Jump to content

ICT Club Ideas

abillybob

By abillybob
in General Chat

 Share

Recommended Posts

abillybob

abillybob

Posted
Posted

Hey Guys,

 

I have been running an ICT Club for around 2 months now twice a week. But I've finally ran out of ideas....

 

I have taught them how to build a computer and theory behind it

What components are called, what they do

Let them create a poster making their own gaming computer from sites such as buyer

Showed them RiseVision and how to upload pictures and display them on all TV's

Showed them how to use FileCloud (our onsite cloud storage)

 

Now what....

 

I'm finding it increasingly hard to think of new things to show and do with them as they are only primary school children from year 3 up to year 6 so their abilities differ quite a lot due to their age. They actually seem to be causing me more work now and certain things like our RiseVision screens I've had to go back and sort them out because it's too advanced for them though the Head and Deputy are really pushing me to do this with the kids. It takes up a lot more of my time having to plan and teach them something when I have so many other jobs on anyway it's all killing me at the mo!!!

 

Do any of you guys have any suggestion regarding what I can do with them?

halbaradkenafin

halbaradkenafin

Posted
Posted

Any funding to buy a few Raspberry Pis? There are lots of resources on their site for primary school and onwards, you could probably adapt some of them for use without the Pis.

 

The other option is to ask them what they'd like to do, they will probably come up with a bunch of things that aren't possible but you might get a few gems that are worth exploring.

davyboi

davyboi

Posted
Posted
Any funding to buy a few Raspberry Pis? There are lots of resources on their site for primary school and onwards, you could probably adapt some of them for use without the Pis.

 

The other option is to ask them what they'd like to do, they will probably come up with a bunch of things that aren't possible but you might get a few gems that are worth exploring.

 

I saw an interesting website that talked about making switches out of sweeties etc then programming them so that when pressed it controlled scratch on the raspberry Pi will try and find it again

Oaktech

Oaktech

Posted
Posted

Start explaining how the interwebs works, see if you can get a local ISP to come talk to the kids?

 

Get them to hook some stuff together with a desktop switch, get some DNS and DHCP going?

 

Get them to install their own OS in a VM or something - I'd be pretty excited about getting to play with windows 10 before my mates!

Bompalompalomp

Bompalompalomp

Posted
Posted
Computer history! That was my computer club's favourite part after building a computer. I taught them all about Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace and the analytical engine, Bletchley Park's war efforts and so on. None of the girls could have even named a computer pioneer before, but they decided Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing and Grace Hopper were their favourite people they'd learned about afterwards. :)
abillybob

abillybob

Posted
  • Author
Posted
Start explaining how the interwebs works, see if you can get a local ISP to come talk to the kids?

 

Get them to hook some stuff together with a desktop switch, get some DNS and DHCP going?

 

Get them to install their own OS in a VM or something - I'd be pretty excited about getting to play with windows 10 before my mates!

 

So would I but when I got them building a computer and Installing Windows 8.1 they where bored out of their brains... Some even ask can we go outside now. I tell them it's a club you don't have to attend! Then some of them run away skipping!

They don't even know what Windows is and I'm sure they don't care about Networking! I might try scratch with them then today...

 

I do have some Raspberry Pi's (Only two) I will have a look on that website thank you everyone :)

7UD9

7UD9

Posted
Posted
How about some Cryptography? We have a very popular Crypto Club ran by a maths teacher here (they recently won the School Cyber Challenge!)
rad

rad

Posted
Posted

We run one everyday, its called Homework Club.

 

My collegue opens a room 8-8.40am and we do a lunch one for half hour 12.40-1.10.

Duranis

Duranis

Posted
Posted (edited)

What kind of media resources do you have available? Some chromakey (green screen) stuff with them would probably be a lot of fun. Could get them to storyboard a short sequence, make up backgrounds in whatever image editing software you use (or go out and take photos and then edit them) and then record clips over a green screen (there for sure must be some A1/A2 green paper/card you can get to improvise a screen).

 

I remember there being a nice bit of chromakey freeware kicking around a year or 2 ago but cannot for the life of me remember what it was called :(

 

Covers a lot of areas and could be spread over a few weeks (coming up with a story, making background images, recording video, editing it together).

