Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Project Plans

Finally back into the swing of things!  Like Mike said, we had a few heavy personal issues happen in August, but we're back in action, and happy to be here.  

I've also hit a technology snag.  Many of my students have not been issued their school computers as of right now.  We've been having a server malfunction at my school recently, and the IT geniuses are using all their time trying to get it fixed.  Laptop distribution has been put on hold for now.  Until further notice, I've got about 40% of my kids without computers, which makes the idea of asynchronous pairing even more difficult.  Also, the balance of my classes is unusually skewed this year.  One section of the class I want to do this project in has 21 students, and the other section has 11.  For this reason, I have decided to allow students to work with a partner in the same class as them, with the added requirement that they must share their work with the other class in a "guest speaker" format.  As of right now, I am still working on the logistics of this plan, and I'm thinking it might even become a video that they create and share somehow.  I'm not sure, though.  It's still a work in progress.

Luckily for me, all freshmen at my school are required to take a class called "Tech and Career," in which each of them is already required to use Google Docs.  Thanks to this class, I won't be responsible for introducing the overall technology idea to them, only the specific pieces I need them to use.  I'm thinking it might be fun to coordinate with the Tech teacher and see if there is a way students can get credit for this project in both classes.

2 comments:

  1. What is it this year with laptops not out? I do really like the idea of asynchronous pairing but can see that differing class sizes can be difficult. Why is it they won't let us have classes the way we plan in the summer? (Hope you can hear the joking tone!) Don't they call this "reflection in action"? I like the video idea. I need to figure out how I can have my students create videos as well but with only 40 min at a time, it would be/will be a challenge.

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  2. Think of the videos as commercials... give them a format to follow

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