The trip is in two weeks, so I decided to do the last post myself. Students are wrapping up their semester, taking AP tests and studying for exams, so the next student posts you'll read will be during the trip.
It has been a year of ups and downs. I started with a small group of travelers to begin with, and then some of the parents got nervous about the Zika virus and sending their daughters to the Caribbean, so I am left with three girls for the trip. After the initial disappointment, there are some real benefits from having such a small group, and I am really looking forward to the trip. Since we are traveling to a new place, it was very important to still keep the commitment to be there. One of the students wants to be a teacher, so this will be an excellent experience for her. The other two are enthusiastic and knowledgeable. It will be a great learning experience for everyone. We will be switching to the trip blog, so please check there once we start to travel. Here's to a great experience in a new place!
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In class we’ve been doing our Scratch project. My project was about changes in the body during puberty. I finished my project a little early, so I’ve been helping Ms. Murakami work on some of the other projects! I will definitely remember how much fun it is to program these lessons for the kids and learn how to make a lesson interesting! I’ve learned that I do like to code and program things on Scratch and that it’s really fun to challenge myself with that program! I’ve had a lot of fun making these lessons and I can’t wait for what the future holds!
In class we have been making lessons in Scratch on puberty for girls to learn about. This includes wellness, how to take care of your body, the stages you’ll go through in puberty, and information so that when they have their period or begin to grow hair they won’t be surprised and confused!
I have learned a lot about Scratch throughout the process. At first I could not figure it out at all, but I think that I have gotten better at it. (Although I still have to ask a lot of questions). My favorite thing has been working on the project with my friends. It’s really cool that we get to teach girls about something that we all go through at some point in our lives. I feel really accomplished and productive in this class. I feel like I am helping people, and it’s cool that they’re from so far away. During class we have been finishing up our lessons on puberty. In the past few weeks a lot of people have decided to not go to Barbados to teach the kids which means that the other two students going and I are going to be able to work with more of the kids and work closer with them. Because I am traveling we have split our class and started discussing our plans for teaching there. In one class period we figured out our schedule for the first day there and what we will be teaching: we are going to be discussing the basics of the computers we have sent there, introducing Scratch and doing activities with them. I enjoyed making lessons on Scratch during the year but planning out lessons is making me very excited for teaching the kids in Barbados and traveling with my classmates.
The One Laptop per Child girls have been working hard and diligently over the past few months to prepare for our trip to Barbados. Every girl has their own individual project that covers a particular topic of puberty. Each girl’s goal is to create an interactive and informative lesson to help teach young people about the female anatomy to proper hygiene. Through these lessons our goal is to help inform people and give them a better understanding of what puberty is and the changes that accompany it. I personally am working on the female anatomy, which I feel is an important thing for young women to understand because it is easier to make sense of the changes of puberty if you understand where everything is taking place. I’m excited that we get to help younger people not only through working with the laptops but using our Scratch skills to inform them about life. The girls are working to get their lessons finished and everyone is very excited to see the final results!
Over these last couple classes, we have been working on lessens in scratch. My partner and I chose to do our scratch lesson on Puberty. We researched a little bit about puberty and put it into a lesson that would teach the kids about the basics of puberty, while also making it a little exciting. We decided to make ours a story of two friends who start to experience some of the different stages of puberty, and then one of their sisters comes in and explains to them what is happening to their bodies. We then ended with a game where the students could press the three parts of the body: head, torso, and legs. After a body part is clicked, it will zoom in on the body part and it will change in the way that part would during puberty. For example when the head is clicked, it zooms in on the face and shows pimples, and explains what they are. We had some challenges figuring out what goes where, and making sure we didn’t accidentally program the wrong scripts.
For the past few classes we have been working more and more on our lessons. We have brainstormed ways to include our information, but at the same time make it fun for the students! The picture of the girl in a pink outfit is who we are using in our lesson to teach the students about puberty. We made buttons where you can click on her face, for example, and learn information about washing hair! We have had some challenges with figuring out how to make things work, for example the next button, but everything is going great!
My favorite part of this whole process is really thinking hard and being creative with these lessons. By working with a partner, and putting both of our thoughts together, we get very creative ideas that Im sure the kids will absoutly love! Im feeling very excited the closer and closer we get to finshing the lessons. Every class, we make so many imporvements that it really makes me happy! I am having a very fun time working with classmates and knowing that I will be helping these students to learn very essential information! This week in class we have continued our work on our Scratch project on puberty to be published online. Most of us have gotten past a simple cover page and are now working on compiling our information in a both informative and fun way using the Scratch program. To accomplish this, we have had to put our minds together to figure out ways to properly program our websites to do what we want when clicked. At first, this process was fairly easy, but as we add more and more slides and information, the programming definitely becomes more of a challenge. However, we still have had fun working on these website together and tying in some fun aspects to make the website more enjoyable.
I have definitely noticed the Scratch programming process to become more complex, however, the more I work with the program the easier it becomes to navigate Scratch. I’ve learned that I have a fairly good grasp on the material and I enjoy explaining to other people how to work the website as well. As mentioned before, I have learned that less is definitely more. Providing less in the website makes the process a lot less complex and easier to navigate and understand. I am still enjoying the process of making these website and I can’t wait to have them finished and get to see the final product. This week we are farther on our lessons and we have started to make games for them. Blythe and I have joined forces on my lesson. We've decided that she would do the writing, I would draw the pictures, and we would both work on the games. So far we have the writing and a few pictures. Our lesson is about the changes girls can expect during puberty. It was originally my lesson, but I had a concussion and been getting bad migraines so Blythe is helping me out. This year, being a senior, I'm busy with a ton of homework and my Senior May Program assignments so Blythe is a huge help. So far, my favorite thing is working on the lesson and I can't wait for it to be all finished!
Since the start of the project we are working on, we have been focusing in more on each particular lesson assigned to us. The overall aspect of the lesson we are creating is teaching young girls about puberty. Not only are we teaching them about it and the changes you go through, but we are going into health issues, body image, reproduction, and how you can take care of yourself and others. The lesson that I have been working on is about basic reproduction, how the baby develops, birth control, and STDs and how to care for people with them. I started working on interactive games and creating lessons within Scratch. When creating the lessons we have to think about who we are giving them to, and for that we have to make fun and engaging activities that will also inform correctly. By going back and forth from a game to a page with information is the best way we think we can keep if fun and engaging. I am looking forward to working on my lessons and finding new and exciting ways to make the lessons interesting and interactive.
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Students will be blogging weekly throughout the school year as they prepare for the trip. Please check back occasionally for updates. Archives
May 2016
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