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Vicki's Fall Implementation Journal, 2009

Vicki6 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:16:52 GMT

←Older revision		Revision as of 00:16, 21 November 2009
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	*'''[[Beth's Class: First Day]]'''		*'''[[Beth's Class: First Day]]'''
	*'''[[Debbie's Second Class Cycle: Last Day]]		*'''[[Debbie's Second Class Cycle: Last Day]]
		+	*'''[[Rod's First Class Cycle]]'''

Debbie's Second Class Cycle: Last Day

Vicki6 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:15:23 GMT

New page: == '''November 13, 2009''' == First class of the day: I got to Debbie’s first class early. Laura, Elisa, Debbie & I were thoroughly prepared to upload the students’ games to the Scala...

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== '''November 13, 2009''' ==

First class of the day: I got to Debbie’s first class early. Laura, Elisa, Debbie & I were thoroughly prepared to upload the students’ games to the Scalable Game Design arcade. As usual there were some unanticipated difficulties, such as a couple of the students couldn’t log into their school network accounts. This made access to their games impossible, but we still managed to upload everyone else’s games without too many problems except for time constraints. Most of the time problems resulted from the students still having saving issues. The most common was the game folder, the aplet folder & the screen dump being saved to different files/areas of the computer. The most common was the game folder in Agentsheets file &/or the screen dump saved in the pictures file. The aplet folder as the newly generated folder was usually on the desktop or once in awhile in the documents area. The challenge was to get all three folders in the same place, & then zip the aplet & game folders. Lastly, all three folders were uploaded.

Each student had to log into SGDA with their individual user ID & password. Then the student needed to choose the appropriate class, Agentsheets version & click “Turn in Assignment.” Probably the most confusing piece was the final one where each piece (screen dump, aplet, & game folder) needed to be browsed for separately, one right after the other. Once all three pieces were in place the student needed to click on the “Submit” button at the very bottom of the page. No, this is not rocket science, but for beginners anything out of the ordinary can be confusing. The games were uploaded with no time to spare!

Second Class: Since all four of us (Elisa, Laura, Debbie & myself) had had so much practice with the first class, the second class was significantly smoother. Also, none of the students in the second period were unable to log into their network accounts. This difference meant that the game uploading process took less time, giving these students a bit of leeway to play each other’s games. A very productive day!

Vicki's Fall Implementation Journal, 2009

Vicki6 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:14:20 GMT

←Older revision		Revision as of 00:14, 21 November 2009
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	*'''[[Pamela's First Class Cycle: First Visit]]'''		*'''[[Pamela's First Class Cycle: First Visit]]'''
	*'''[[Beth's Class: First Day]]'''		*'''[[Beth's Class: First Day]]'''
		+	*'''[[Debbie's Second Class Cycle: Last Day]]

Beth's Class: First Day

Vicki6 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:12:30 GMT

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== '''November 17, 2009''' ==

Alex, Kyu & I visited Beth’s morning class in Trinidad. We arrived at 9:15 am. The school building houses grades 1 through 12. The school is set off by itself, surrounded by fields. Beth has the computers set up on one side of the room in twos, with the others facing the other wall. The room is a bit cramped … long but only about 9 or 10 feet wide, with classroom on one side of what looked like a temporary barrier (wall) & Beth’s office on the other. Beth had a version of Sandy Rea’s power point presentation that she had modified to introduce “Frogger” to her class up on the far wall when we arrived. The students were sitting at their desks.

First the students were allowed to play the Frogger games on the Scalable Game Design Arcade. Once they had the idea of what a finished game should look like, Beth introduced them to Agentsheets. After a brief introduction to the basics of agent creation, the students started to design their frogs. The frogs evolved in multiple colors & all kinds of shapes. Alex, Kyu & I interacted with all the students while they were making their frogs. Next the class designed their roads. By now they were getting the hang of designing agents, so the roads went quicker than the frog, plus roads are usually less complicated than frogs. With two agents made, Beth had the students open a worksheet & place their two agents onto it. Since Hoehne has primary grades through high school, & as a more rural school, Beth has taught most of the students in her class for several semesters at least & sometimes years. Her own daughter was in this class. This school structure also allowed Beth to know of a high school senior who was capable of assisting her, & fortunately had this school period free. His name was Brandon Tortorelli & he helped out with the class demonstrations as well as individual students. He also expressed an interest in attending the 2010 Summer Institute.

The last task of class period was to program the frog to move on their worksheets. At first the students were mystified with the programming process, but Beth went through the first rule on the front screen & slowly the students finished the first frog movement on their own. When a student finished the first rule, I would explain to them how the other three directions could be made exactly the same way by just dragging the conditions & actions down to the next rule,& then changing the directions of the arrows. Once they realized how simple it was, they finished the four rules for moving the frog very quickly. Class was almost out of time, so the students needed to save their games & leave. Most of them wanted to work longer on their games, but were excited to continue the following class.

