Loyola Stars

In Which I Write A Monster Report

Midterms smacked me upside the head this year, so to make up for my silence I’ve got a monster report heading your way.

The last few weeks have been nothing short of chaotic at St. Viator’s, but as I’ve been told that’s nothing out of the ordinary. The week of October 19th Mr. C, the computer class teacher as well as my site supervisor, had a seminar to attend, so all the computer classes were cancelled for a day. I only worked with the kindergartners on their iPads to learn writing numbers above 10, as the teacher told me they were having difficulties writing numbers like 16 and 17. Naturally they found that the numbers app they have has a blank editor as an option, so they wanted to draw their own pictures and explain those to me rather than work on their numbers. Keeping them on task was definitely a battle of the wills.

The week of October 26th, Mr. C had to leave last minute as a chaperone on the 6th grader’s field trip. The original plan was to have the 8th graders come in during their morning slot, but Mr. C also had some electricians come in that day to do some rewiring, so since there were exposed conduits that plan was ixnayed. I went to the kindergartners at my usual time to continue working with them on writing their numbers and letters out on the iPads. Fortunately, the electricians were gone by the time the third graders were slotted to use the lab, so their class passed without incident. I wrote a couple puzzles for them to work on to help refresh their memory for Scratch. I took screen-caps of all the pieces they would need and gave them a simple problem to solve. They seemed to enjoy it well enough.

This last week of November 2nd for whatever reason did not go quite as smoothly as I would have liked. I had the sixth graders again for the first time in two weeks, so at that point I skipped the refresher Scratch course and had them start working on the project I had in mind for them. In a nutshell, what I want the sixth and third graders to be able to do is write a short story, and then animate it in Scratch, making full use of the sprites and simple commands I have taught them. With the aid of a simple story-starter site, the sixth graders leapt into the project with enthusiasm. I don’t think they’ll have much trouble finishing next week or the week after if necessary. After the sixth grade class I went down to the kindergartners to work on the iPads. They are getting a little better with writing numbers greater than 10, but they still like to test my patience and use the paint editor and not the program itself. I’ll take my victories where I can get them. 

The third grade class worries me some. While most of them exhibited the same enthusiasm for the project, one or two of them I think are being intentionally obstinate, choosing to walk around and bother the other students rather than do their own work. While I encouraged asking their neighbors for help, that wasn’t quite what I had in mind. 

They’re probably going to take a little longer than the sixth graders to do this project, which is fine. I just hope that next week goes a little better for them and that they’ll make more progress then.

As for me, I’m hoping not fall as far behind on posting like I did, so lesson learned.

Ending transmission,

Alexandra Nine

Tech Star Kids at Have Dreams

10/9/12 - Today we started to make a gravity game in Scratch so that the sprite would jump up and fall down realistically. Brian showed a demo of the game and the scripts that are associated with it, and everyone was paying attention. As it turns out, most of the kids got this project done before their time in the lab was up. They really seemed to enjoy how simple the scripts were and how much fun they could have with something like this, but they did not have any ideas as to where they could take these scripts and apply them elsewhere. We tried asking if the kids had seen something like this in any games that they played, but it was difficult to get them to make connections between the simple script and something like a platform jumping game. Nonetheless, some of the younger kids had fun making a sprite jump on a trampoline and keeping track of how many jumps were made.

10/16/12 - Today was the start of a project that would take multiple days to complete. The idea was for the kids to create a top-down shooting game, like tank battles, soldiers on a battlefield, or something like asteroids or space invaders. The demonstration piqued most of the kids’ interests, but one of them decided that it was a “stupid game” and it was too simple for him, so he asked to leave the room. As soon as the kids got to the computers, so immediately set out to look for sprites to use on the internet, while others got to creating their own sprites. In the past, this sprite search or creation process has taken up most of the class time, and many kids seem to not get in to programming at all. This time wasn’t too bad as almost everyone got their sprites in and scripted simple commands to move and shoot. There was another incident with one of the kids that caused another “chill out” card to be given, but as soon as his punishment was over, he came back and wanted to catch up to everyone. Hopefully we will get to finish this project next week.

