Mark's First Class

September 1, 2009
First Class (30 students): Mark opened class by introducing the two community college students as well as myself. Then he reminded them of what they had done the previous day … the survey and consent forms, especially about returning the consent forms asap).  Next he had Dave Kuttler show the students two different Frogger games while he took role. After role, he talked briefly about computational thinking and how it related to the game they would be creating. Mark has a smart screen in his classroom that he used to advantage to teach Agentsheets. He started Agentsheets on this screen to remind them how to open it and still make sure their work could be saved on the district network. This involved creating a file on their drive (“W”) and opening a new project in Agentsheets within that file. Once all the student finished this task, he introduced them to concept of agents and behaviors. Mark distinguished the agents in Frogger, while using his own game. The students could see all the agents and why you needed to design everything to make the game function. He related the behaviors to his previous comments on computational thinking. Then Mark brought up the depiction screen on the smart screen, and explained the different tools for creating an agent, as well as using the screen. He showed them his frog in the game he had designed during the Summer Institute. Then he showed them how he had created it. He asked for questions and then gave them five minutes to design a frog. The students started out confidently, but soon hands were raised continually for help. Fortunately, besides Mark and myself, both Dave Kuttler and Allen Comer were there to help the students individually. All the frogs were absolutely wonderful! The frogs were multi-colored, multi-shaped creatures, just waiting to step out onto the worksheet. I joked with Mark that his frog was not as creative as his students’ frogs. He good-naturedly took up the challenge and put all the students’ frogs on the smart screen to compare with his. The students admired each other’s frogs and agreed their frogs were better than Mr. Shouldice’s! So far all the students were enjoying themselves. Since the class was close to ending, Mark had them open a new worksheet to put their frog onto, so they could save their work. This task proved more difficult than expected, as several students received error messages. None of us understood why this happened, but Mark managed to work the problem through by having those effected students save their work in a different manner. The students were disappointed that the class was over, and seemed to be looking forward to the next day’s class. Mark’s class had gone well, I thought. The students had accomplished the creation of one agent, a frog, and had saved their work. Mark also had approximately 30 students in his class, but unlike Debbie, he had two community college students helping him. Although this worked much better than one assistant, he also used them to help him demonstrate, leaving him free to do other tasks. This also worked very well. Mark also kept his students totally on task without being too strict or humorless. He used his own mistakes with Agentsheets to instruct the students not only in what to do, but what not to do. This also gave the students the freedom to make mistakes without any major feelings of inadequacy. This is my opinion, but these students definitely seemed to be more able to learn from their mistakes than other classes I observed.

Second Class (30 students): Mark followed pretty much the same protocol for the second class as he had with the first. Mark usually comments that the second class is usually smoother than the first, due to his increased experience with the material. Both Allen and Dave are helping the students individually. This system seems to work so much better with the class size (30), than when only one community college student is available to assist. The students were excited to make their frogs, and Mark himself commented that his frog was not as well designed as the students’ frogs, when all the frogs were displayed on the smart screen. Of course, the students and I agreed with him. We also had the same saving issues at the end of class, as the first class had experienced. All in all, both classes went very well, with the students leaving in a most positive manner.