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| |  Posted 7/9/2008 9:32:04 AM | |
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| | We are doing a day-long VBS (beginning Monday) and have added stations to the Power Lab line up. One of the stations we are adding is a Computer Lab. In the lab, we are going to have computers set up with internet. There will be four computers and most likely three crews coming during each rotation. I have someone who has set up a site for us and linked it to the church site. He has set up a blog area and a picture area. The person leading the station (someone else) is out of town until very very late Sunday night. I know that he is very capable and will do a great job. My dilemma is that as I am thinking this through, I am concerned there will be too many kids loose and not enough for them to do. My thought was that each crew would work on one computer and: Blog... Day 1 Who are you most thankful for? What are you most thankful for? What are you looking forward to the most at Power Lab, etc. Older students can do the typing for the younger ones or maybe there is one person typing for everyone in their crew. Post pics... We will have our photographer bringing by their memory card and dumping the pics and kids can post the pics and do something with graphics perhaps. Is this something any age can do? Should this be something the older kids do? I don't know anything about websites and how all of this will work. When the time comes, my leader will be very capable of doing it, but he and I won't have any time prior to Monday morning to touch base about it. Is what I am suggesting doable? How much time will it take? We are allowing 25 minutes for each station. Are there other graphics type things they can do? Is there some way to turn the clipart (either on the cd or on the site) into on-line coloring pages? That way older kids can post pics and younger kids could post coloring pages.? Obviously, I should have thought of all of this before he left town, but I didn't. I just don't want to end up with a bunch of bored kids annoyed that there is not enough to do. Any thoughts, suggestions, tips, stray fragments of ideas, brilliant brainstorms or just a good idea from those who are well versed in this sort of thing would be much appreciated! Thanks! Sue  |
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| | | Posted 7/10/2008 11:00:10 AM | |
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Last Login: 7/11/2008 4:27:07 AM
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| Qceus (7/9/2008)
We are doing a day-long VBS (beginning Monday) and have added stations to the Power Lab line up. One of the stations we are adding is a Computer Lab. In the lab, we are going to havecomputers set up with internet. There will befour computers and most likely three crewscoming during eachrotation. I have someone who has set up a site for us and linked it to the church site. He has set up a blog area and a picture area. The person leading the station (someone else) is out of town until very very late Sunday night. I know that he is very capable and will do a great job. My dilemma is that as I am thinking this through, I am concerned there will be too many kids loose and not enough for them to do. My thought was that each crewwould work on one computer and:
Blog... Day 1 Who are you most thankful for? What are you most thankful for? What are you looking forward to the most at Power Lab, etc. Older students can do the typing for the younger ones or maybe there is one person typing for everyone in their crew.
Post pics... We will have our photographer bringing by their memory card and dumping the pics and kids can post the pics and do something with graphics perhaps. Is this something any age can do? Should this be something the older kids do?
I don't know anything about websites and how all of this will work. When the time comes, my leader will be very capable of doingit, but he and I won't have any time prior to Monday morning to touch base about it. Is what I am suggesting doable? How much time will it take? We are allowing 25 minutes for each station. Are there other graphics type things they can do? Is there some way to turnthe clipart (either on the cd or on the site) into on-line coloring pages? That way older kids can post pics and younger kids could post coloring pages.? Obviously, I should have thought of all of this before he left town, but I didn't. I just don't want to end up with a bunch of bored kids annoyed that there is not enough to do.
Any thoughts,suggestions, tips, stray fragments of ideas, brilliant brainstorms orjust a good ideafrom those who are well versed in this sort of thing would be much appreciated!
Thanks!
Sue
This is a pretty cool idea, and may work well for some of the kids, but "all" is a tall order. If each group is going to be a cross-section (age-wise) of the attendees, then the older kids should be able to help the younger ones. There are (or, at least, used to be) quite a few free blogging-type sites. I don't know if it would make more sense to set up a separate blog for each group, or just one per computer. The latter would be easier because you could have the username/password saved on the computer and eliminate one hurdle, but the former would give each group more "creative control" over the look of it (if that really matters).
Probably the biggest obstacle I can see is internet connection speed. I'm assuming you've got a broadband (cable or DSL) internet connection in the church and will be sharing it among all of the computers. This won't be an issue until they try uploading pictures. Most broadband connections have upload speeds that are just a fraction of the download speeds (for example, a standard Verizon DSL connection has a download speed of 768 kilobits per second and an upload speed of 128 kilobits per second). The best way to mitigate this would be to make sure that whoever's taking the pictures takes them at a low resolution. Most cameras, regardless of their maximum resolution, can be adjusted to take them at 640x480 (about half a megapixel) or 1024x768 (one megapixel). The lower the resolution, the smaller the file size and the faster it will upload. When you're publishing to the web, lower resolution also means faster loading pages, and you don't really need high resolutions anyway (you can't tell the difference in most cases).
Using the coloring pages as an "online coloring book" would be quite easy to do. Well, not the "online" part, but on the computer, yes. I don't recall what format those pages are in, but if they're .bmp or .jpg files, just open them in Paint (assuming you have Windows, it's in Start > Accessories > Paint) and kids can use the "paint can" tool to fill in the pictures with different colors. If you've got Macs, there are a slew of different programs you can use (Graphic Converter is my favorite) for the same purpose. |
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| | | Posted 7/11/2008 10:35:57 AM | |
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Forum Member
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Last Login: 10/8/2008 2:10:26 PM
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| | Be very, very careful about where you let your kiddos go online. Be sure you have very specific site addresses to give the kids. You may even want to have adults put those is, then monitor the kids very closely. Without a really good filter, you could end up with some serious problems with just one typo. That said, there are some cool science sites out there. Check with your local elementary school teachers, since they probably have some they use. Power Up!
Kelsy in Kansas
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