Cycle One Report

Statement of the Problem

The problem I am addressing is to increase participation by girls and students in the Autism Spectrum in Tech Club at the elementary school where I work. Tech Club started as a hands-on technology troubleshooting activity for students who wished to better understand computer systems like the one we use at school and to provide classroom-level support for the computers. However, over the years Tech Club has developed, in large part because of students' interests, into a multi-media club where technology is the means by which the students are able to produce new and exciting work. I very consciously chose this year to continue to shift the Tech Club from concentrating on the technology itself, be it a camera, laptop, or a particular application, to focusing on what technology can produce for the user. In doing so I hope to create projects that are more appealing to girls. Additionally, I hope to capitalize on the fascination with technology demonstrated by a few particular students on the Autism Spectrum.

Even in elementary school there is disparity in technology use between the genders. Boys tend to be more assertive and demanding when it comes to computer use, while girls typically are more patient and willing to wait for a turn to use the computer. Without conscious supervision girls might be excluded from activities involving computers or technology as the boys will typically dominate the use of the equipment. Additionally, the stigma attached to technology, and being perceived as being too interested in technology, prevents some girls from participating lest they be labeled by their peers. By creating activities that emphasize the multimedia projects that we are able to create using technology, girls can be comfortable learning technology skills and demonstrating their competence for their peers.

Some students on the Autism Spectrum have an interest in technology. They approach computer applications differently than their peers do, and are often quite precocious in their computer abilities. Furthermore, the computer can be a good buffer between them and their peers. The student on the Autism Spectrum might have good computer skills, which he might demonstrate to his peers through his work with the computer. The computer becomes a point of social interaction, an important aspect of educating a student on the Autism Spectrum.

Additionally, there are students who have a difficult time fitting in and socializing with their peers. Such students have often been referred to me by the school counselor or the principal. Tech Club can be a place where there is a smaller group of students and where it might be more comfortable to socialize than the playground can be. Including such students gives them opportunity to have voice, to express themselves publicly and for everyone to see, and to share one's vision with the world. It also gives the student a chance to improve her or his computer skills and in doing so create work that demonstrates to her or his peers the competence and creativity of the individual.

The overall goal of my Action Research is to create projects and curriculum for Tech Club that increase participation by girls and marginalized students. I wish to increase participation by these communities because I feel that technology offers them a chance for voice and expression.

Cycle One Question

My research question is twofold. How might Tech Club be modified to better consider the voice of girls, and what kinds of activities would better suit girls' interests? How might students on the Autism Spectrum or other marginalized students benefit from a program such as Tech Club? I feel that if I create projects that emphasize what technology can produce for the user instead of projects that emphasize the technology itself that girls will be more interested in participating in Tech Club projects. Furthermore, if projects are designed with the technology skill strengths of students on the Autism Spectrum in mind, the students' interest might help to keep them focused on participating in Tech Club and provide a point of social contact for these students with their peers.

My Actions, Cycle One

I started Tech Club this year by conducting a series of information sessions for students to showcase the past projects Tech Club had completed. Before the meetings I worked with a student from last year's Tech Club to select photos from prior projects to use in a digital picture frame hanging in the hallway. The same student used Stationary Studio, a computer application he had not used before, to design a flyer announcing the date, time, location, and eligible participants for Tech Club. On the day of the first meetings I used the microphone at lunch in the Multipurpose Room to announce to the third, fourth, and fifth graders that I was holding a Tech Club information meeting. We met in the library, which is a very public place that many students use for recess. By meeting here, instead of the Occupation Therapy room, which is more private and out of the way, I believed that students who might not otherwise know about Tech Club would get to see the presentation and might become interested. Students were able to watch a promotional film clip that students from last year's Tech Club had made to highlight their films. They looked at photos taken last year displayed on a number of portable media players that Tech Club would use this year. Students paged through a comic book we created last year in conjunction with the school counselor. This comic book introduced new students to our school with photos of the faculty and staff members who are important to know and answers to common questions. Students who were involved with Tech Club last year, particularly one who had worked on the stop-motion animation film, helped to field questions about the projects we would be working on this year. The response to these presentations were very favorable and I had about twenty five students come to the first Tech Club meeting.

