Mark Savignano's First Class

September 28, 2009
Mark Savignano & his students arrived almost simultaneously. The class takes place in the same classroom as Burke’s class. The students immediately powered up their computers & started working on their games as soon as they arrived. Ashok, Mark & I walked around trying to observe the students unobtrusively. My first impression, in general, was that these students were much further ahead in designing their games than the previous class. Plus the students seemed to be more engaged in the Agentsheets software & using it for designing their own creations. Again I took photos after first asking the students if they had returned their media consent forms. Many of the girls in this class were engaged & doing very well. One girl sitting next to the teacher’s desk was very occupied with her game. When I took her photo, she started asking questions about the software. I sat with her for awhile, helping her to implement the behaviors she asked about.

About mid-class, Mark asked for the students’ attention to give them the next instructions. He asked them to make the river, logs & turtles (agents) with examples on the class media screen. Then Mark put up an example of transport behavior on the class media screen & told them how the frog was supposed to be able to “ride” on the logs & the turtles. Once the class started to work on the new game sections, more hands rose for help. Some of the other girls started to come over to ask me questions, so I went over to their desks & helped them for awhile, as well as taking their pictures. Also a couple of boys on the end of the top level of the horseshoe kept posing for pictures … I couldn’t resist taking advantage of this behavior. I realized that class was almost over, so I visited the other side of the class to get pictures. Several of these students also “posed” for me. After a few more pictures, class was over & then students left excitedly!