Deborah's Journal: Week 7

Monday, July 6, 2009

Today we met all of the teachers and went through the beginning tutorials. We made it through Part Two of skaterworld. I am continuing to work on my own projects

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

I went through Part Four with the teachers. I also took two teachers who missed yesterday through the first two parts of SkaterWorld individually. We tried to go to the DIVE today as well, but it didn't work.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

I continued to work on my example world while I helped the teachers. My sisters were able to come for lunch. I always enjoy hearing Professor Astrachan speak. I wish CS 82 counted for the minor, lol. The DIVE worked today for the teachers.

I've ccme up with several ideas for tools for teachers and students to more quickly use Alice. I'm excited about creating them next week.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Today as we continued to go through tutorials, I was able to mostly work on my own projects.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Another successful week gone by already. I've really enjoyed these past three weeks of workshops. I think it's been great practice for me when it comes to my position in Turkey. Also, I've gained a different perspective on how Alice can and should be used in middle school and high school classrooms. Half way through today, one of the teachers from the first week (Patricia, an ESL teacher) came by again. We went upstairs and she explained how she'd created a powerpoint and she wanted to convert it to an Alice world. For each slide, she wanted to have a section for the presentation of the information, an exercise for the students to interact with and an assessment to test what they learned. I must admit, I was a bit wary about how something this detailed for one lecture was going to turn out - as in how reproducible it would be for Patricia.

We created part of a world - it was actually kind of cool to be so creative on the spot. But like I thought, it was incredibly time consuming. Patricia raised some concerns because of course teachers don't have much time to develop all of their materials in Alice. So I talked with her about the options and the different approaches to incorporating Alice. And in her case, I don't think all of her lecture presentations ought to use the application. She showed me several of her activites. I came up with which one's would make a nice Alice world. Next week, I am going to create one for her so she can see how it can be used.

After work, Lana and I talked about the various ways Alice can be incorporated into the classroom.

Saturday and Sunday, July 11 and 12, 2009

I planned a bit for some of the ideas that I will be working on over these next three weeks. I worked mostly on my example world though. It's getting really big! I also showed Alice to three of my little cousins (all 12 and under). One of them quicly made two worlds, one of which was really cute. I'd told him about Alice last summer, so I wasn't surprised.

I worked for 8 hours this weekend.

Back to Week 6 || On to Week 8

My Alice Home Page

Professor Rodger's Home Page