Before planning the information sessions I contacted the individual at the district level to get permission to conduct research in Tech Club, which was granted. A letter was written to the parents of the prospective Tech Club students explaining the role my Action Research would play in Tech Club this year. An ethics statement was drafted and sent home with this letter. Additionally, permission slips allowing me to conduct research on the student were also sent with a permission slip allowing the student's work to be posted on the internet. From the permission slips I compiled a list of all the students who had expressed interest in Tech Club as well as their classroom teacher information.

At our first meeting I outlined the projects that I wished to explore over the course of the year. There would be a digital photography unit, a podcasting unit, and a movie-making unit. Students would be exposed to three means of communication: visual, audio, and audio-visual. I had originally suggested that Lego robotics might be an option, but I was unable to secure the equipment, which is used at the middle school, in the quantity that I would need to make the project a success. I had the students fill out a questionnaire about their interests in Tech Club activities as well as three things that they were able to do with a computer. This allowed me to gauge the students' enabling knowledge and interests to help guide the projects that we would work on throughout the year. There were many third graders who were eager to participate. I think the interest derived from the promotion we had for last year's stop-motion film, when these students were second graders. Many had seen the film and were eager to participate in such an endeavor.

I decided to use digital cameras as Tech Club's first project because they are very accessible technology even for people with limited computer skills. Additionally, I felt that a project involving digital cameras would place more emphasis on the photographs the students were taking rather than the technology itself, an important consideration when trying to attract girls to a technology project. The research I conducted indicated that girls are more interested in the collaborative process and the final product than the technology itself. The digital camera would be a perfect, unobtrusive technology that would engage the girls and might offer more opportunities for them to participate.

Tech Club started with a group of twenty five students. I have access to five different cameras, so I grouped the students and gave each group of a camera. We went outside onto the playground. I asked the students to take pictures of "everything and anything." On average each camera came back with twenty-two photos on it. A few photos were candids, but most were "formal" portraits organized by the photographer. At the next meeting we reviewed the 122 photos the students had taken by hooking up an LCD projector to a laptop and displaying the photos as an iPhoto slideshow. Afterwards, I asked the students who had taken photos the day before to step to one side, and the students who had not taken photos to collect cameras and to take some photographs. I asked the students to try to take pictures of shapes, colors, and textures. I believed that by giving the students a focus to their photographic subjects, but by leaving the subject open to interpretation that I was creating a project that valued the students' aesthetic sensibilities while also giving these skills a chance to develop. Some of the students were able to think very abstractly and capture images that showed shape, texture, and color. I found that the students who were using the cameras for the first time were still preoccupied with taking photos of people, and this was fine. It was best that they experiment with the cameras and get a feel for how they work.

As we continued our work with the cameras and photography I took opportunities as they arose to talk with students about the cameras themselves and the different settings that can be used to affect the photo. One student liked the texture that the wood chips on the playground had, but was having a difficult time capturing the image without it blurring. I took the opportunity to show her how the macro setting worked. She was then able to capture her image. The students also learned how to connect the cameras to the laptops and download their images into the computer. I showed them how cropping a photo can emphasize certain aspects of the photo. For instance, in the first batch of texture, patterns, and color photographs one student took a photo of another's shirt, which had a paisley design on it. The students head and legs were cut off in the photo, as they were emphasizing the pattern on her shirt, but her arms were still in the photo. I showed the students how I could crop the photo, retaining the same proportions as the original photo, and emphasize the pattern. In turn, a student who took a photo of other students playing basketball cropped everything but the hands on the basketball, emphasizing the point of action. Much of this work was done in small groups, where students could work with one another to get through the steps required to select and crop a series of photos. There is a difference between what students are able to learn by themselves and what they can learn working collaboratively with their peers. Working together the students provide for one another a "zone of proximal development" in which they help one another take the next steps in developing their photographic eye and innovative strategies for finding new images.