10/23/12 - There was a parent meeting scheduled for today, and I was supposed to watch the last group while Brian went to speak with the parents. He had prepared two different lessons to choose from for today, so that the kids could decide what they wanted to do. During the demonstration for the first group, many of the kids were not paying attention at all, so I knew that today would not be a productive day. There was no demonstration today as is usually the case, so the kids just got handouts of what to do. Some of the kids went on their sprite search again, and in the end got nothing done. Others however wanted to work on the other project, so I handed them the other instructions with screenshots and tried to work through the project with them. Eventually Brian decided that today was just going to be a “catch up” day so that the kids can work on anything they wanted to do. As was agreed, I was to lead the last group during the parents meeting however, I had no idea as to what to demonstrate or do, but I did not want to let the kids just waste time on the internet because most of the kids in this group could accomplish so much more. I tried to get them to work on one of the projects, but word spread that the other groups got a free day, so there was no hope of getting anything done with them today. There was a new student in the group today, and he seemed to be the only one that wanted to learn Scratch. I worked with him and one other student on the shooting game that the rest of the class did a few weeks ago. He grasps the concepts quickly and has an interest in making video games, and even had suggestions on what he wanted to change and ideas as to how to implement those changes.

10/31/12 - Halloween….the kids had been eating candy all day, so they were still on a “sugar rush” and simply could not sit still. To make matters worse, half of the lab was now blocked off by a screen and tables on the other end, and one of the computers did not work at all. Brian decided that there was no hope of getting anything done today, so the kids got another free day. I will try to speak with the program director, as I was told that the computer lab would be moved to a different room, but I had not heard anything since. Hopefully when the lab gets moved, the computers will be more reliable, and there will be less distractions and interruptions.

Rafal Z.

HTML Class Assistance at Steinmetz, Wk2 (10/2-16)

In the past few weeks work with the classes has largely been checking in with the students’ work and answering questions as they come. Maribeth has also tasked me with critiquing quizzes that the class is to do throughout the year, along with uploading questions/quizzes into a new quiz-taking service online (the old one went out of business), keeping in mind their actual progress compared to the planned progress which the quizzes were made for.

For the most part what critique and suggestions I can make are fairly easy: this question may be a little unclear due to wording, asking when was that answer mentioned in class and which questions ought to be modified/added per the classes’ overall progress, et cetera. What has been difficult is considering the questions’ clarity, as well as whether the quizzes really test and reinforce what the students have learned so far; luckily I have been around the classes to really get a sense of which parts are troublesome and which parts have been easy to grasp.

There and Back Again - Survival of Bureaucratic Hell

Last Friday marked my first day at my official volunteer site, St. Viator Elementary School. It’s been a struggle to get this far, since the CPS strike this year temporarily took out all the public school sites. I ended up finding this site during the strike through a coworker at one of my jobs, and I started talking with the principal and computer education teacher. After a week or so of back and forth emails, I filled out the paperwork they needed and went through Virtus training. We decided the best thing for me to do would be to teach the 3rd and 6th grade computer classes Scratch programming. Additionally, I’d be working with the afternoon kindergarten class on the class iPads.

For my first class with the 6th graders, I started with some early history of programming and some basic concepts of what a program is. I used a cream cheese and jelly sandwich to illustrate how a program is only as smart as the programmer, and that the instructions to make a sandwich had to be incredibly specific. They seemed to catch on to the concept very quickly. Afterwards I set them loose into the Scratch environment, and it was as if I put them into a candy store. They jumped right in, eager to race ahead and see what everything did before I could explain it. As it turned out, two of the students were already familiar with Scratch, so if anything I will have them help me as teaching assistants to handle all the questions.

In the downtime between the 6th and 3rd grade classes, I went to the afternoon kindergarten class to work on the iPads with the students, mainly just supervise them as they worked on basic educational apps, like counting and sorting games.

For the 3rd grade class I basically watered down my lecture to the 6th grade class, but I kept the sandwich demonstration, which they thought was the funniest thing since sliced bread. The nice thing with the 3rd graders is that they weren’t as quick to get ahead in the Scratch program, so I was able to introduce concepts a little more slowly. 

