September = 6th Month in Peace Corps!
(from Miercoles, 9/8/10)
School has started, and we’ve been with the students everyday in the computer lab. The past two weeks, Ruby and I have been working one-on-one with the students on evaluations, figuring out what they’re capable of doing on the computer, and making individualized plans based on what they already know and what they can learn this year. There’s about sixty students or so at the school, so we spend 10-20 minutes with each. The youngest student is 3 and the oldest is 20. They are all divided into six classrooms, so we have six different informatica classes, and each class has time twice a week where they all go to the lab together. At this point, we’re just about done with the evaluations of everyone, and the process has definitely helped put into perspective how these informatica classes might go at the school.
The students at the school are all here for different reasons, (autism, hyperactivity, down syndrome, inability to speak, difficulty hearing, behavioral challenges). In general, teaching at the school is individualized, which makes sense - even within classrooms of students with similar skills, not everyone is starting at the same level. So, informatica classes are going to be that way too. There are blocks of time in the schedule for “Informatica Individualizado,” basically a one-on-one chance for advanced students to work on something more challenging or extra time for beginners to practice using the mouse. The school uses three computer programs primarily - a painting program (good for pointing and clicking the mouse, and clicking and dragging), a letter identification game (many students need practice with letters, or just don’t know their letters) and a memory/picture matching game (grouping colors, images, and building memory). Overall, I think it will be great, but it won’t be what I originally expected.
It’s just going to be a matter of measuring success in a different way. And certain things are expected: obviously not all the kids know how to use a mouse or type on a keyboard; that’s why we have computer class. In general though, most students pick up “computer-concepts,” how to click a mouse, open documents and programs, and shut down a computer, pretty easily. But the biggest surprise so far is how many students don’t know their letters or numbers. In the evaluations, I’d pick the first letter of their name, (figuring the first letter of their name would be the one they knew best), write it down, and ask them to locate the letter on the keyboard. Still, few students could do this. Some kids also have trouble counting and recognizing numbers. Another program displays images, asks you to count them, and lists four possible number answers. Many kids can count the images fine, but don’t recognize which number is which. So its been surprising - surprising in that the students are quick to learn (and recall) but surprising in that many kids don’t know fundamental things that I just assumed they would. I’m trying to anticipate how working with the students will go from here. It’ll mean teaching the very basics rather than advanced classes, working one-on-one as opposed to instructing groups, and assessing progress and learning according to how the individual, rather than the class, has progressed. But so far, so good.
So I’ll let this end here. Right now its almost 5:30am, I’ve been awake since 1:19am. Couldn’t sleep so I read a Jorge Luis Borges book, watched a Michael Moore movie, and wrote part of this post. Hmm, a great way to start the day? We’ll see.
XO
No comments:
Post a Comment