Monday, September 19, 2011

Lets Get it Started



Mackenzie is going to start us off this year with her Misty Flower and Inside a Bottle. It is helping us get started and it will get us started for the year. It will be a great season and let's keep it up VM Club Click.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Club Click

We are back and ready to start another season of picture taking. The group will be getting together again here soon. It will be a great season. I hope more people will join. It will be a great year. More people, more pictures, and more skills. It will be a great year and hope you all will join or look at our pictures.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Club Click has a New Member from New Hampshire

Hi...I am Luc. I am a second grader in Portsmouth NH at Dondero School. My dad is Steve Gagnon and both my parents are teachers. I love science. I love baseball, skiing, and woodcarving. I also love to play golf.

And what I enjoy about photography is that it is a type of technology. You can use it in a bunch of different ways. When I'm taking a shot. It feels like I'm diving into my next adventure. Each picture is like its own adventure. I like taking pictures of mountains when we're camping. I actually like taking pictures of anything. I don't have my own camera, but I hope to get one by next year. I am using our family camera now.

Thank you Mrs. Miller for making me a part of this club. I can't wait to take pictures when I'm hiking, skiing, and other times for you all to see.



Monday, February 21, 2011

MacKenzie Teaches Us All About Flickr and Picnik



I am a new member to Flickr. If you are not filmilar with Flickr it is a photo sharing website. My friends also got Flickr accounts. Now we have an easy way to share our pictures and edit them for other people to see. You can edit your pictures right in your Flickr. It can be helpful, even though I like editing but I only do it with certain pictures when I think of it as a different way.

The photo editing tool I use is Picnik. I use a premium account but you can still do a lot with the free account. You can get Picnik on Flickr. How you do this is you click on the photo you want and then go to actions, then sort of by the bottom then click edit in Picnik. It takes a while but once you get the hang of it you will love it. I use it a lot, for many uses. It comes in handy for school, and personal use. You can add captions, pictures, make it black and white and more. I think you will get addicted to it like me.

Flickr, is very fun. You can add sets, which are groups of pictures, like photo albums. You go to the top and click organize and create, and then there will be little tabs and click sets. Then there will be a little words under it, it will say create a new set. Click on that. Then on the bottom you will see all your pictures, any that you want click and then drag them. Then you have a set.

Club Click has been a fun experience. I think we could get more people to join it would be fun. We have our Club Click Flickr Group, and I think that it would be fun if everyone in Club Click got permission to get one, and then everyone could share their pictures with our group.

One of the best parts of Club Club is Skyping with Diane, who lives in New York. She is a very good photographer. I think that we all want to be able to take photographs like her.

We want anyone who loves taking pictures to join.

~Mackenzie, 6th Grader at Van Meter

Sunday, February 20, 2011

We Would LOVE For You To Take a Guess!


1.


2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.


The members of Club Click are doing an amazing job taking photographs, sharing, and encouraging others to join in on the fun. Our Flickr "Club Click" Group is gaining members and wonderful photographs everyday.

While Skyping with Diane last week, Club Click decided to have a little photography guessing game with several of the photographs they have taken.

Below you will find several photographs taken by the students at Van Meter. We would love for you to guess what they are by leaving a comment on our blog. There is a number by each photograph that you can refer to in your post.

If you would like to add a photograph to the blog, please email Shannon Miller at shannon.miller@vmbulldogs.com.

We look forward to seeing what everyone guesses! This will be a lot of fun. :)


Friday, February 11, 2011

Meeting

Today we have a meeting at 11:30 it will be fun we are taking pictures today.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

The Start of Club Click by Chelsea

This post was wrote by Chelsea, who is a 6th grader at Van Meter.

I love to take photographs. Mrs. Miller told us about her friend Diane who also loved photography. She thought it would be a great experience to connect and learn together. Diane lives in New York and is a retired librarian. Mrs. Miller loves to take photographs too...this would be something really fun to do together.

One day at school, Mrs. Miller, Bailey, and I were talking to Diane on Skype. Then Diane had an idea about making a photography club. We though that it would be cool if we had a different theme every month. While we were walking back to class thinking of names for our new photography club, Mrs. Miller said, “ What about Click Club?”, and Bailey and I were like “ Umm sure”. Then Mrs. Miller was like, “No Club Click!” We said, “Yes!!!!”.

So that is how the name came along. Then we Skyped Diane for the next 3 days and got all of the details figured out. Our friend Emma set up the blog. We have meetings during advisory and talk through Skype, Google Chat, and email. We also share our photographs in our Flickr group. Last Monday we had a snow day at Van Meter and Mrs. Miller sent out an email encouraging us to take photos on our day off. Weston, who is another 6th graders in our group, took this photograph on a snowy walk.

Thanks to Club Click we are seeing that Van Meter students can take some awesome photographs. And who knows maybe one of us will go onto be famous someday.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Club Click by Diane Cordell

This post is from Diane Cordell's personal blog, Journeys.


One of the benefits of semi-retirement is having a flexible schedule that leaves time for interesting new ventures.

Shannon Miller is an online acquaintance who became a friend when we got to connect in real life at the SLJ Leadership Conference this fall. She and I decided to collaborate on a project: we would become co-advisers for her school photography club - Shannon, from the school library media center in Van Meter, Iowa; and me, from my home in upstate New York.

We Skype at times that fit into her students' schedules, keeping in mind the one hour time difference as we plan. Although an Internet problem forced us to cancel one meeting, Shannon, some Van Meter students (in grades 6 - 12), and I have managed to make a good start on organizing Club Click. School administrators have given their approval, an explanatory letter went home to parents, and we have about 20 enthusiastic members.

The Van Meter students are respectful, creative, and fun to interact with. Some have moved ahead quickly on their own: Kylee (who is old enough to have her own Flickr account) has been building an impressive collection of photographs. Alissa includes lovely photos in her blog postings.

And then there's Emma, who not only has a blog of her own, and aTwitter account (with her parents' knowledge and approval), but also has volunteered to set up and administer the official club blog, which will feature students and their photographic work.

Our Club Click Flickr group has more adult than student uploads right now, but that will change as Shannon and I determine the best way to allow younger members to share their photos.

In our Skype sessions, we've discussed some of the possible directions in which the club might move, from choosing themes to constructively critiquing each other's work to community service projects. I talked about the importance of tagging, and displayed some of the tools available on Flickr. Shannon and I have been stashing relevant resources in diigo; we want to offer students as many options as possible to feed their obvious enthusiasm for taking, editing, and sharing photographs.

For most Club Click members, this will be a fun hobby. For some, it may grow to be a lifelong passion. Either way, it's a privilege to be part of the adventure.

"I wish more people felt that photography was an adventure the same as life itself and felt that their individual feelings were worth expressing. To me, that makes photography more exciting." -Harry Callahan

"What is art but a way of seeing?" -Thomas Berger

"Skyping with Van Meter" by dmcordell
"Some Flickr options" by dmcordell

Friday, January 7, 2011

Welcome

Hello Welcome to the blog for Club Click you will be seeing tons of fun photos that kids at Van Meter have taken. Again welcome and hope you enjoy the blog. :)

Van Meter

Lately at Van Meter we have started a club called Club Click and it’s a photography club that’s a lot of fun. We have boys and girls of all grades 6-12. It’s a lot of fun. We are also talking to a really talented photographer named Diane.

Introducing the Van Meter Club Click Photography Club!