Last night was one of those teaching nights that I would like to have the opportunity to do over. Although there were some highlights, the evening did not go as I had visioned it. Perhaps one saving grace is that we talked about Papert's emphasizing learning from mistakes and somehow the evening presented an opportunity for me to do that!
Highlights during the evening were Adam's interesting and useful resource review, the specific examples from Mindstorms identified by students and the example blog assignments for students.
The major lowlight was my introduction of Webspiration and the fact that I tacked the application on the end of the class without setting it in context and giving students enough time to explore the application. In retrospect, I could have integrated our work with Webspiration with the Papert discussion and thus used the tool in an authentic environment. Had I done this, our topics would have all flowed together and connected naturally. I will work to introduce our applications in better context in the future.
Adam's presentation was well organized and effective. Once again, a student chose an application that is important to him/her and was able to communicate this importance. Adam's contribution also got us started thinking and talking about apps.
I look forward to our discussions this week----both Adam's application discussion and the sharing of delicious pieces from the readings. I am hoping for more student to student conversation as we build the skill of online communication together.
