Guess Who's Here...

Stacy! Stacy's here. All of us Creek Squad "veterans" are here training the new Squad. It's a big group this year, and we're starting off with the bar set pretty high. It feels nice to get back into the groove of our meetings with Stacy, I have a lot of faith in this year's group. (: We'll blog some more after today, tell you guys how things went. :D

No Way!!

So, guess what guys! Creek Squad was invited to a tech conference in the Dells! We're all so excited, the trip can't come fast enough. I'm not quite sure on all the details yet, but I'll be sure to update everyone when I am. I know the group is looking forward to sharing our ideas with educators all over, and we are really hoping that this will be starting something new! 

I'll be keeping things posted!

-Cooper Horning

Google Put Us On the Map!

Iowa schools got a little recognition when a post on the "Official Google Enterprise Blog" was made about what Google has learned from it's users over the previous school year. The documentary they had made about The Creek Squad was a part of the blog post. Check it out!

The Official Google Enterprise Blog
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/06/reflecting-on-school-year-with-google.html?spref=tw

We Broke the Spell

The Creek Squad has finally broken out of the grueling dry spell. We ventured out to North Bend and Oxford Elementary schools. It was nice for a change of pace, especially at the end of the school year. Six of us, Moriah Johnson, Lauren Judge, Gene Schwartzman, Rachel Beckler, Trevor Toy, and Cooper Horning.

Thursday the six of us made a trip over to North Bend Elementary in North Liberty to help prepare the future sixth graders for the use of Google Docs. It was nice to have a group of kids who really had no idea what they were doing, but they were awful talkative. It was nice to get out of school to play teacher.
                         - Cooper Horning

Tuesday, six of us went to Clear Creek Elementary in Oxford to start getting our district’s 5th Graders up to speed on their Clear Creek Amana Google Domain accounts. It was nice to teach people that didn’t already know what we planned on teaching them. It’s always fun to see the reactions people have when they learn something new in technology.

                        - Rachel Beckler

Long Time No See!

Stacy's back! We're sitting here contemplating what our next move is.
I'm thinking we should hit the elementary schools soon, even though we've already been out to Amana.
It's just been a bit of a dry spell for us lately, finally Stacy's here to rescue! We're talking about training our seventh graders who are going to step up next year and fill our oversized shoes. Zimmy has narrowed it down to 18 kids who fit the criteria.

Stacy brought up a good point of having two groups of nine. A Google group who specializes in Google Apps, and an Apple group who specializes in all iLife programs and any extra Apple programs and technology. I'll post some more later, I've got to go tune into this meeting. :D

-Cooper Horning

Google Reflections

WOW. That's just about all I can say. I didn't really know what we were in for when we were first told that Google was coming to see us, but I can say it was really nothing like I expected.  The whole day was really relaxed, I didn't feel like the Creek Squad was trying hard to be something we weren't. Thanks to Mrs. Zimmerman to telling us that we should just go ahead and be ourselves, because that's who Google came to see, not some totally perfect and quiet kids. I mean, even the Google guys were relaxed. I enjoyed the cameraman's shirt that read, "The internet was down, so I decided to come outside today." Man, there are days, especially in the summer, when I can definitely relate to that.

I loved just hanging out and being techy, I mean... it's what we're best at. It's not that we only hung out with Google either, we held a seminar for teachers to come in and learn more about Google Documents and Sites. We held our usual Creek Squad meeting, and discussed new technologic findings and ideas. It was great, and I can't wait to see the finished product. Maybe they'll come back to check up on us again!

~ Cooper Horning

As you probably already know, Google came to our school to interview and learn more about the Creek Squad. While they were here, they interviewed us, recorded one of our meetings, and recorded us training some teachers. This was a great experience for the Creek Squad and I thought it made us realize some things that we had never really realized before.

-Moriah Johnson

On the 10th of March, Google came to CCA Middle School to film the Creek Squad. They interviewed us and then filmed us having somewhat of a normal day... If normal is having a camera crew follow you to the lunch room!!! :) Then they filmed us having a normal meeting, and also they recorded us training a few teachers. It was very exciting!!! I was kind of nervous, but not that bad. It surprised me :)

~Lauren Judge

Good morning, GOOD MORNING!

....It's great to stay up late! Haha, no. Today's the day! Google is coming! We're expecting them around 11:00, they'll snoop about for a while to find the perfect place for the Creek Squad's close-up. We're looking spiffy in our blue polos, and we're all just bouncing off the walls due to excitement. A few of us came in early this morning to tweak some last minute stuff, and to put together some outlines for teacher training today. Off to class! We'll blog ya later (;


-Cooper Horning

Marco Polo..

We're getting official now! Not only is Google coming to get to know us, but we're getting POLO SHIRTS. They're a beautiful Clipper blue, with white accent.
Enjoy(:

-Cooper Horning

Google's Coming to Town!!!

This is the official turning point for the Creek Squad, Google has notified us that they're interested in coming to Iowa and filming us in action. They're interested in all of the support from parents, peers, and the district. Google has told us that they're interested in filming us and using us as models for other schools.
This is a HUGE achievement, we're all super excited.

-Cooper Horning

Check out this article about Google coming to Clear Creek by Patrick Hogan!
Read it!

Future Creek Squad

We had a meeting today, we talked about finishing up our application for next year's Creek Squad members, our sixth and seventh graders. We planned out questions and other details for the form and sent it out via Google Docs. We will hopefully be posting a sign-up sheet for them so we can contact them with further information.  We're hopefully going to get lots of tech-savvy kids to sign up.

-Trevor Toy

Test Tweet Post

Creek Squad just connected with the Twitter!

Twitter

The Creek Squad got started with Twitter when our Grant Wood consultant, Stacy Behmer, brought up the idea of a Creek Squad Twitter account. On one of our work days we went through the process of creating an account. We then went and started choosing followers as a group. Afterwards we decided that we would choose “tweeters” every week who would tweet for the Creek Squad account.


Miles Lucas

Mimio Interactive Smart Board

On the week of  January 10th, 2011, three members of the Creek Squad were chosen to participate in a private class to learn about Interactive Boards. David Herzog took time out of his day to teach myself (Lauren Judge), Rachel Beckler, and Bailey Mooney, along with our Director of Technology, Joe Francis.

In the class, we learned how to correctly calibrate the board and pen. We also learned how to set different commands to the different buttons on the pen.There was an A button and a B button. You could set either to be the right clicker, and the other to be one of a number of different options.

Until you are very comfortable with the pen you use for the board, your handwriting on the notebook is sort of messy and hard to read. No problem :) There is a tool called Ink Recognition. You can select your hand written text, and use the Ink Recognition tool and it will turn it into a font! You can then choose the size, font, color, etc all right from the board instead of going back to your computer and typing it on a key board.

You can also pull a keyboard up directly on the interactive board. Then you just type with the stylus. You can Google search, type in URLs (site addresses), and anything else you could do with a keyboard.

We learned a lot more, and I was very interested in this subject. I have so far used Smart Board and Mimio brands. Each is very interesting and fun to use :)

I would love to learn more on the topic and be able to master the pen :D Hahah, I had some issues with actually writing with the pen. It looked like a Kindergartener’s handwriting :)

-Lauren Judge :)