We still have a day to go, but ….
I was sold on media computation before I got here, I just wasn’t sure what direction I wanted to go in and how to accomplish it. I’m still not 100% there, but I do want to use it.
If I only have 1 student in AP Computer Science, which is what I suspect I will have, I may very well go with the Guzdial / Erickson book. He’s a kid that will REALLY like the media computation and I have enough copies of that book that I can teach with — I have at least two. I may be able to get more copies if I need them.
I’d like to do it with the 9th graders I am going to have over the next two weeks, but I’m not sure I’m ready — I still have that spinning in my head.
Here’s the deal, I know what I did with Alice worked, and I’m not 100% sure what I will do with the media computation itself will work.
I am thinking of pulling out Raptor for the PreAP kiddos, and doing a few weeks of Python with media computation instead. I would probably do the "hello world" stuff with the pictures and video. But I’m still in the thinking stage and I have some time to work that out.
I also think that doing a movie at the end of the year would be as fun as the pong game, but again, I have to work it out.
HOWEVER, here is the biggest thought, and maybe this should be it’s own post.
The biggest problem with adoption of any new material seems to be the infrastructure supporting the class. What I has hearing from my classmates is that they weren’t sure that they could load the files needed for the course, because of their network standards. That really sucks and I am getting more and more tired of seeing and hearing of problems being caused by the support staff.
It’s just as bad to not be able to do something in a course because the network administrations won’t support it, as not being able to hold class because the custodial staff won’t turn on the lights. Network administrators are SUPPORT staff and should never get in the way of the main mission which is to educate students. If network administrators are in the way, then heads should roll in that department!
Oh, yeah, that’s why I bought an air card — plus I was sick of sucking the juice out of my phone and not being to use my phone because I was using it as a modem.