Sandy's First Class

September 10, 2009
Sandy Rea teaches 6th grade at Aspen Creek Middle School in Bloomfield, Co. The class on Thursday was referred to as her block class, meaning she had the students for over an hour. I chose to visit on this day to observe a longer class than the shorter ones. When Kyu & I arrived to observe Sandy’s I week module class, we signed in at the front desk. In BVSD, there are not the stringent security protocols for visitors, as there are in the Aurora Public School District. When we entered Sandy’s class (Rm. 210), there was an image being projected from the smart screen at the front of the classroom. The image was a frog leaping with the words above the image. “Long live the frog!” Below the frog image were instructions for those students who arrived before class & wanted to begin early. The students were instructed to begin work on their frogger game.

Students started to wander in, randomly, almost immediately, individually or in small groups. Some began to work, others milled around chatting & joking with each other. Because we were visiting, Sandy called the class to attention to introduce us. Both Kyu & I said a few words apiece. Then Sandy asked the students if anyone could identify Kyu’s nationality. Several students raised their hands … many thought Chinese, a couple said Asian, one said Thai, and another Japanese. Finally a dark-haired girl in the front row, off to the right, answered Korean. Once a chocolate had been dispensed to the girl with the correct answer, Sandy mentioned that she was part Korean too. Not to be left out, I said that I was Irish. Sandy asked me if I could do an Irish jig? I said, “No!” but I could sing “Danny boy.” So Sandy replied, “Well, go ahead!” I sang one verse … just to prove I could do it, & then it was back to class business. By this time the students seemed comfortable with us. Sandy reviewed some of the computational thinking behavior patterns, asking the students to describe what they meant. Again many students raised their hands … it was wonderful to observe the students so engaged and participating so readily. Because they were doing so well, answering Sandy’s questions, I asked her if I could ask them a question. Sandy challenged her students, “Do you think you can answer a question from Vicki?” Of course, they said, yes.

“What is it called when an agent is programmed to behave in a certain way without the player controlling that behavior?” Immediately the students raised their hands. After calling on many students, their answers were getting closer, but no one had gotten the correct answer, “Artificial Intelligence.” Sandy & I gave them a few more hints, and a boy finally answered, “AI.” So I replied that AI was very close, but could he tell me what it meant? No one knew. So we gave them the answer, as well as chocolates to those students with the closest answers. Then Sandy & I described how AI or artificial intelligence was used in the tech industry. The students were excited to understand a term that they had heard but hadn’t completely comprehended.

They were anxious to start working on their games. Most of the students were working on getting their cars/trucks moving, generating, & absorbing. I noticed that Sandy had a smart screen for her students. This enabled her to show the students how the programming actually worked by doing it in front of them. Today, she was demonstrating how to program the different agent behaviors. For the rest of the time, Sandy, Kyu & myself helped the students who encountered problems by going over to them when they raised their hand. It became obvious that these computers had similar problems interacting with Agentsheets, the way that APSD schools did. In Sandy’s class Agentsheets would freeze. Often the students could correct the problem by just exiting Agentsheets. But sometimes the student would have to completely log out from the computer log back in before the difficulty would be solved, and the software functions restored.

For this class (her 1-week module class), Sandy had minimalized the Frogger game. She had eliminated the river, logs, and turtles, along with the transport behavior. So the students were only required to complete the frog, road, grass, cars/trucks and a winning agent. If a student accomplished the assigned tasks before the rest of the class, they could add the other agents (river, logs, & turtles) for extra credit. I thought this was a very good idea to possibly resolve the time issues that had been cropping up in the other classes. So far none of the classes I’d been able to observe, had been able to finish their Frogger games in only one week. Sandy’s students were almost finished with this abbreviated version after only three and a half days. So this was something I will definitely share with the other teachers.