Today in class we finished up our directions for first two sections: basic skills and intro to Scratch. Then our two different groups switched our sections we did and read through theirs to check the instructions, re-iterate them, and make them more descriptive and easier to understand. Some things I've learned is how to make better lesson plans to specifically cater to the children we are going to teach at Barbados in the spring.
This has opened my eyes and really helped me understand children’s education in our culture versus other cultures. We also had a discussion about the different values of respect and behavior in the Barbados culture versus ours in America. It makes me so much more appreciative of our education and the creativity we are encouraged to develop at CSG.
1 Comment
Last class, we worked on cleaning and sorting the laptops donated by our school. Every year, when the seniors graduate, they have the option to donate their computers, or take them home, and the class of 2017 was very generous! Mrs. Murakami is hoping that we can install some software on the computers, and donate them to less fortunate people. However before we do that, we have to take all the stickers off, and make sure they are properly working. We also learned about open source software, which means code that is free to use and modify. One interesting thing we learned is that Firefox is open source, and anyone can change the algorithm they use, in order to give the whole world better search results. I am very excited to be involved in this awesome project, I have a passion for service work and STEM, and pairing them together is fun so far but can only get better!
This week we had our second day of class. We downloaded the correct version of Scratch and we started talking and planning out what we wanted to achieve this year.
One of our goals was that we wanted create a book of guidelines to help teachers or other adults try and teach the kids how to use the program while we aren’t there. We also read over the learning plan from last year to see what we could make better and what we could take out. In class, we all started working on the guidelines for the booklet and I started with the intro to Scratch. In the introduction, we explain the layout, what Scratch is, and how it was first started. Although it was only our second class, I learned how excited I was to be a part of this amazing experience and how lucky I am to be able to do this. I can’t wait to get more work done and learn more about how this class works! This week we had our first day of class. We went over the course as a whole and what we should expect from the class. We also went over the trip and saw some pictures which were fun to see again In my class, we decided that this year we are going to create a curriculum so that teachers can use our guidelines to help teach while we aren't physically there. I am really excited to start working on this because I feel like this will really help others around the world and the kids we will teach on our trip!
Because I have already traveled I knew that I wanted to take the class again since I have witnessed first hand how we actually helped these children. Watching the kids in Barbados faces light up when they finally caught on to what we were teaching made our work so rewarding and made it feel like we were actually making a difference. I'll never forget how the day we left the students were so sad and hugging us and crying which just goes to show how much they enjoyed our lessons and learning. I hope that this year we can do the same and even more than last year! |
About this pageDuring the school year, students will blog once per week. Please check back often. Archives
April 2018
|