I had initially been skeptical about Beth’s class finishing by the end of the week, but this was a very good beginning for only one class period. As I talked more with Beth I realized that her afternoon class is another class period for the same students. Since Hoehne is on a four-day weekly schedule, the students are in school each day until 4pm. So Beth has these same students twice a day. Obviously if her students keep the pace they have set for themselves, they will be uploading games by Friday. Beth also added that their school district only has the traditional Thursday, Friday of for Thanksgiving, so she can add additional time for the games, if needed.

There were a majority of girls in Beth’s class. Of the 24 students, 16 were girls. The girls were just as excited as the boys about learning to make their own games. Beth’s students did not seem to be as influenced by traditional female stereotypes of technology, as a male-oriented domain, as some of the other classes I’ve observed. The boys didn’t feel the need to talk down to them when helping with difficult tasks. In fact for the most part, the boys & girls treated each other pretty much equally. So observationally, there did not appear to be any striking differences between the boys & girls as far as understanding & accomplishment of the learning tasks went. The only marked difference was in the artwork, which evolved along more gender-typical lines. As far as helping each other, he distinguishing feature appeared to be whether the student you were asking, knew the answer to the question. Consequently, there was no real difference in how the students helped each other according to gender. This was markedly different from most of the other classrooms, so far. Alex queried Beth on her thoughts about this phenomenon. She attributed this difference to the fact that as a rural community, the students were more influenced by their parents & local community, rather than outside sources. And also in a rural community, who does the work is not as important as whether the work gets done. This attitude usually transcends gender, age & economic concerns.

Later, while waiting to meet with the principal, one of her students (Arik) was in the office, also waiting. I took the opportunity to ask him what he thought ... I hoped he would be straight-forward, as I had talked with a bit during class. He said he enjoyed the class, “… that it was real fun!”

Vicki's Fall Implementation Journal, 2009

Vicki6 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:10:52 GMT

←Older revision		Revision as of 00:10, 21 November 2009
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	*'''[[Mark's Third Class Cycle]]'''		*'''[[Mark's Third Class Cycle]]'''
	*'''[[Pamela's First Class Cycle: First Visit]]'''		*'''[[Pamela's First Class Cycle: First Visit]]'''
		+	*'''[[Beth's Class: First Day]]'''

Pamela's First Class Cycle: Second Visit

Vicki6 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:09:16 GMT

New page: == '''November 10,2009''' == I arrived as the class was beginning. Per my discussion with Pamela during her last class, I had asked Laura to attend her class regularly to help out. She ha...

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== '''November 10,2009''' ==

I arrived as the class was beginning. Per my discussion with Pamela during her last class, I had asked Laura to attend her class regularly to help out. She had arrived just before me. Our main task today was to upload the majority of students’ games to the Scalable Game Design Arcade. Again I was impressed by the level of understanding that many of her students had of the programming process. For most of the students, all that was required for them to upload their games, was some concise directions. When they didn’t understand something, a brief explanation was usually enough for the students to achieve understanding. Also, as I was directing each student, most of them understood the directions without explanation. This was very different from most of the students in all the other classes that I’ve attended.

In the other classes, helping the students with the uploading process was very time consuming & complicated. Not only was the process time consuming but with many of the students, in order to get all the games uploaded, the CC students, myself & their teacher had to constantly prompt them. Most of the time, these students were just doing things we told them to do without understanding why. This was necessary to facilitate the uploading of all the students’ games. One of the reasons that this process was so difficult was because many of the concepts used in the uploading process, had not already been covered by the teacher. This made the process take longer. This also detracted from the class as a whole since the uploading process took most of one entire class period. Consequently, I was delighted to help students who understood the directions. Not only did the process take less time, but the students will most likely be able to accomplish the process by themselves when it’s time to upload the next game.

Pamela told me that this class was actually two classes together, hers & Carrie Hardy’s. That way, Carrie could help Pamela with the logistics of the class requirements. I talked to Carrie about the upcoming Summer Institute, 2010. She was enthusiastic & preliminarily committed to attend. Pamela is also much more enthusiastic about the program since we started visiting & Laura has been attending the class regularly to help out also. Carrie teaches math & science, whereas Pamela teaches technology & computer skills.

Pamela's First Class Cycle: First Visit

Vicki6 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:06:12 GMT

New page: == '''November 6, 2009''' == When I arrived at Pamela’s class in Columbia Middle School, Kyu & Laura were already there, helping the students. I apologized to her for being late … wen...

