- The first day's "warm up" ("This is a what?") went very well. Students were skeptical at first, as usual, but quickly saw that the game is fun and not as easy as it first seems. A good ice-breaker, and one worth using again.
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- The transition to the computer was smooth. Students seemed to master the basics of using the new program (sketchpad) quickly, and I think it is noteworthy that their first products almost uniformly imitated my own demonstration with my "name tag." It took a while to produce these first pictures, and this time is included in the "group exploration" above--a nice reminder that even the quality of the "instruction" parts of the workshop were fairly different than a normal school class.
- We looked over the individual name tags in a kind of mini-gallery, and students were quite reluctant to talk about the works--either their own or someone elses. I felt that this problem continued throughout the workshop, and I think it is one that needs to be addressed. At the same time, I did not find this at all surprising. Students are not used to talking about their own or their peers' work publicly, and I think this is a real weakness in the culture of school, and one of the obvious lessons of re-thinking education in terms of a studio model.
- We took a quick look at the AMBULENCE puzzle, and then students wrote in their journals--another rough spot in the workshop, I felt, and another shortcoming of our current system of education.
- We then went on to the exploration of visual palindrome words and the symmetries of letters, which went smoothly, with the same issue of the two boys rushing ahead somewhat. The demonstration of mirrors on the computer went quickly, and students seemed to have no problem understanding the relationship between the "mirror" image on the screen and the function of real mirrors on objects.
The first activity--making name tags in mirror writing--was also a big hit: not too difficult, but a task that feels like a "problem" for students, and one with some interesting solutions. Several of the students (the boys) solved the problem very quickly and disseminated their solutions, which was not a source of difficulties, but certainly was a sign that they would provide many of the "answers" to questions during the workshop--sometimes to the detriment, I think, of other students' ability to think things through for themselves (later that morning I actually asked them to give other students a chance to talk sometimes).