Debbie's First Class

September 1, 2009
1st 8th grade Class (30 students): I arrived late for Debbie’s first class, due to traffic. Since her classes are only about 40 minutes long, I passed out the media forms immediately. I told the students that if they returned them before my next visit, I would take their photos and post them on the website for other students to see. They seemed excited about having their picture taken, and all the students took home a form. By the time we finished talking about pictures & I helped a few students, especially a Jamaican girl (Faktu), it was time for the students to leave. When I attended class Faktu would always single me out to help her. I like to think that was because she felt she could relate to me, but I never asked.

2nd 8th grade Class (31 students): I introduced myself. Lots of complaining from the students about the simplicity of the game, Frogger, as opposed to the games they were used to playing. I tried to explain that learning any skill required starting at the beginning. The skill of programming was no different. I told them that some other students in the 6th grade had started learning this software last week, in Ms. Benjamin’s class. One boy interrupted me to yell “Ms. Benjamin teaches French, not computers!” I told him that I had just attended her class last week, the same as their class. He continued to contradict me, so I asked Debbie to intervene, as arguing with a student is not productive in any setting. Debbie told the boy to leave the class for the rest of the period, so the rest of the students settled down to learn.

Once the boy was gone, I explained how WIKIs work on the internet, and that their games would be uploaded to the Scalable Game Design Arcade (SGDA) that was a part of the Scalable Game Design WIKI. Since there wasn’t much time left, I suggested to Debbie that she let the students play some games to show them what their game could look like. This was the 2nd day of the program that I was observing, so the students were just beginning to design their frog. I showed Debbie where the Frogger tutorial was on the WIKI, and she got out her projector to project the tutorial for the class.

About a third of the class seemed really interested in the material. Elisa handed out media consent forms to the students that wanted them. I helped the students to get started, solve some computer problems and answered questions, individually. The students that were interested and paid attention created some awesome frogs and went on to the other agents. Later I learned that these students had access to computers on a regular basis. Other students were having a very hard time even understanding what the tutorial or Debbie was describing for them to complete. These were the students that had no contact with computers, except when they took a computer class like this one in school. This severely handicapped these students in performing even the most basic function of Agentsheets. When the class ended, the more technologically savvy students had completed the frog, and possibly started another agent. The technologically handicapped students were still struggling with the depiction screen.

Debbie had a free period after this class, so I stayed behind to talk to her and Elisa about the class. We agreed she needed to be more organized, in order to feel more confident about teaching Agentsheets, especially for the first time. When her students for the next period arrived, I told her I would be back to take pictures in a couple days.