Today I was feeling quite ill but I still came in just to teach this class. Again, time is pressing and I don't feel like I can afford losing a day. My lack of energy made it quite difficult to be patient and bold with students. I very much had a "I don't really care" attitude especially toward those students who are not putting a focused effort on this project.
Compared to yesterday, I didn't feel that much progress was made. Students were still carrying out their experiments or wasting time on the internet. It felt like I was spending most of my time today motivating a handful of students who are avoiding and procrastinating this project. These students are also the ones that don't have very intriguing ideas.
Stephen is comparing soccer and football, which is a bit broad. I've asked him what he's learned and he replied that based on his survey, most people prefer soccer and the world cup. Nothing to earth-shattering or life changing.
Hilarion with his video vs video game. I helped him to see that his initial survey of simply asking others if they prefer videos or video games did not give him enough data to actual make some conclusions. Every five minutes I had to tell him to go work.
Kenya is comparing preferences of fruits and veggies. I didn't catch her soon enough to encourage her to do something more meaningful. I should have explained that from the beginning that the two things they were comparing should be personal and meaningful. She surveyed people for what they prefer and a majority chose fruits. I encouraged her to compare the benefits to health between fruits and veggies. She found that generally vegetables have more nutrients that promote good health. But I still don't think there is much take away or personal application or meaning making.
Libby wanted to do something with the deconstruction of a building on BYU campus. Her idea has potential, but she is lacking in resources to talk to people about the views on the old vs. the new building. Hence she wastes time on the internet.
I talked to Emma Sims about her project. I encouraged her to ask people, without saying anything, what people thought her project was about. The responses she got were that it was not very realistic, but still looked good. My illness did not give enough energy to fight her too much.
Annalise has decided on the mask as an object. I'm not sure if she will still wear it. I hope so, but today she cut the mask out of paper, wrote notes with a sharpie and then painted it a dark blue. I'm very excited about her project.
I discussed my thinking from yesterdays journal entry with Ella. She really liked the idea and tried to think of a person she could use to do a recording and an actual. We decided on the secretary, Mrs. Peterson, who is delightful, but can put on a very good act of being harsh. We ran out of time for anything to happen, but I did receive an email with a video from Ella. It captured Mrs. Peterson getting upset at a second grader. My plan was for the person to get upset with Ella, but this works too I guess. I haven't talked to her, but I'm hoping she still did a recording. I'll be excited to talk to her.
Max has still been glitching people's ideas of perfection and I think that it is very very rad. I'm excited about his. His images are very cool looking, although a bit small.
Sarah Huber, modified her project to include a more random time and is now asking people to describe the quality of their day on a scale from 1-10. I think it is a very good improvement.
Madeline has been asking people to take an introvert extrovert quiz. I'm curious to know what her findings are after she completes the quizzes.
Aubrey Boyle seems to have abandoned the written compliment. She did not want to use the original slips of paper for her project because some students included names. We decided it might be best to type them up. This she did and she printed them and cut them out (quite wobbly with scissors) and is pasting them on some construction paper. This was toward the end and I didn't have time nor energy to help her.
This is the challenging part for me in that students have these amazing ideas, but then their craftsmanship is often quite poor and the end product does not do justice to the idea. I guess that is my modernest side coming out thinking that all the artwork needs to look really nice in addition to have an interesting concept.
Hudson is also starting his artwork. He traced the ballerina and is coloring it with markers. The tracing looks nice and the marker, so far, isn't too bad either.
Kenai is trying to see how colors effect peoples emotions. I need to work with him.
I discussed with Christopher about trying to find the difference between machines and organisms or souls and systems and he said he'd think about it. He added sparks to his brain/computer artwork. I like it but I don't love it.
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