I found that i got very frustrated when i didn’t get a concept and, while trying to understand it, the class moved on then i was even more confused. Or if something was being discussed and someone asked me a question or was talking around me and I didn’t hear what was being said. The good thing that came out of that is understanding that many students go through this as well. Most of time i like to figure things out before moving on,esp if its something i’ll need to know to do other tasks. I didn’t like the navigator/driver approach because if the driver knew what they were doing the navigator couldn’t follow.
The biggest challenge came to me towards the end of the second module, when we were able to design models more independently. We were having trouble creating a balanced ecosystem, where one species didn’t just die immediately. We attempted to fix this problem by changing the speed that the animals moved during certain commands. For example, the predator could run faster when it was facing a rabbit, and the rabbit could turn and run away when this happened. We also created a slider to adjust how many of each species we started with, and how much energy they needed to reproduce. None of these strategies really worked, so it’s something I still need to figure out.
Similar to what I enjoyed… I struggled with creating my own simulation, making the given simulation my own with my terms. It is difficult to add many factors and have them work, especially since the order of the terms for each factor makes a big difference on whether it will work or not. But just as you struggle, the conquering feeling is Amazing when you get it on your own.
After the introduction, I chose “Water as a Shared Resource” as the module to work on next. (I guess this was 6th Grade level.) I found this challenging because this was right after the introduction and it contrasted with the simplicity of Module 1. I thought that the change in pace was quite dramatic and our facilitators were experts and probably assuming that we were, too. I felt like that fellow participant who, in the middle of the session, blurted out “I feel stupid!” But of course, I too felt the same way and I thanked her in my mind for being candid and brave enough to say her feelings out loud. I believe that I could “conquer” the difficult given more time to figure everything out at my pace. I just thought that everybody else was going too fast for me. But it was still fun, nevertheless. I enjoy challenges.
It took my partner and I a long time to get the epidemic model the way we wanted it to be. We found, also, that we frequently had to reload the page, as slnova had a tendency to mess up the intended code.
I think that students will benefit from working in groups to design and create the model. The coding and thinking about what goes into model to make it work got challenging as we progressed into more complex models.
For me it came down to the human factor as we tried to work out solutions with a partner. I feel that this will also occur in the class room too.
Trying to match the exact percentage of the spread of disease was a challenge. Having sliders really helped with this however, so I did not have to run the code over and over
I think I had the most trouble when I tried to understand and explore the Water as a Shared Resource module. I ran into a great deal of frustration and found that it was hard to change the existing code to get it to represent what I was trying to get to the program to do. I think that getting students to understand that water is a valuable resource that we are depleting through pollution but I don’t know if that message was able to come across through the program.
I found that it was most challenging and exciting when we were asked to take what we had just learned during instruction and apply it to creating a model that had to contain a several defined variables. These experiences really gave me a chance to get a sense for what my own students will be feeling when they are working with their partners to develop and create their models.
The most challenging part so far has been to recode the errors and the branches of code that caused the error. That could be endless but so satisfying when it all falls into place.
The most challenging part was when I started experimenting with the code!
Not having a book was the biggest challenge. I was new to the whole thing so not having a guide was difficult.
Module 4 challenged me the most because of my limited knowledge of Star Logo Nova as well as not being a middle grade science teacher. I needed to collaborate with at least one science teacher to know just what was going on. I wanted to set it aside and practice it later at home.
I needed more foundational instruction in coding and the language to be successful in the summer course.
I have had a lot of trouble with the back side of the PD - not being able to post comments consistently, work not saving, and the such. The actual in-person PD was great but it would have been better with more people from my district attending for networking. I was a little frustrated one day with programming because my partner “got it” more than I did and did not want to try different programming activities, he would just tell me what the code would look like but not want to do the actual coding.
The part of the chemical reaction module that challenged me was during section when adding a graph to view the change over time. I like the chemical reaction module because it is one of the modules I can take back into the classroom and have my students engage in coding curriculum. The challenge was getting actual lines to plot the change over time. I wanted to conquer the challenge but time was of the essence.
One of the most challenging component was that my excitement often got in my way. I wanted to jump into the coding and sometimes I wasnt as thoughtful as I could be.
I agree with this statement. I often cared more about what I could accomplish and wasn’t always thinking about the kids.
One of the most challenging aspects was coming up with a way to get the kids excited and involved in creating the programs. Many of my students are excited about it right now, but I am afraid that once I start teaching the associated lessons, their excitement may dwindle because it is not easy. Another challenging aspect was figuring out how to teach the logic statements to the students. Many students don’t want to think about something for more than a few minutes at a time, and it is difficult to get them to focus long enough to make their logic statements work in the program. They tend to give up after one try. I want to be able to conquer all of the challenging aspects associated with this curriculum and I would love to be able to figure out how to use it in some of my other lessons as well.