In the next week or two, I hope to work with both of these classes to write and illustrate a short story in Scratch, most likely in teams of two. It probably won’t be a very long story, just a paragraph or two. That has yet to be decided between myself and the language arts teacher. As of now however, my hopes are high, and I’m really looking forward to watching their projects take shape.

Fall @Hamdard Wk2

Fall @Hamdard Wk1

After a long break (August/September) I am happy to return to Hamdard this week to work with the small group of kids that volunteered to attend our weekly computer sessions.  The group is down to six kids now (was eight in the summer), but they have the enthusiasm and energy of maybe twelve!  They were really excited to get started and those that were also in the summer session seemed interested to see I was back again.  There were some kids I hadn’t seen before also, including a middle-school aged girl.  Generally I don’t get a lot of information about the kids, so I don’t know their ages, but the youngest is probably 6yrs and the oldest is ~10yrs.  In the next project we work on, I’m going to try to incorporate some personal information so that we can get to know each other a bit better. 

As for this week, we worked on a kind of warm-up project in Scratch drawing shapes to get the kids actively building instructions from multiple command categories.  Drawing is an area I hadn’t explored myself and so I learned how to use some of the commands in a new way and how to incorporate the ‘pen’ function into a program.  We started by choosing a sprite to ‘draw’ for us, and then followed instructions for drawing shapes provided by DSHnetwork (Digital Schoolhouse Network) on Scratch Ed.  We started with triangles and squares.  The plan was to build on the examples and get to the really interesting and complex geometries on pages 4 and 5 of the handout we were following.  They weren’t shy to grumble about the ‘boring’ task and insisted on surfing the internet or customizing their sprites to have them do more interesting things like saying ‘wee wee’!  It took a lot of repeated requests to get them back to the shapes project and focused, but even the most unfocused and boisterous of the group finally settled on trying to construct the shape examples.  The clincher was when they all noticed the female of the group having successfully created all the simple shapes and then moving on to the complex shapes.  It’s interesting to watch the complex shapes as they are drawn, and the kids were suitably impressed.  I had to help the youngest in the group find and connect the necessary instructions, but he watched me closely and helped read the handout example.  He was very interested but seemed to have little computer experience.

Overall the kids did a great job and seemed to enjoy drawing shapes in Scratch.  It’s nice to be back at Hamdard and I’m looking forward to all the fun projects we will work on this fall.

“Tech Star Kids” so far

” ‘Tech Star Kids’ teaches children aged 9-13 who are categorized as having ‘High Functioning Autism’ (or in some cases referred to as Asperger’s Syndrome). The goal of the program is to provide social interaction by working as a software development team, and then using the creation of a video game as a motivation to learn computer programming.”

That was the hook. It only took a few seconds for me to know that this was where I wanted to do my service-learning project. When I first contacted the program, I thought everything was going to be strict and formal and set-in-stone, if so to speak. What the program really is, is a dedicated group of individuals trying to create a suitable and educational environment for children with autism to spend time in after school. The foundation recently moved in to a new building in Evanston, so there are still many things that need to be addressed and many difficulties that are experienced by everyone there, but so far everything is going well. The program is very laid back and informal, and it’s structure is not set-in-stone. Since the program deals with children with autism, it has to be adapted and tweaked frequently, but has to remain constant enough that the kids won’t feel as if they are entering a new class every single week.

The computer lab where the program happens is a temporary one. In the coming weeks, the lab will be moved to a different part of the building, and this new lab will have many amenities that the current one does not have room for. For instance, the new lab will most likely have a large TV display hooked up to the instructor’s PC which will make it easier to demonstrate and show the steps the kids need to do in order to complete their tasks. In addition to the extra amenities, the new lab will be located in an area with less people traffic moving about, so that the kids can better focus on their tasks.

My first week with the program (on 9/18/12) was very informal and not much was done. I was introduced to the instructor, Brian Myers, who is an elementary school teacher at West Ridge. I was also shown around the building and introduced to some of the kids. While the goal of the first meeting of the program was for the kids to create Scratch accounts online so they could upload their projects, some of the computers in the lab did not work or had no internet connection. This one task was further complicated by the fact that some of the kids would much rather watch videos on YouTube or look for pictures on Google, and this is what they constantly went back to instead of creating their accounts. While in the end, mostly everyone had set up an account, there was much confusion about usernames and passwords and emails and the like.