Our next activity concerned learning how to manipulate the photos that the students were taking once they were loaded onto the computers. There were four iBook laptop computers and five digital cameras including my personal camera that I allowed students to use. My camera was the wildcard and these photos were loaded onto all four iBooks. Then each of the cameras were loaded on one of the iBooks: Camera 1 onto iBook 1, et cetera. The students had over a hundred different photos on each of the iBooks. I hooked up an iBook to an LCD projector to demonstrate the activity that we were all going to try. Each student selected a different photograph that they would then duplicate and crop or otherwise modify. I demonstrated by cropping a photo and using the pre-configured "constraints" to define a 4X6 portrait-oriented shape to my crop. I explained that it was convenient to use a constraint because you would end up with a standard sized photograph, though I suggested that shaping the photo as they saw fit was acceptable, too. The students took turns using the computers; as they finished they raised their hands and I came over to export the original photo and the cropped photo to a folder on the Desktop. This allowed me to collect all of their work and not have to explain at this point in time the intricacies of exporting a photo, specifying an image size, and what to do if students choose the same photo to export, saving this for a later lesson.

The next project built upon the photos that the students selected, cropped, and exported and served as a mini-culmination of the photography project. The students learned to build simple web page photo albums with their images. At this point in Tech Club the students still had time and opportunities to take photos but this project was designed to give them an idea of our target goal. I had the students use one of Mac OS X's built-in tools to create very simple web pages from the images that they had cropped. It was a good project because it required manipulating the file system, which they do not do on a regular basis, customizing their Desktop environment, building a web page, and renaming a directory, meeting in this project various technology competencies appropriate for the grade level of these students.

We started by logging into the Tech Club accounts on the iBooks I have set up for Tech Club to use. We then had to navigate into the file system. There we located 'Build Web Page,' an application that is used by other programs like iPhoto to generate web pages. The students dragged the application to the Dock so we would be able to use it again, as well as to take advantage of the crag and drop feature of the software. The student on the Autism Spectrum is particularly good at working his way through directories and manipulating icons, so I asked him to circulate and help the others, and another fifth grade student also volunteered to help others. The students were able to customize the page colors for the web pages that they would build. The application only required the students to drag and drop the images onto the application's icon, so the learning curve was very low and the results, a fully built web photo album, were impressive and engaging to the students, who felt accomplished for being able to build a web page.

At this point in Tech Club I realized that I needed to make another change in order to affect the most positive experience for all the students. Participation in Tech Club was phenomenal but the number of students attending Tech Club was more than the technology that I could provide for them to use. I decided to use creative scheduling to ensure that students would have equitable use of the technology to produce the best photographs that they could. I explained to the students that for the next few weeks we would be meeting four at a time for Tech Club. This would allow each of them to use the cameras for at least fifteen minutes each as they took photos of their school. I tried to have two girls and two boys signed up for a particular day. I explained to them that it was part of my research and it would give me an opportunity to ask them questions about using digital cameras as well. I also explained that it made sense to show up at every regular meeting time in case somebody on the list didn't show up so they could have an earlier chance. Everyone was excited, I got everyone signed up, and posted a sign for those who did not make it today to see me so they, too, could get signed up.

The final part of the digital photography unit built upon the students' previous work. Twenty-five students in all chose to participate in this project, and each had at least fifteen minutes of hands-on time using a digital camera, as well as fifteen minutes to review and edit their photos in iPhoto. The final project brought the students back together to review their work as well as a collection of nearly 400 "grab bag photos" that we took when Tech Club first started working with the digital cameras. They selected their favorites from the library of photographs that they had built.

