CSP - Reflections on weeks 0 and 1

This last week I had two "good" days in CSP which I feel like means I need to reflect on where I was and where I am going in CSP.

The first week was a little shaky.  Students did not know what to expect, I asked them to take risks without knowing me and that they could trust me, I had one student who was a crab-ball and I honestly did not project confidence in the classroom.  So, next year, I think I want to do some team-building to get to know students before jumping into CSP.  Also, students finished things faster than I was ready for.  I couldn't predict (or didn't understand) how to push their thinking on the content and the combination of both meant the pacing was off.  Also, I didn't have a seating chart for the first week - big mistake.  Groups needed to be split up to challenge students to assume new roles and responsibilities.  I had a few other people add the class and a few drops too.  I also have started pulling in students from out in the hall if they want to check out what the class is about.  I need to make a one-pager so they can get registered in it themselves too.

Buzz is building with some publicity at the Junior meeting and with an article coming out in our school newspaper soon.

This week I started students on the Mobile CSP site for the "I have a dream" app which they seemed to like.  We ran into some glitches with the devices, but I think technology has helped us get that all cleared up.  I will know for sure when we do our next app on it.  I still think it would be good to be able to test the app ON the actual site, but we will see where we go from there.

We continued with our bit sending devices (which went horribly the first time).  This time, I pushed students to make their device have two states and got students to develop a protocol for sending their messages (usually with time as their metric).  This seemed to flow nicely into the internet simulator.  I was pretty impressed with how students embraced the challenge of sending these messages in the simulator.  Speed was how I challenged them further and one team even found a way to send written messages (rather than just As and Bs).

I had students write a weekly reflection - but did not give them enough time or structure in doing so.  That is going to be my goal for next week.