Last Week of School

Ah, another year comes to a close. This week has been busy in the experimental classroom and lab of Phillips Hall. Religion and Contemporary Society students, under the direction of Kathy Brownback, have used the lab several times this week to present their final projects. Students brought in PowerPoint presentations, Internet reference materials, DVDs and video clips from YouTube on everything from The Simpsons and South Park to The Passion of the Christ and The Life of Brian. One student discussed the religious context of the movie Field of Dreams and showed relevant clips. It was interesting to hear the students' interpretations of religious references in contemporary media. But what I found most astounding as I was sitting among the students was the realization that just one year ago--before YouTube--viewing these clips in class would have been an arduous task that would have involved taping, clipping, and retaping these scenes, winding and rewinding tape. Now, they're one click away from anywhere with an Internet connection. The video really enhanced the discussion and I can't imagine how the students would have made their presentations without them.

Speaking of videos, in the classroom this week film-making instructor Brad Seymour's students presented their completed films. How exciting for the students to see the videos they've been working on all term on the big screen! We just should have had a red carpet and some paparazzi for opening night.

The lab has also been hopping with kids writing and printing final papers, so much so that we had to guard the door to have them not interrupt constantly the classes that were using the rooms. The students are feeling the loss of the open lab in this building but we also realize that the renovation plans will be better developed by our experiences bringing classes to the lab for some of the periods of the day. We hope to put a print station down the hall this summer to alleviate that problem for students who just need to print a paper.

And speaking of summer, trainers, committees, conference personnel and summer school faculty are already lining up to use these spaces over the summer. It doesn't look like there will be any idle time, even though the regular session ends tomorrow--just a short break to get the air conditioning going, which is great because it was a muggy, mosquito-y 85 degrees down there by end of day today.

iBT AP Exams

Hooray! We completed the iBT Chinese and Japanese AP exams--unscathed. Wow, what a lot of preparatory work, but thanks to our amazing tech staff, our students had a successful experience.

It was stressful to have the students file in and wait for the test to progress. Just at the very beginning of the exam, we had a power blip that caused the lights to go out momentarily. I thought for sure we were done for, but, again, our great tech folks had supplied UPS power strips and none of the computers hiccupped.

It was hot in the lab with 14 students and 3 adults laboring through the test, but we made it. We are looking forward to hearing the scores for the exams and to having the air conditioning completed. Both should be refreshing.

Teacher Comments

Johnny Griffith: Experimental classroom is nice and neat, and the equipment works very well. Easy to operate. The sound in the classroom is absolutely terrific. The class was watching portions of Macbeth, and we all felt we could hear individual rain drops and horse hooves as they fell. A great experience.

Charlie Terry: Wonderful space; great balance/blend of a Harkness setting and a spacious and convenient room. Plenty of room, but cozy space as well.

Kayoko Tazawa: It is great that multiple students can record their speech at the same time. We can be very efficient.

Christine Robinson: The big screen is like having the "Little Theater" back - i.e., it's close by and provides great viewing & with the table right there, we can move directly to discussion when/if that's part of the class. Thumbs up!

Michelle Dionne: The students seemed to me less stressed about writing on a computer (vs. in-class booklets). Comparing the writing to the in-class work done in Winter term (not on computers), I'd say the students wrote more and the papers are more organized, and certainly easier to read.

Becky Moore: I have tried the computer lab twice. Once I had 330s write English translations of poems in languages that they lived in at home or studied here at school. They saved these to LionsDen and then came into the lab and sent them to the computer. I was logged onto that was attached to the big tv screen. Vi was there the whole time to be sure all technology worked. We sat around the big table and faced the screen where we looked at various translations and I moused changes on my computer that the students were making. I could have had one of them running the mouse and another time I might. I wanted the screen to have the option of hanging vertically instead of horizontally so that we could see more of the text at once. I also was quite aware of the attention that we were all paying to the screen rather than to each other's faces -- a structure that I still wonder about in this arrangement.

For a second class I reserved fat block, assigned re-reading the 40 pages of TRANSLATIONS that the 330s had done so far, and then had them write on the computers for the full fat block. They had open books, notes, electronic data bases for o.e.d. and the Bible, as well as spell and grammar check. They had to think for 15 minutes before they could start writing and then wrote a p.s. in the last five minutes as well as printed out their pieces -- automatically double sided on the lab printer. I was pleased to see the level of specific writing that cited text well and posed questions and explored them. Several students commented that they had never done an in-class and that they found it hard while others said they had done some before and liked the intensity of focus.

This Week Down Under

Things are hopping down under the Elting Room. I've started calling the basement "Down Under," a much nicer term, and more Continental moniker for a Languages building, if you ask me. This week we saw visits from:

• Our principal, who showed snippets of hobbits for his Lewis/Tolkien course
• Christine Robinson, whose students viewed and discussed Kandahar
• Johnny Griffith, who held a writing workshop in the lab and watched Macbeth in the classroom (see Teacher Comments post for more about this)
• Eimer Page's class--they conversed about a film
• Temple Jordan's class practiced writing, speaking, and recording in Japanese
• Becky Moore's English writing students did some Internet research and then wrote
• Mario Alvarez and his French and Spanish classes watched digital Internet video and DVDs

The teachers tell me there is significant value in having a Harkness table at the ready so they can quickly move from activity to discussion without losing precious class time, something I was grateful for in my Phelps Science classroom.

In addition, the lab functions as a work and writing space for students all throughout the day and into the evening until 10 pm. My only regret is that I regularly have to kick students out who are working during their free periods if a class has signed up. For some students, who call this their primary workplace, that has been difficult and goes against the grain of my educator's cloth, since we teach them to find and stick with a place where they can be productive. Perhaps we'll eventually have sufficient space for both classes and students who (wisely) choose to use their frees to get some work done. Of course, there are also a few who are watching YouTube episodes of Lost to relax for a few minutes!