Spendin' some time behind the wheel and drivin' our html code towards a road test

This morning we started with Education hour working on the Behind the Wheel projects. Felipe had each group of three sit in order so all those working on codes were on the left side of the room and all those working on creative content were on the right side of the room. Illa was being creative by working people from ITA in to the plot of the film trilogy his team is making in to a website. Patrick was having some trouble focusing and being creative; his group has had "creative conflicts" from the beginning, but to their credit, the actual work itself is getting done.

Snapshot of a moment in time: Felipe is bent over Nick's computer, helping him adjust his html code; Juan M. is staring at his screen, busily editing code; DJ is now consulting with Felipe about something Felipe is projecting on the classroom screen; Juan A. is editing code; Stephanie is really working hard on her code editing; Jacob is cleaning up his photo edits, adding Stephanie's face from a Facebook photo; Patrick is working on turning his summaries of the Blade trilogy, which he copied from the internet, into something more creative and personal; Collin just finished adding his own head to images of the Blade movies (Patrick is refusing to allow his team to use his face since they won't let him be the character he wants to be in the movie cast); Aubrey is adding Excel's face to a Rush Hour poster; David is adding Juan's face on to a Toy Story image; Jose is working with David on editing on the Toy Story image because they decided to collaborate on the images and then collaborate on the writing; Illa is being very creative (and talkative) while re-writing the plot of the Friday movies to fit his team's "ITA Saturday" theme; Remi is working in adding Illa's face to the movie posters and (full-circle) back to Nick, who is still working on code.

Remi found a great photo of Excel when he was in high school. He has a 70's hairstyle and is in a cafeteria drinking milk. Funky! During break, everyone came in from the other classroom to take a look.

Work time continued in a similar fashion through all of Education and Exploration periods.

Then everyone got silent while each student worked on his or her html and css test on learn @ UW. Felipe watched everyone like a hawk while Elizabeth went in to the hallway to supervise Patrick while he tried to get the trouble with his net ID worked out. It seems he finally has access (yay!).

Everybody did some bloggin and then we saved our files and left to get some Thai food (yum).

Satatat Session 8 WEBBIN'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmGr4yfXBCg

Dear today,

Started off with everyone getting into their groups, and lining up by role. The coders were few -- we only had four groups, and of that Besma was in the other room and Marcie wasn't here -- but then Besma showed up and Sarai pinch hit for Marcie.

Besma's site was near done, and entirely original. Kim and Sarai quickly caught their groups up with the pre-made code, and Saige had finished typing up the HTML at home and continued to work on CSS.

Oscar rocked on the images for cheetah girls. Erica had already made a bunch of images at home.

Copy text ("copy" being publisher-speak for text/writing) was spewed out by Clara and Ibadete, who both wrote short novels for their BTWs.

Dylan rocked out in the front of the room, building his own custom site from scratch.

In the final hour, everybody took the second attempt at HTML/CSS. It was awesome. Some people complained, but jokingly.

Best,
ITA Session

Sat Number 7

Word,

In room B109, the class participated in A.J.'s Web Presentation, a fantastic display of web knowledge and review that brought a number of student's up to speed in all things web design.

A.J. presented first the general idea of building a website, then got into specifics in HTML and CSS, with usage, syntax, and purpose. Students used a worksheet to practice select topics.

After a period and a half of the assessment, the Exploration section saw a massive increase in BTW productivity. Students worked in near silence, with extreme diligence, on their BTW projects.

The last period was three fold: a Dreamweaver first permit attempt (which went quite well), then a blogging question/summary assessment of how BTWs are going, then a last 15 minutes or so on the BTWs.

In short, it was a solid ITA Saturday.

April 10 (not a day for fools)

ITA Freshmen were no fools today! Much was accomplished by all! Students worked on their BTW projects, where each team of 3 students is designing a website about a movie trilogy. Today, the coders worked closely with Felipe to get their website codes all established and working cleanly. Those students responsible for the written content and images worked on their parts, with help from both Eliza and Felipe. The teams made progress. Some students were using the built-in cameras to take photos for their websites. They were adopting facial expressions and poses that imitated the original photos and still shots from the films  . . . v-hilarious! You should have seen Juan A. looking "intense" . . . . It's cool too that the students recognize visually that a full-front facial view is different from a 3/4 facial view, and that they were wanting to create the right sorts of views so that when they added their own faces to the original image, it would look as authentic as possible.

After a break, everyone took the Dreamweaver permit test and worked on daily blogs.

All morning the class was busily engaged and working hard.