Monday, May 23
Another great day in the classroom! And some nice press! Please see http://www.nationnews.com/nationnews/news/81541/programming-hit-st-alban for a quick story about why this is special! Today, the girls spent about half of the three-hour class with puzzles, debugging exercises, learning a few new skills, and reviewing the maze game we made Friday. This helped for two reasons. One, it helped the kids who were out of class last week because of ball games get caught up. And two, it helped reinforce the concepts that were taught last week, but perhaps had not sunk in yet. Interestingly, some of last week’s missing kids caught up extremely quickly, while some of last week’s attendees needed the review, so it was definitely time well spent. Then we introduced their project and showed them a few potential examples to get their creative juices going. Their project is to be something to help celebrate the Barbadian 50th’ anniversary of independence, which happens this year. We gave them ideas like a quiz, a game, a maze where a character could pick up Barbadian objects, a story, or an info page where you’d click on an icon to get more information about a topic. I was a little worried that the Barbados students wouldn’t know what to do with so much freedom, but they were all settled in to their projects within about 5 minutes of our introduction. The plans and enthusiasm were really fun to see. And with five of us in the classroom, plus Mr. McConney from St. Albans, there were plenty of us to help out. We will have to do a better job, however, for the next group. We will split up into two classes on Thursday and Friday, so there will be fewer of us to help when there are questions. We’ve already started to talk about how to handle that challenge. The girls (and the teachers!) were all exhausted after the three hour class. It went amazingly well, but it is still really tiring to teach. Plus, every question is slightly different because the projects are all so varied, so you have to listen to the question, think about it, come up with a solution on the spot, and then find a way to communicate it to the student. It is a lot to handle, but as I’ve said already, these girls are doing amazing work! After school we grabbed lunch at a very sloooooow café, and then headed to a place called Harrison’s Cave, which is a beautiful cave network with all kinds of formations like stalactites and stalagmites. Some of us needed a day out of the sun to let our skin recuperate. Check out our photos of the really beautiful rock formations. Another delicious meal from Selena, another really productive meeting, and I think all are going to sleep early tonight for another intense day tomorrow. Hard to express how proud I am of these girls. Wish you could see them in action!
1 Comment
Dana P
5/24/2016 05:17:18 pm
Awesome. I love the concept of 50th year of independence. Also love the challenge - teaching, done well, IS exhausting. But rewarding. :-)
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