I needed a way to provide the students with all the photos that they had taken. The laptops corresponded to the cameras that the students used, and I kept careful notes about which student used which camera and laptop. I decided to consolidate the photos onto a "server" to which the client Macs could connect to retrieve the photos. First, I backed up all the photos from each of the laptops by exporting, by student album, all of the photos. I then built up a computer to host the photos and copied all of the photos to this "server." I imported the photos into the server's iPhoto library and activated sharing. Henry removed all the photos on the laptops so they were completely clean and ready to re-populate. This was a task that reinforced his skills with applications and recognized his abilities.

I reconvened Tech Club and went around during lunch to personally invite each of the students who took photos to come and select their favorite photos. I used an LCD projector to walk through the procedure so the students could see what they needed to do. First, they needed to create an iPhoto "album" named after them: we decided on "Josh's Favorites" as being a good name model. The students then selected the shared iPhoto library from the list and provided the password. They could then see all the photos they had been taken by everyone, which were further organized by album by who took the photographs. The students could select their own photos from the shared library and peruse the images. Those that they liked the most they could drag and drop into their album on the laptop. Once the students selected their photos they captioned them by renaming the files in iPhoto. From there the photos were exported as before and the students built web pages. This time the students were able to customize the page color as well as the caption text color. The same group of photos was converted and copied to SD memory cards for use with the portable media players. This was another way students could share their work at the exhibit.

As the students worked to finish these rather technical procedures I made another conscious action by having the students "do the driving" while I sat down next to them and narrated their moves. Sometimes, when the confusion level was high and there were students clamoring for attention and the use of the computers, it might have been easier to do the various processes myself and have the students watch. However, I made it a focus of my actions to have the students complete the activities themselves, with peers or me helping them along the way. The tactile experience of manipulating the icons, settings, and configurations is important in the learning process. Furthermore, the choice offered by the multimedia aspects of this project is enticing to girls using technology, something I've explored in my Literature Review. This choice was also offered as the students made materials for the exhibit we mounted. They designed the invitations, chose the colors of the paper onto which I photocopied it, and designed the "stage" onto which we projected our images as students arrived at school. I believe that the students' involvement in the exhibit process made the work more authentic and contributed to the students' feeling of ownership of the project.

The day of the exhibit I set up the drawing that Beth, a girl in Tech Club, had made with the other students for just this purpose. I used an LCD projector hooked up to the iPhoto server to show the 1600 photos that were taken during the project. The computer and easel were set up right inside the entrance to the school. Few students actually pass this way I found out; they are expected to go around the outside of the building to the individual doors of their classroom. Future promotions will have to take this into account, with individual posters on the external doors of the classrooms, where students will see them as they wait to get into their classrooms in the morning, being a more effective means of advertising. Since the digital picture frame had the exhibit photos already loaded on it I decided to load the photos into iPhoto. This gave me more control over the slideshow. Beth's drawing was re-purposed to advertise during the first recess in the library the exhibit. Third through fifth graders often gather in the library to play games, use the computers, or talk with the school counselor. I made a contact sheet in iPhoto of forty of the students' images and printed it on a color laser printer. Below it I posted one of the invitations inviting everyone to the exhibit at lunch recess. I changed the desktop pattern on the digital picture frame to the same contact sheet image, so there was something interesting to look at on the screen as we waited for people to assemble. The students helped me to move tables and set up chairs.

I made some remarks to the students who had gathered. I explained that we had taken 1600 photos, which broke down to sixty-four photos per student. I also explained that the photos would be available for viewing after the exhibit on the digital picture frame in the hall. I then introduced Beth to say a few words to the crowd about what we did in the project. Her mother came to the exhibit and when I told her that I had asked Beth to say a few words she said that she thought Beth would be very embarrassed speaking in front of so many people. Beth did a fantastic job explaining to the audience, which included her peers, the principal of the school, the librarian, several parents, and me what we had done in the project, from taking the photos to using the laptops to group and title them to finally building a web page. She did not miss a step and did a great job introducing the show. There were many girls who attended the exhibit. Beth's friends and the other girls who participated had come to see the work that the students produced. There was genuine interest in the work that the Tech Club produced, and I hope that the girls and boys who attended the exhibit recognized that the emphasis in Tech Club is producing artistic and fun work, not studying computers. Many boys who participated in the photo-taking part of the project but who had not completed the web pages came to the exhibit to see the work that was produced. Periodically I would pose a question. Of a picture of the bike rack, with the sun bouncing off all the chrome, I asked those assembled whether they too thought that photo looked nice and warm.

