Debbie's Second Class: Second Visit

October 15, 2009
Thursday, Oct 15, 2009 was my second visit to Debbie’s second class-cycle. I knew already from her email, that her class was having problems saving their games. The problem appeared to stem from not saving accurately or not saving the information in the correct location. Ashok & Kyu schooled me with an abbreviated version of how to solve the perceived issues. We all hoped that we were accurate in our perceptions.

When I arrived at Debbie’s first class, I asked her to give me a brief overview of the problems. I had sent her some solutions over email, which she had printed, so we could go over them together. We realized that we could solve the issues, but all four of us (Debbie, Elisa, Laura & me) would have to work as fast as we could to reach all her students, as well as tutor them individually in the correct manner of saving their games so they wouldn’t experience this any longer.

By the end of the second class, all the students except six who had been called away to a student gathering had been helped. The most common issue among the students that I helped was the separation of their worksheet from the rest of the project. I assumed this was caused by the students saving the worksheet separately from the rest of the project. When I encountered this difficulty, I told the student how to prevent this issue in the future by leaving both the worksheet & the gallery open when exiting the Agentsheets program. By saving the project in this way, both pieces remain saved in the same location.

The other common problem occurred in two different forms. First was the game saved to the network file, so we had to tutor the student on how to move the folder to the desktop before working on it. Then at the end of class, after saving their new work, they have to move this folder back to their individual network file. This usually eliminates the loss of work. The other related problem involved the student saving the game to the Agentsheets program, & not to their network folder. The solution to this difficulty was a two-step process. First we had to identify the student’s game on the C drive. Once the game was identified, we copied it to the desktop, giving the student the same instructions for working with the software on the desktop & saving their work. When they understood that they needed to work with Agentsheets from the desktop, they were reminded that after saving their new work to the desktop folder. They needed to put that folder into their network file at the end of class.

Despite the difficulties, most of Debbie’s students were happy to be able to work on their games without the loss of their work. There was a bit of disinterest due to the frustration & work difficulty level of working on this program, when surfing the internet & checking email is relatively easy for them to accomplish. I will be interested to see if their attitude improves, now that their work & progress on the game can be saved regularly.

I perceived that all the students understood the new procedures for using Agentsheets. At least they did at that moment in time. Only time & practice will engrain the procedure. The next obstacle will be the arcade uploading process. This has been difficult for most of the classes. Anna Holen believes that the reason for this challenge is that the upload procedure uses computer protocols that most of the middle school students have never seen, much less learned or practiced. Consequently the upload process takes a full class to accomplish, leaving the class with one day less to work on their games.