Debbie's First Class: Third Visit

September 11, 2009
First Class: This was supposed to be the last day of the program, so the students needed to take the post survey and upload their games to the Scalable Game Design Arcade. I didn’t arrive until the class was about half over. The class was in chaos due to the students’ inability to upload their games. It appeared that the biggest stumbling block was that many of the computers did not have the “paint” program, which is a requirement in the upload process. Besides the fact that two sets of instructions had to be given (one set for each different computer program), and the students’ technological experience was not enough to overcome these difficulties, other problems with the older computers contributed to everyone’s frustrations. The only solution I could think of was to have the students do what they could to create the “ristretto” file on the desktop, so I could save them to my data stick. This process took the rest of the class, since I had to do it entirely myself. Although Debbie & Elisa tried to help, the students used this technological difficulty as an opportunity to create more distractions. When the class was over, I still had several games to download. The incoming students made it worse because they immediately closed the other students’ games to log on themselves. It took all Debbie’s & Elisa’s time to prevent the new students from erasing the previous students games from the computers until I could save them to my data stick.

Second Class: We assumed that the second class would have similar problems with the game upload. As soon I had finished collecting the first class’ games, Debbie told the students to access an icon on their desktop and take the post-survey. Once the first student had completed the post-survey, I began the process of saving their games to my data stick. I instructed Debbie & Elisa to make the screen shots as best they could with whatever program the computer had that would allow it. I started the “ristretto” for the game, added the screen shot to the file and then saved them to my data stick. I also had to rename the files to make sure that the game would be connected to the student who created it. It took the entire class to collect all the students’ games. Debbie & I spent her break, trying to figure which students’ games I’d collected in her first class, since we had both forgotten to put their names on their game folders. As I saved the students’ games, I realized that several students had blank worksheets. These students told me that they never knew when they came to class if their game work from the previous class would still be in their saved file. They were very frustrated about this situation, but did not have any idea how to correct it. I had planned to take pictures of those students who had returned their media consent forms. With the upload problems, I had very little time for anything else. I did manage to take a few pictures of the students who were lagging behind (who had media consent forms). After class Debbie & I discussed ways to improve the students’ experiences for the next cycle. I volunteered to help her organize the curriculum for the new students. We agreed to meet the following week to address these issues.