I finished Cycle One of my Action Research Project by presenting to the parents of Tech Club students at the Principal's Forum. I created a presentation for people who were interested in the findings I had made about elementary student computer use. There were three Tech Club parents who attended my presentation, along with the principal, the parents of two students who are not in Tech Club, and my wife. I intended the presentation to be very non-technical but to illustrate some of the findings that I had made in my work with the students. The idea for the documentation grew out of my fascination for the documentation process practiced by the Reggio Emilia schools and chronicled in _The Hundred Languages of Children_. Although I wish turnout had been stronger, I was happy with the presentation and I feel that the people who did attend learned something about our project.

Finally, I created CDs for each of the students who created web pages. The CDs contained the web pages created by Tech Club members. Additionally, for the parents, I included a link to my documentation that I used to build my presentation. This way, parents who had not attended the presentation were still able to access the information.

The Reactions

I believe there are three areas that show the changes I made that have positively affected participation by girls and students on the Autism Spectrum. I believe that I created a Tech Club project that better took into account the way girls use technology. Additionally, the project allowed a student on the Autism Spectrum to use his skills in a way that publicly demonstrated his technology competency and made him a model for his peers. The images taken by the students and the web pages that they built were tangible products of their efforts and are the third area for which I have evidence of change.

I wanted to create a Tech Club project that engaged girls, got them interested in what they might be able to produce using technology, and provide them with a voice through their technology use. This required carefully constructing the project to counter the inequity that often occurs when girls and boys use computers, to account for the differences in the ways girls use technology, and to provide girls with aesthetic choices in the products that they created. Last year there was one girl who participated in one Tech Club project, but she did not complete the year in Tech Club. This year five girls participated regularly in the digital photography project and completed the steps necessary to build a web page. By scheduling the use of the cameras and the computers instead of making the use a free-for-all on the playground, I was able to get more girls to participate in taking photos. Each student was given an equally equitable opportunity to use the laptop computers to view their photos, crop and manipulate them, as well as caption them because of scheduling the computer use. I tracked on a spreadsheet which computer or computers each individual student used to help them to keep track of their photos and to complete the steps necessary to build a final web page. Of the twenty five students who started the project, sixteen completed each of the tasks that together represented the culminating project. Of these sixteen, five were girls. Last spring there were no girls participating in Tech Club, so I see the participation by these girls, representing nearly one-third of the Tech Club's participants in this project, as very encouraging.

Research suggests that girls seek to create interpersonal relationships through their computer use. My work with the female students in Tech Club also suggests that these girls value the relationships that they create with their peers as they work collaboratively. Some girls see the computer or technology as being a point of social contact where they might be able to work together to produce a product. Girls might not value the computer use at all in a technology project, but rather place worth on the relationships that the work with the computer allows them to create and foster. For this reason much of the project was built with collaboration as a goal. Additionally, in digital still photography I chose a technology that was relatively transparent and could be de-emphasized. The use of the technology for this project encouraged partnerships and collaboration. While students were taking photos individually, they were using a shared library that contained not only their photos but the photos of their peers as well. The library was organized by both the individual photographer and the group as a whole. Students were allowed to select their own photos for inclusion in the web pages they built but also the photos taken by their peers. This encouraged students to see from other people's perspectives and to build relationships based upon the work that others produced. The same limitations on the amount of available equipment that necessitated creative scheduling of the students' time with the cameras and laptops also created opportunities for people to share the time that they were allotted. For example, one girl's collection of photos that she "took" included a photo of herself, taken by a peer. She used her time to take photos but also shared her time with another girl so they could both produce photos. Likewise, girls were able to collaborate and work together, when they wanted to, to caption their photos for the web page. Providing girls opportunities to collaborate helped them to complete the various stages of the project and allowed five of the girls to complete all the tasks that led up to the creation of a personalized web page.

