Week 3 - Day 2 - Justin

For the second day of student training, we broke up into two groups. Stephanie posted about her experience below, but I thought I would blog about mine too – it was just that good of a day.

The rain finished before lunch was over, so there were no obstacles standing between the teachers and the school. Everyone arrived on time and was excited for their second day. As I mentioned, we broke up into two groups, which was a great way to help kids work with others their own age as well as cut down the class size. This helped things move along more quickly than they did on day one.

The teacher that Eli and I worked with did a wonderful job of directing the class. First, we caught up the kids who had missed day one, since our numbers grew a bit, and then opened Memorize to begin the activity. The teacher started by letting the kids try out some of the games that the XO comes with, and then we worked on creating new ones.

Lead by example and open the door for the kids to make it their own – this was how it worked. The teacher demonstrated how to make a game with some thing like countries and capitols, making just a few slides, and then allowed the kids to create their own game. In case the kids had problems that weren’t immediately solved by working with their friends, I always made sure to carry my XO with me so that I could show the kids how I did it instead of just doing it for them. Still, demonstration was only needed a couple of times since the kids were so willing to try things out and then ask questions to their neighbors if they had difficulty.

One child created a game matching students’ first and last names, another matching sports to famous athletes, and another matching words in French and English. After finishing and testing one game, most students immediately wanted to make another.

Since this all went so well, we asked the teacher what she thought would be best next. She suggested opening Write to practice typing. She then demonstrated to the class how to make capital letters, insert commas and periods, and also add accents to French letters. Again, alternate keyboard functions took some training with the teachers, but the students picked it quickly and weren’t shy to ask a friend if they couldn’t find something.

Everyone wrote sentences about themselves, their computer, their family, or the day’s class. It was great to read the positive things kids were writing. Not only they were getting it well, but they loved it. Tomorrow is another day and I am pretty sure I am just as excited as the kids.