Debbie's Second Class: First Visit

October 6, 2009
I arrived at Debbie’s second class, as there was a huge accident on Hwy 36. She’s teaching two classes for her second cycle as she did for her first. Since Oct 5 had been an “in-service day” … which means there’s no school, this was really the first day of the program class. As the students arrived, Debbie told them to access the survey icon on their desktop & take the survey. Elisa, Debbie & myself answered questions about the survey or clarified for the students. Once that was done Debbie had them access the Scalable Game Design Wiki, so they could play the games & get an idea of the kind of game they would be designing. This worked out well, since some of the students took a lot longer to complete the survey than others so all the students had something to occupy their time without having to wait for the anyone. While the students were playing the games, Elisa & I walked around commenting on different aspects that they might want to use for their own games. I announced that the purpose of playing the games was to see both good programming ideas & errors, so they would be more knowledge about what worked well & what didn’t. I also encouraged them by instigating a friendly competition for best game. Two girls were the last to leave & I took that opportunity to ask them if their games would be better than the boys in the class. Of course they told me, “Yes!”