Aesthetics are an important and overlooked component of technology projects. For this reason this project was conceived with aesthetics as the only "requirement" that needed to be met. By concentrating on the aesthetics of the project and what we were attempting to produce, I made an effort to build upon girls' ways of knowing. Choice was a central concept of the project: the students captured images of the school as they saw it. This choice in turn informed the aesthetic qualities of the students' work: they might concentrate on photographing color, texture, and patterns, as one "assignment" asked them to do, or they might instead try to capture images of the people at their school. Opportunities for choice extended throughout the project. Students chose from a body of over 1600 of their favorite photos, grouping them into albums. They chose the names for the photos, as well as the background and text colors for the web pages on which the images are displayed. Each of these choices was an effort to engage the students' aesthetic sensibilities, to ask the student to show us how she or he sees the world, and to help the student to represent that vision for the rest of us to see. All students benefit from this concentration and emphasis on the aesthetics of the project, but girls in particular are well-served by a project that takes aesthetics into consideration. The girls who took part in the project thrived: one described to me the "great texture" that a particular photograph had, even though we were looking at it on a two-dimensional LCD display. Other girls took great care in developing the titles for their photographs. Boys and girls alike devoted much time to making their choices of their favorite photographs. A student on the Autism Spectrum created Warholian sequences of images, some of which were chosen by other students because of their unique vision of a common object, abstracted into something much different and quite evocative. Yet another student, with an extremely artistic eye, created digital images of his world that were striking in their simplicity, composition, and colors. Relieved of meeting any requirement besides capturing the world in its myriad shapes, colors, and forms, the students were allowed the chance to make aesthetic choices. The images they chose for their web pages show the care and attention they put into their work.

The project was also planned to allow a student on the Autism Spectrum to demonstrate his computer skills, to assist his peers in their computer use, and to provide a point of social contact between this student and his peers. While this student had participated on the periphery of Tech Club last year I sought to create a learning environment in which he was able to increase his collaboration with his peers. The evidence I collected shows that this project was successful in allowing this student to demonstrate his competencies, to develop new skills, and to allow his peers to recognize the talents that this student has because of the voice that technology provides for this student's creative visions.

Henry, the student on the Autism Spectrum with whom I have worked in Tech Club this year, was given ample opportunities to demonstrate his competencies with the computer operating system and specific applications, such as iPhoto. Specific projects, such as tracking down in the file system the "Build Web Page" application and moving a copy of it to the computer's Dock were conceived knowing that for this particular student such a task was relatively simple and that he might be asked to help assist his peers in completing the steps necessary. When appropriate, Henry was given other opportunities to assist me or his peers. He helped me, for instance, by emptying out the iPhoto libraries as we transitioned the laptops from being used to download the students' photos from the cameras to being used to select the students' favorite photos from the massive library that they had collectively created. This student's computer skills were reinforced through application and demonstrated to his peers as an example of his capabilities, as well as skills that they, too could build through practice. Henry valued his role as an instructor for his peers and enjoyed demonstrating his competencies.

Henry is very focused on creating various projects using computers. Oftentimes, however, he is resistant to completing a computer project devised by somebody else. He is very self-directed in his computer use. One challenge was to have this student complete the tasks that were technically easy for him but which were not initiated or conceived by him. Again, the project was a success because Henry, with my prompting, was able to complete all the steps necessary: he selected from the photos his favorites, captioned and exported them, personalized the colors of the web page and text, and created the web page to share with his peers. Though he moved on to his next project before most of his peers finished this one, he was able to complete a project that someone else devised. When Henry chose not to attend the exhibit because he was working on a different project, this in turn led to an important mentoring lesson on recognizing the importance of other people's work. Henry saw the amount of work that I put into the project, as well as the work his peers contributed, and recognized that if he wanted his work to be recognized that he needed to show similar respect to his peers and me.

