What Challenged You the Most?

The biggest challenge was time to work on various learning modules. It seemed that time to understand and change commands in the slnova and keep up with class was difficult to master. I could see this being the same issue for middle school students needing more time.

The Model 1, lesson 6 was challenging because I was unable to follow because of laptop problem and I became frustrated when I had to repeat things. This lesson, I have to take my time to redo before I have the students to do it. Also, this applied to the Module 2.

What challenged me the most was just catching up. I didn’t find out about the training until the Monday the in-person started and joined the group on Day 2. I didn’t know about the online portion until after, so I didn’t have the chance to mull over that information before going to the in person training. Regardless, I really enjoyed it. I wanted to conquer the tasks, especially as we explored the module on ecosystems. I really wanted to figure out how I can set up a simulation that resembles real life data.

The most challenging part of my PD experience with Code.org was having to leave things in an incomplete state, ie. not being able to finish everything. When I ran into problems and was not able to stay with the faster students in class, I got frustrated. I found out that I am not intuitively smart about this stuff, but rather I have to work hard to understand it. Once I do understand, I am able to innovate.

It was interesting to have different partners during the paired programming. I can see the benefit of rotating partners during the school year. I was able to learn different things and share my ideas in different ways with each partner. Also, I especially like the gallery walk time when we talked to other people about their simulations. I think I will use this format and have students record new ideas they learn from their classmates during the gallery walk.

I found a few things challenging. Coming up with a working code was probably the most difficult aspect in the beginning of the PD. When we initially started working on StarLogo Nova, my little turtles just didn’t want to work for me! :slight_smile: But eventually, I was able to get them to comply. I did, however, feel that the more complex commands threw me off. I may have gotten something to work at one point during the PD, and then I would totally forget how I did it. But, I must say the most difficult part was the StarLogo Nova system freezing up.

Following the directions was the most difficult aspect. I felt the modules and programming was extremely complicated and there were numerous steps required to perform simple tasks.

Working with a partner in navigator and programmer roles was the most challenging. I had an opportunity to practice all my teaching skills; my partner consistently fell into controlling the whole experience and usurped my role often.

The most challenging thing to me was remembering how the different pages and agent work and keeping everything straight. I think practice will be the only way for me to remember how to use each one.

I actually just mentioned this in the last discussion. OUr group was trying to model the concept of run-off in our water table model. We finally figured out how to make the water roll off of the paved area, but some of the water droplets would get stuck on the edge of the paved space. It was really frustrating when we ran out of time.

The largest challenge was having something in my head and figuring out how to make it work. I am actually having the hardest time figuring out how to look at spaceland in a 3d image instead of from above. I cant figure that out.

One of the extensions for the chemical reaction was challenging and it was more challenging that my instructor wasn’t sure how to do it either. I did get close and that made me feel a little better.

I enjoyed the 3 days training in NY ( Microsoft); but i have some problems creating the program.

Trying to get the counting boxes to work on the water pump module was challenging and frustrating. It was a bit difficult to figure out how to get it to count the drops when the water seemed to disappear immediately. We wound up have to use a range but it was definitely tricky to figure out and something I wouldn’t have gotten on my own. Trying to address that problem seemed a little too advanced for the bit of coding we had done up until that day and I don’t think I would have been able to solve it without the facilitator’s insights about why each water droplet was not being counted.

The most challenging part of this training is the part where we work independently - like the 10 hours of this phase of the training. If you get stuck, there really is no way to get help. The in-person training was fantastic because there was an expert who could help you find your coding errors.

IN the P.D the part was to come out my comfort zone and learn this . It is totally new for me .

The most challenging thing for me was getting use to using my computer. The school district provided me with a new laptop from a grant I am working on with Chapman University, however the mouse pad is very touchy. I realized I needed to buy a mouse to make the coding process less frustrating. Also, I enjoyed experimenting with the modules, like what the students will be doing in my class.

At first, I felt I wanted to get right to coding and the truth is, I didn’t have the familiarity with the pages and symbols and order which dictates how your agents act and interact. The handout sheet was indispensable and I will have color copies for everyone because I relied heavily on it the first few days. Also, the first day we shared the responsibility of driver and navigator and I felt that I would have pulled myself up the learning curve faster if I had been using my own computer completely.

Though, I enjoyed the creativity aspect of building my own model, making sure all the moving parts were properly set up was my biggest challenge.

I think the most challenging part for me was in Module 4 Chemical Reactions, understanding why the grey tiles were flat and then pyramid. It made sense, but may not be something I would have thought of when making a model. Looking forward, I wonder if this will be a challenge for my students.