Pamela's First Class Cycle: Second Visit

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.