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== '''November 6, 2009''' ==

When I arrived at Pamela’s class in Columbia Middle School, Kyu & Laura were already there, helping the students. I apologized to her for being late … went to her regular room instead of the library computer lab. The room is set up with the computers all around the walls. So the students face the walls instead of the teacher. Pamela’s class had been working on Frogger for several days. In comparison to some of the other teacher’s first class cycle, her class seemed to be doing very well. Most of the students had the worksheet populated with background agents, as well as a cursor-controlled frog, generated trucks, logs & some turtles. Most of them were working on programming collision, transport, drowning, or winning/losing behaviors. Unfortunately, before I had a chance to help many students, the school had a fire drill. The fire drill took up most of the class time, so when we returned to the classroom, the only thing the students were able to do, was to log out.

During the fire drill, I took the opportunity to talk to Pamela about what was happening at Columbia & her perceptions of the program. She felt unsupported which was expected, as there had been some miscommunication about start dates. I assured her that we were committed to supporting her & asked if there was anything I could do right then to help her. She asked for some information on Sokoban & I promised I would email it to her within a few days.

Pamela’s class schedule is unique in that she teaches every other day … this means that one week, she teaches on Tuesday & Thursday, & the following week on Monday, Wednesday & Friday. Her class period is 50 minutes long & there are about 30 students in the class.

Vicki's Fall Implementation Journal, 2009

Vicki6 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:05:20 GMT

←Older revision		Revision as of 00:05, 21 November 2009
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	*'''[[Debbie's Second Class: First Visit]]'''		*'''[[Debbie's Second Class: First Visit]]'''
	*'''[[Debbie's Second Class: Second Visit]]'''		*'''[[Debbie's Second Class: Second Visit]]'''
		+	*'''[[Mark's Third Class Cycle]]'''
		+	*'''[[Pamela's First Class Cycle: First Visit]]'''

Mark's Third Class Cycle

Vicki6 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:02:21 GMT

New page: == '''October 1, 2009''' == I arrived at Mark Shouldice’s class just after the class started. Dave was helping a student in the corner. These students were on their 4th day of the progra...

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== '''October 1, 2009''' ==
I arrived at Mark Shouldice’s class just after the class started. Dave was helping a student in the corner. These students were on their 4th day of the program … they were finishing their agents & putting them onto the worksheet when I got there. Most students had their background done & were putting the frog & trucks on, to start the programming functions. Knowing what it’s like to draw agents, I was impressed by the creativity & skill demonstrated by the students … represented by their agents. Mark allowed them time to play with the agents’ images for a short time, while he took role. Then he reviewed the frog’s behavior programming, making sure to find out who was still having trouble with that. Then he told those students to work on that while he went on to demonstrate the “generate”, “absorb”, “collide” & “truck move” behaviors for the students who were ready for it.

The students worked busily while Dave, Mark & I helped as many students as we could. However, at the end of the class period, several students had not been helped at all. This appeared to be the result of the length of time we had to spend with each student. It took much longer to help each one with the programming than it had to help them with agent design. Needless to say those students that had not gotten the help they needed were very frustrated by the end of class.

As the students filed out of the room, Mark pointed out that his two trouble-makers had been behaving very well since the program had started. It had surprised him. Then he gave me a copy of a checklist he had developed for his students. Using this checklist, the students could keep track of their own progress toward game completion, as well as help each other by using the checklist as an evaluation tool. The checklist could encourage peer evaluation & motivate students to try to complete the features they understood before asking for help. Before I left, Mark promised to send me an electronic copy to post to the Wiki.

