Mark's Second Class

October 1, 2009
I arrived at Mark Shouldice’s class just after the class started. Dave was helping a student in the corner. These students were on their 4th day of the program … they were finishing their agents & putting them onto the worksheet when I got there. Most students had their background done & were putting the frog & trucks on, to start the programming functions. Knowing what it’s like to draw agents, I was impressed by the creativity & skill demonstrated by the students … represented by their agents. Mark allowed them time to play with the agents’ images for a short time, while he took role. Then he reviewed the frog’s behavior programming, making sure to find out who was still having trouble with that. Then he told those students to work on that while he went on to demonstrate the “generate”, “absorb”, “collide” & “truck move” behaviors for the students who were ready for it.

The students worked busily while Dave, Mark & I helped as many students as we could. However, at the end of the class period, several students had not been helped at all. This appeared to be the result of the length of time we had to spend with each student. It took much longer to help each one with the programming than it had to help them with agent design. Needless to say those students that had not gotten the help they needed were very frustrated by the end of class.

As the students filed out of the room, Mark pointed out that his two trouble-makers had been behaving very well since the program had started. It had surprised him. Then he gave me a copy of a checklist he had developed for his students. Using this checklist, the students could keep track of their own progress toward game completion, as well as help each other by using the checklist as an evaluation tool. The checklist could encourage peer evaluation & motivate students to try to complete the features they understood before asking for help. Before I left, Mark promised to send me an electronic copy to post to the Wiki.