 

We run afterschool clubs here (runs for 5 weeks at a time) and I have been thinking about volunteering to do a media/ICT club doing this or maybe stop motion animation.

 

I'm at a primary school as well and it is hard as kids (mostly) don't really care about the history of something or how they work. They just want to be doing something fun which they are getting some kind of "reward" from completing (i.e. I programmed this and I made the robot do that, I took these photos and edited them together to create this mega monster picture, etc). The end result needs to be interesting and unusual enough for them to put the effort in.

 

Building a PC doesn't really give them that reward at the end because "hey I spent an hour sticking these boards in and installing windows and hey... its a computer.... just like the one over there which I could have just turned on and used in 5 minutes". A lot of kids are fairly used to using different OS's (from iOS/Android and whatever PC OS they have come across to Xbox/Playstation/NDS) so showing them another OS that does the same thing but looks different isn't going to be a draw.

 

Not saying all kids are like this but most of them are (My 9 year built his own PC and loved that he had put it together himself, I guess also he had a larger reward in that he had his own PC at the end of it as well). Just need to either have a large enough "reward" for large amounts of "effort" or lots of small "rewards" for small chunks of "effort".

 

Alternatively does your school have anything like purple mash/skooville, etc. Some of the teachers here run a skooville club (which I think is actually pretty unstructured, the kids basically just play on there together). The kids seem to enjoy it though and if you wanted to put a bit of effort in you could offer rewards for them completing things (our old IT teacher used to use skooville coins as rewards for doing stuff in IT club and the kids loved it).

Edited by Duranis
AMLinington

AMLinington

Posted
Posted

If these are primary school age children, I think some of the ideas here are a little advanced. The Lego avatar is a good idea. When I did my PGCE one of my mentors and I disagreed REALLY strongly about pedagogy but she had a philosophy about doing a practical EVERY SINGLE LESSON. I disagreed with her in many instances but I can't deny that the pupils were engaged. I remember in primary school back in the olden days of BBC Micros and early lego programs and I loved playing with things. Lego Technics used to be a thing, perhaps it still is.

 

Every January a bunch of new make-your-own-something magazines come out and one of them is a 3D printer. Ultimately when you calculate how much it will cost it'll be something like £900 which is INSANE money, but what about getting the kids building a 3D printer to print models and toys? There are plenty of open source projects for the software and I'm sure you can raid popular gaming install directories for model archives (I have a program that extracts World of Warcraft character and item files and turns them into paper models).

 

As an extracurricular club, you want to engage the kids and get them having fun - toys all the way. Borrow a games console and have them play games - it's a good learning opportunity to discuss online safety. Get them understanding graphics processing etc.

Anoia42

Anoia42

Posted
Posted

Yes to Scratch and animations. The Pi stuff takes too long for a club that lasts half an hour, though the older ones enjoyed it.

Mine have also enjoyed taking apart the stack of dead laptops that we seem to have accumulated - it's much easier to let them go for scrap after that! They are UKS2 though. The younger ones mainly like to explore the programs they have used in class or in earlier years. Lots of 2simple drawings and similar. They also like Duck builder and other strategic games.

DB91

DB91

Posted
Posted
Get them to make a podcast

 

I did similar, did a news channel.

 

Also had Minecraft installed on a couple of Pi's and the kids built a pretty impressive world on there.

crc-ict

crc-ict

Posted
Posted
Arduino!! get the kids into basic electronics!

 

+1

 

I was going to suggest Arduino. Quite easy to get going and build a traffic lights or something like that.

 

If you are lucky and your school has/had Flowol, you might find some of the Mimic kits around which give you bare bones of gear needed to build various things.

  • 11 months later...
katmax

katmax

Posted
Posted
Hi, can you download free programs to your computers? If you can there's ejay, algodoo, crazytalk, muvizu. There are also some online activities such as fluxtime, incredibots, benettonplay, blockcad lego. I'm afraid this is off the top of my head- I'll have a look at my stuff and add some more ideas later.

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing


×
×
  • Create New...