and keep track of their accounts. Some things we taught them were:

Calendars

1. adding events
2. managing accounts
3. starring events
4. adding flare

Documents

1. changing titles
2. sending to groups
3. sending to personal accounts

They have really enjoyed having some of the Clear Creek students working on and learning about google.

Gene Scwartzman

Summer Training

In August of 2010, we, Creek Squad, took a break from our break and went back to school to train for the school year. It was an all day experience with our tech director, Joe Francis, and the guys from Grant Wood, Stacy Behmer and Andy Crozier.  We got to familiarize ourselves with the schools new laptops and got the chance to have some actual training in the Apple application that come along with them. We made Podcasts after learning how to integrate the different tools together. Creek Squad gave us all a reason to look forward to the school year.

Rachel Beckler

Welcome!

Welcome to the blog for the Clear Creek Amana Creek Squad. Here you will be able able to find links to articles about us and articles written by us for you. Follow us on Twitter! @CreekSquad

How We Started

During the summer of 2010 the Creek Squad presented a presentation to the Clear Creek Amana school board. At this meeting our goal was to get laptops and desktop computers for the Middle School. To achieve this goal we used our technology skills to make a Google Doc PowerPoint. At the beginning of the PowerPoint we knocked them off their feet with an amazing video about the 21st century and how all kids want and use technology. Then we went on talking about the benefits and the obstacles we were going to have to overcome. We talked about how we were going to overcome the obstacles and the problems that we had and needed to overcome. We also talked about our long term goal which was one student to one computer.

In the end, we came out with 110 laptops and 20 desktop computers, and we use these every day in our 21st Century Writing class. We will continue working towards our goal of having every student have their own computer. ~Moriah Johnson