The competencies that Henry demonstrated to me and his peers and the socialization that occurred during Tech Club gave Henry an audience as well as the encouragement to produce an exhibit of three animated films that he made. The presentation coincided with his birthday. He and I discussed what kind of audience he wanted to attract, and he concluded that he wanted a small, serious audience but he also wanted to maximize the amount of people who saw his films. I facilitated this request and allowed him to screen the films in the computer lab during one recess, and in the library during another. Henry explained his films to the assembled crowd and showed them. Afterwards, he fielded questions, including one about his creative process. He articulated, with my prompting, how he used his keyboard and his computer to create the sound loops and associated images that make up his films. This project gave Henry the opportunity to show the community his computer skills and competencies and to share in his unique vision. Again, I feel that the changes I made to Tech Club that allowed this individual to emerge as an authority on computer use as well as a creative user of computers to create art that appealed to a wide variety of individuals qualified the project as a success.

The third area of evidence that I believe shows positive change as a result of my actions to increase participation by girls and students on the Autism Spectrum is the number of photos that the students took, the quality of the photos and the refinement that the students' creative process underwent as part of the process of the project, and the web pages that the students built and the exhibit that they mounted. All are evidence of positive change for Tech Club.

Twenty-eight students at one point or another took photos as part of this project. Three of those students only participated once, while the other twenty five students participated more than once. Over the course of the two months during which twenty five students took photographs they managed to take 1601 images, an average of sixty-four images per student. Seventeen of the twenty-five students completed all the steps of the project. All the girls who took photos, except for one, completed all the steps of the project and built web pages. Of the 1601 photos taken by the twenty five students, five girls and eleven boys produced 1209 of them. The girls took 394 photos while the boys took the remaining 815. This averages to the girls taking 49 photos, while the boys averaged 43. The girls took fewer photos but ended up keeping 26 percent of them for use on the web pages that they built. The boys kept fewer photos, 24 percent, for use on their web pages. The students created a very large body of work with the limited amount of time that they had with the cameras. On average the students kept nearly a quarter of the images that they created. This selection involved the next area where I collected evidence, the refinement of the students' photographic skills.

When the students first started taking photographs I characterized their use of the digital cameras as unsophisticated. This was to be expected from a group of elementary students. Left to develop their skills on their own I would not expect students to mature in their use of the cameras. By offering critique and examples of how the photographs might be improved the students were able to refine their practice, and I was able to become a part of their zone of proximal development. As the students were allowed more time with the cameras I was quite pleased with the critical eye some of the students showed. I was particularly impressed by two students, a third grade girl and boy. They were both tasked with helping other students with the assignment as they has already had the chance to crop a photo or two at a previous meeting. They rose to the challenge, making their way from group to group to help the students who needed assistance. It was an excellent demonstration of the zone of proximal development, where one student with slightly higher skills influenced the development of the others within the group. The work the students completed showed refinement. Students wanted an aesthetically pleasing final result. A third grade girl who "controlled" the trackpad on the laptop that the other third grade girls were using decided after the web page was created that she wanted to re-do it because they had selected an orange background but had gotten a gray one instead. I walked them back through selecting the color palette and let them choose their colors and generate the web page again. Students were willing to put in the extra work to achieve the results that they wanted.

Finally, the number of students who were able to build web pages of their photos, sixteen, and the number of photos that were exhibited, 184, are evidence of a successful project. Building the web pages required the students to complete a number of inter-related tasks. Students became familiar with manipulating files and folder in the file system; using iPhoto to manipulate, crop, and adjust their photographs; and exporting their photos to build customized web pages. Few of the sixteen students had ever built a web page prior to this year's Tech Club project, yet all were able to build web pages that had customized captions for the photos, contained the images that each student wanted on her or his own page, and were customized in color. The exhibit was also a successful product of the project. The students who watched the exhibit were some of the quietest, most observant and curious that I have ever seen. Everyone was extremely respectful of the work being exhibited and paid close attention. The exhibit exposed students who had not participated in Tech Club to the work that the students were doing and served to recruit several new students in participating in our next project. The exhibit was a great success. This evidence also shows that I was able to create a project for Tech Club that would encourage girls to participate and would honor the differences in the ways that they used computers and offer them choices in the aesthetic quality of their final product.

