Week two of class, and things felt a lot better. Trying to get a feel for the class the first week is always an interesting proposition, and this class was pretty quiet. They loosened up a bit today (I still had to tell them that it was okay for them to talk to each other during the break. Fifteen minutes of dead silence with everyone looking at their respective phones, laptops, or notes was pretty funny though.), and I got to use one of my favorite demonstrations which uses note cards and the entire class to simulate a distributed network like the Internet. I also added a new piece to the class, finding an old Macintosh commercial to supplement the section on metaphors and computing.
As I said in class, one can always count on old computer commercials for unintentional comedy. Since it was so old, it didn’t have captioning, which was a problem since I have some students which would benefit from it. I transcribed it myself, but also noticed that Youtube has an auto-captioning button on the bottom (it looks like a menu). After seeing it in action, however, I used the opportunity to show that this kind of technology is still a work in progress (60-70% correct is still a LONG way off).
Overall I think things went well, and I’m still looking for more things to add to the class to help the students. Next week we go to the library, and then, after the lecture, it’s time to give them my famous internet scavenger hunt.
Weight: 227 Loss: 13 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 278.7 miles
Fitocracy Level: 25 ID: disciplev1
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