Scalable Game Design Thursday Bulletin

Vicki6 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:57:28 GMT

←Older revision		Revision as of 23:57, 20 November 2009
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	'''Communication Corner'''		'''Communication Corner'''
	* Communication, like your signature, doesn’t necessarily get better, the more often we communicate!		* Communication, like your signature, doesn’t necessarily get better, the more often we communicate!
		+
		+
		+	== '''Issue 4: November 12, 2009''' ==
		+
		+	'''Teacher Class Updates'''
		+	* Steve Barron’ at Ft. Lupton will start the actual Agentsheets in January.
		+	* Carol starting November 16, Agentsheets installation in progress
		+	* Debbie’s class continues
		+	* Pamela’s class visits have gone well
		+	* No communication from Robin
		+	* Elisa & Laura remain in Debbie’s class
		+	* Dave remains in Mark’s class
		+	* Laura remains in Pam’s class
		+	* Rod’s class is ongoing
		+	* Beth still starting on Nov. 17, will do surveys today
		+	* Sandy’s next class is scheduled for 12/3/2009 … same time
		+	* Anna to start next class on Nov. 16.
		+
		+	'''General Updates'''
		+	* Wiki update still in progress
		+	* Team Meeting this Monday in ECOT 831 @ 12 noon
		+	* Clemith says we might be able to expect a donation of 9 laptops from CU (still pending: no further update)
		+	* Have started talking to current teachers about next year’s Summer Institute: It’s going slowly, but mostly positive … will update team on specifics at meeting
		+	* Alex, Kyu & Vicki to visit Beth (Hoehne) & Rod (LaVeta) on Nov. 17. If anyone wishes to join them, you must commit before the Monday meeting
		+	* Agentsheets update for the CC students went very well.
		+
		+	'''Possibilities in Process'''
		+	* Possible involvement in a Pueblo CC career fair (making contacts)
		+	* Home Schooling Assoc. from Stemapolooza (possibly next year?)
		+	* Steve Barron is promoting the program to his entire district
		+	* Laura Rodriguez has a teacher who is interested (private school)
		+	* Everyone should start thinking about the expansion goals for the next cycle?
		+	* (How many teachers, CC students, etc. are we expanding to? Ratio of science/math teachers to tech teachers/school?)
		+
		+	'''Communication Corner'''
		+	* “Creativity doesn’t just happen by chance; the prepared environment nourishes it” R. E. Peterson (2005)
		+	* “The difficulty in defining teacher beliefs centers on the difficulty and ambiguity of differentiating beliefs from knowledge.” (Calderhead, 1996; Pajares, 1992)
		+	* One communication perspective stresses that beliefs can be (& usually are) communicated as an undercurrent of almost any type of knowledge/subject that we speak about.
		+
		+
		+	== '''Issue 5: November 19, 2009''' ==
		+
		+	'''Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!'''
		+
		+
		+	'''Teacher Class Updates'''
		+	* Rod’s Class is doing Great!
		+	* Carol postponed until Agentsheets can be installed (this week)
		+	* Beth’s Class is doing Awesome … on their first day!
		+	* Robin will begin 3rd cycle on Monday
		+	* Anna started 2nd cycle this week
		+	* Burke to start 2nd cycle on Dec 3, 2009
		+	* Alyson postponed 2nd cycle
		+	* Sandy to start 4th cycle on Dec. 3, 2009
		+
		+	'''General Updates'''
		+	* Alex, Kyu & Vicki had a wonderful (5am-9pm) visit with Rod & Beth in their respective classes
		+	* Wiki is still not fully updated, due to increases in other tasks … soon, though
		+	* Clemith says we might be able to expect a donation of 9 laptops from CU (still pending)
		+	* Laura has whiplash & a concussion from a rear-ender … will be awhile until she can return to work
		+	* Ian traveling to Oglala … hopefully to resolve the stand-off between Carol & Thomas (Yeah!)
		+	* Vicki will be in Santa Barbara this week (sailing w/Mike) … sporactic email, internet & phone service while on the water.
		+
		+	'''Possibilities in Process'''
		+	* Possible involvement in a Pueblo CC career fair (making contacts)
		+	* Home Schooling Assoc. from Stemapolooza (possibly next year?)
		+	* New teacher possibility from Laura Rodriguez
		+	* New CC student recruitment for southern area from Trinidad CC?
		+
		+	'''Communication Corner'''
		+	* When you want to make sure your message is understood, remember that realizing that your perceptions are not the same as those of your conversational or email correspondent is the key. Just because you have said your piece eloquently, do not assume that your message was received accurately until you get some feedback!

User talk:Educating

Educating — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:31:42 GMT

New page: Educational Tips for College Boys and Girls about Online Dating It’s one thing to embellish in your profile about the number of times you go to the gym, the amount of sushi you can...

New page

Educational Tips for College Boys and Girls about Online Dating

It’s one thing to embellish in your profile about the number of times you go to the gym, the amount of sushi you can consume, or your knowledge about baseball statistics, but it’s dating suicide to lie in your online dating profile about your salary, appearance, current relationship and family status.

For example, if you write in your online dating profile that you run a successful hedge fund when you’re really the janitor at a hedge fund, your date with know when you can’t afford to pick up the tab at the expensive restaurant she suggested you take her to (because she thought you were rolling in dough). Unless you don’t ever expect to go out on an actual date, don’t write in your online dating profile that you’re three dress sizes smaller than you actually are, your date won’t even hang around to watch you finish your first cocktail. If you’re still technically married, even though you know for certain that things definitely won’t work out, click the box in your online dating profile that says separated and not single. And, if your family life means that you have custody every third weekend and on alternate holidays, make sure you write in your online dating profile that you have children. That’s one surprise no one wants to have on a third or fourth date, especially when you show up on the date with three kids in tow because it’s your Sunday.

And so, to all you avid online daters: if you’re really not that interested in attracting someone with a decent character, go ahead and lie in your online dating profile. We certainly can’t stop you. But, when it comes to dating and relationships, trust is an essential element in making things work. Don’t start things off on the wrong foot; be candid in your online dating profile. Abe was right: honesty is the best policy. We know you’ll thank us when you’re in an honest and loving relationship that started off on the right foot with a truthful online dating profile. Well here is one good and decent dating site:
[http://www.matchmaker.com/es/ Buscar pareja por Internet]