The second week I was with the program (9/25/12) was plagued with more internet connectivity issues. On some computers, the Scratch program was not even installed, and when I tried to install it, it required an administrator account to proceed. This admin requirement was bypassed by downloading the Scratch program and running it locally without having to install. During the program there were internet connectivity issues that rendered some computers useless for the activity planned, so certain kids had to double up on a computer. The activity for the week was to create various sprites (character objects) by using a sprite sheet that could be downloaded from the internet. With no clear example of how to create the sprites, nor any additional computers which could be used to demonstrate, led to many of the kids not knowing what to do, or not understanding the procedures. This week I was introduced to Simon, a young boy who’s previous programming experience in Scratch made it so easy for him that he lost interest. Brian decided that the best way to engage Simon and keep his interest would be to introduce him to Greenfoot Java and have him learn and code with that instead of Scratch. Simon now brings in his own laptop with Greenfoot installed and that is what he will be using for now. Simon’s mental abilities to comprehend abstract concepts could dwarf any college freshman or sophomore in a computer science course.

This week (10/2/12) went much smoother with a lot less trouble with the computers and network, although when I got into the lab, one computer was missing a mouse, but was somehow logged on to and previously used. Eventually a replacement mouse was found and 4 out of 5 computers were usable. This week was the first week that the kids had to actually program. Before the first group came in, Brian quickly showed me the basics of Scratch and the final goal of the day. The kids were to create a simple shooting game with a score counter. As each group came in they were instructed to sit around Brian so they could watch a demonstration and explanation of what they had to do. Some of the kids readily complied, while others had difficulty staying focused or were doing something else entirely. Some of the kids quickly completed their tasks and moved on to creating variations of the basic program like adding sounds or changing the appearance of the sprites. Others struggled to remember what components they had to add or had difficulty manipulating the mouse so that their components ended up out of place or lost entirely. This week went much smoother with more kids completing their assigned tasks, however there is still room for improvement.

Rafal Z.

HTML Class Assistance at Steinmetz, Wk1

Day One - 9/20 (Thursday) - Orientation/First class (10-11:30A)

With the ending of the Chicago Teachers’ Union strike, classes at Steinmetz started and I could go in to render my service. I came in during the teacher (Maribeth)’s break period and got briefly acclimated before the bell rang and in five minutes I was helping a class with their HTML assignment. I would walk around and be called upon to assist with the assignment. It was intimidating at first, though the feelng passed and the challenges could be observed with clarity. From a teaching perspective, any field of computing presents an interesting challenge. First, some things will come more naturally to some students but will be a challenge for others. Second, there are only so many resources available to those with difficulties: they may not have computers at home, and classes are so short and so large that individual attention is limited. Thirdly, all students have experience, but they are at different levels: some may be breezing through the first assignment whereas others don’t even know how to type efficiently, or are concerned for their spelling. In this way, at least, I felt I could help out: I am one additional “body” for the class to interact with and ask questions of, and there isn’t as much of a visible difference between me and the high school students; I am at their level, in other words. The key is finding a way to empathize and translate the material to them; for instance, content within the basic HTML assignment is not terribly important, and so a lack of expertise in English spelling or grammar should not detriment ability to know the basic concepts (every paragraph has to be enclosed with <P> and </p>, and this is the basic structure of HTML, and so on).

Day Two - 9/25 (Tuesday) - Class Assistance (8:30-11:30A)

Today during the break period I attended the student assembly with Maribeth; I may as well see the full workings of Steinmetz as an inner-city school. The presentation by Steinmetz’ principal and the dean of students functioned as a sort of state of the school, definitely necessary given that classes effectively had to restart their curriculum following the strike. It presented some interesting observations: one, that schools really do depend on their students’ performance and attendance to stay open, and two, they must impose certain incentives to encourage and reward these things. Unfortunately this is generally all they can do given their resources: there are the simple physical constraints of classroom sizes (often cramped), and only a certain number of teachers. Additionally, other circumstances for the students outside of school might make effective performance or even attendance difficult. In a way this has given me a good perspective on what it is I’m doing through class assistance: at least I can help in what little way I can.

