"I want to see a squirrel throat!" - Tech Club Visit #3

Yesterday Brenda, Shelby, and I went to the CDC at MSU for our third Tech Club visit.  At our last meeting we tossed around lesson plan ideas.  Shelby put together a zoology lesson featuring pictures of animals but only showing a part of the animal.  For example, for the elephant, all we saw in the picture was its trunk.  She put this together in a presentation format - power point, maybe - and was able to go through the high quality pictures easily.

The kids loved guessing what the animals were.  The three of us were able to generate enthusiasm and incorporate learning with silliness, physical movement, a focused lesson, and technology.  There were only one or two animals the kids didn't know.

Here are some things we learned during our visit:

1.  Technology made it easy for us to be flexible and enhance the lesson.
The students were excited to see pictures of the animals.  They jumped up and down and squirmed in their seats.  During the first few pictures they were content to talk about the animals, make animal sounds, and guess what they eat and where they live.  By the third, they were ready to be creative like imagining having a pet rabbit or pet spider and what they would name it.  They also wanted to see a video and we were able to show them one quickly on YouTube.  They LOVED the videos.  They also wanted to see close ups of a hamster's teeth, a beaver's tail, and even a squirrel's throat.  Through Google Images we were able to find most of what they wanted to see.  At one point Brenda used her smart phone to add even more context and images to the lesson.  We kept the group engaged for over 45 minutes by being able to offer them what they wanted to see.  

2.  At this age, students need a fairly rapid pace or they divert their attention.
Technology is meant to move quickly.  We didn't stay on a single photo more than 3 minutes before they were ready to see other images or a video.  We have come to expect video and audio to stream immediately, for high resolution images to be ready for download, and for whatever we want to find to be available in just a few clicks.  It's fast and can work well for this age group that has a relatively short attention span.    

3.  Children have much to add to the lesson and educators should invite their input.
This particular group of kids is awesome.  They are diverse and many of their parents are university professors.  We were astonished at how much one child knew about spiders.  When his mom arrived, we learned that his father is an entomologist.  He taught us some things about what spiders can eat and not eat.  Another little girl wanted to see a squirrel's throat.  Then she wanted to see a beaver's throat.  We wondered if her father was an ENT doctor.  We never found pictures of animal throats, but it added to our group conversation.  We watched a squirrel video and then Brenda took out her phone to show the kids pictures she took of a baby squirrel she rescued from a building at MSU.  Kids are smart and they learn quickly.  They learn even more when they are directly involved.  We let them ask for what they wanted to see, and we let them hold the iPad.  That was a big treat.


I'm not sure we had any struggles during this visit.  We started on time and the "friends" that sat with us stayed for the majority of the lesson.  They were enthusiastic and loved every minute.
Next time I might email them and ask them to make sure the iPads are fully charged.  We didn't plan on using two, but we could have had two tables of tech club had the other iPad been charged.