Based upon the evidence presented about girls' participation in Tech Club, the strides a student on the Autism Spectrum was able to make in his technology use and his socialization with his peers, and the products that we were able to produce using technology, I believe that I was able to make changes that affected the participation in Tech Club by these two targeted groups.

Answering my Cycle One Question

How might Tech Club be modified to better consider the voice of girls, and what kinds of activities would better suit girls' interests? How might students on the Autism Spectrum or other marginalized students benefit from a program such as Tech Club? The changes that I made in the digital photography project that Tech Club worked on affected participation by girls and a student on the Autism Spectrum. Participation by girls increased tremendously this year, and Henry was given opportunities to develop new skills and also to work within the social constructs of the Tech Club to share his knowledge and interact with his peers. By offering students the opportunity to work with technology in a much more transparent fashion I was able to keep participation by girls in Tech Club high and use this engagement to encourage them to complete the steps necessary to produce a web page. This web page was a means of giving these students voice and allowing others to see the vision of the school and its participants through the eyes of many different individuals. Working on this project helped me to realize the importance of offering students opportunities for voice. The engagement and personalization something like a web photo album allows for makes for a project that honors the aesthetic sensibilities of the participants. Furthermore, the collaboration allowed my such a project is beneficial for the girls participating as well as students on the Autism Spectrum, who benefit from structured social settings where they can share interests with their peers. As Tech Club continues projects should be constructed to allow for other voices to emerge. Different means of expression can be considered, captured, and played back for a growing audience.

Reflection

Allowing these students opportunities to share their vision of the world was a powerful experience for the participants, the people who viewed the web pages the students built, the people who attended the exhibit or my presentation of my findings, and the readers of this Action Research Report. As I progress into my next Action Research Cycle I realize the importance of sharing what Tech Club is accomplishing with as wide an audience as possible. Already I have sent home to parents along with the students' web pages a link to the documentation that I used in my presentation. The students are working to create podcasts for their next Tech Club project. This involves sharing their view of the world through their written and spoken word, allowing for yet another means of communication. New collaborative relationships are forming as students work to produce podcast segments. Once again Henry's skills with computers and applications are being used as he is quite proficient with GarageBand, the application with which we are recording our podcasts. Another student on the Autism Spectrum is interested in participating but must learn the skills and patience required to help produce a podcast. New students, attracted by the work done in the digital photography project, have joined Tech Club, including additional girls. Based upon what I have learned in my first Cycle, creating projects that can be shared with the larger community is an important consideration. Additionally, projects that allow the individual voice to shine among the collective voice is also attractive to students. Technologies can be leveraged to help spread the word of our accomplishments. For instance, the directions I sent out with the announcement about the release of Tech Club's first podcast include instructions on how to subscribe to the podcast so new episodes are "automatically" downloaded, requiring minimal intervention on the end user's part. By simplifying the means by which we share our work Tech Club will be able to share its work more readily with a larger audience.

I must continue to help girls build relationships through their technology use. The collaborative nature of producing a podcast segment is an ideal point of contact for student to collaborate. By pairing students interested in similar segment topics I might be able to facilitate new learning partnerships.

Tech Club's projects will remain constructive in their focus. By allowing students to create tangible products like web photo albums or podcasts I am keeping the technology transparent and emphasizing how technology, like any other tool, can be used to build products that benefit us and others. Projects such as these are empowering for the students, and I hope to create more opportunities for each student to share her or his individual voice as Tech Club continues into my next Research Cycle.