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 :)

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