Day Three - 9/27 (Thursday) - Class Assistance + Grade Entering (9-11:30A)

Today my work during the classes became more formalized; after the class bell rang, I would walk around and check that each student had completed or had done work on the assignment, and assist them in the submission process. The students were to email them to the teacher; however, some of them emailed them from non-school email addresses, resulting in the email winding up in the teacher’s spam folders. For the most part it was a simple matter of checking with them, showing them where they had to go to log in to the school email, and tell them to send it from there, just to be safe. Surprisingly, by the end of the classes I had assisted, Maribeth had received almost all of the assignments. During the break period I helped enter in the grades, for both the assignment and points for helping other students. The helping points presents an interesting system: ideally it encourages everybody to communicate, which is ideal in a lab class and for the sake of learning both the material and how to work with others with the material. But as it is extra credit, students who are already doing well have no class-related reason to help out, and students who do need the extra credit are likely in no position to help with confidence. Yet it should be emphasized that in trying to help someone else with material, one has the lesson reinforced. In any case, as the curriculum shifts from focusing on HTML to the larger subject of web publishing (utilizing MS Publisher and other applications), encouraging communication and collaboration will be important, not just for points’ sake but also for the sake of achievement.

Summer Mentoring Wk3

The last week of mentoring at Hamdard was actually a few weeks ago now.  The session went very well.  We started by watching a demo of the example introduced in week 2.  While the demo was running, we talked about what was happening and how the loops and events were constructed in the program.  I tried to emphasize that the animation was just simple statements combined together to make a more complex activity, and that all the programs and games they liked to use everyday were just like this, except with more and more statements and control elements strung together.  Then we continued with the addition of movement to sprites with the goal of completing at least one nicely functioning, looping animation by the end of the hour.  Most of the kids were able to get this far.  One pair of children made a finished animation in which two sprites rode in a car while a dog chased behind.  They seemed to grasp the control statement concepts really well and were apply them to multiple sprites successively.  Overall, everyone reached the goal of at least one functioning loop activity, although the level of interest and subsequent application to additional sprites was variable.  My final conclusion that the session was really successful that week is based on the fact that throughout the work period every one of the children had multiple questions.  They seemed really focused and productive this week.  Unfortunately, the Hamdard summer camp session ended and the next series of children’s programs doesn’t start until September.  While a good start that left me with a lot to think about regarding the refinement of objectives and methods of increasing engagement, I look forward to more learning and mentoring experiences at Hamdard this fall.  

Summer Mentoring Wk2

Since the kids were so quick to combine basic commands in the first week of our Scratch workshop, it seemed that a more complex project would be needed for the second week.  I created two simple animations as examples and took screen shots at each step in the process of building those animations.  The first example shows how to make a character move across the screen and then start back at the beginning, then repeat for the appearance of continually walking.  I tried to emphasize 1) create an action; 2) modify the action by changing the number of steps and x/y coordinate positions; 3) control the action with ‘repeat’ and ‘wait’ commands.  The second example is similar, except that while the character is moving across the screen, it recognizes contact with the mouse pointer and makes a change in appearance in response.  While a little more advanced, it seemed a good idea to give the kids ideas and goals to get them excited and focused.  I also tried to emphasize that those complicated activities were just individual steps added together and that they could easily create complex animations by practicing and mixing a few basic action and loop statements.  To help guide them, I put all the screen shots for the two examples into a power point file, printed out the pages and made booklets so that they each had a copy. 

Those were my great ideas anyway, but the reality of the situation was different than I had hoped.  I let the kids get started before loading the examples and giving a demo, so they started without those finished products in mind.  And then it was really difficult to get their attention back to look at the examples as they were already very busy with their projects and had lots of questions too.  Also, the booklets were too long and detailed to follow through without having had the demos first and they were quickly abandoned.  The kids were also much less focused in this session as some wanted to recreate characters and fuss over backgrounds, while other kids were already using loops and still another expressed disinterest in the project in general. 

Although week two got away from me, I had good ideas about what to do and what not to do in future sessions.  Also, I made a post on the ScratchEd site to share the examples and handouts prepared for the class.

Intermediate-Level Loops and Event Recognition on ScratchEd