I Recover.

OK, if you have been following along at home, you know that I had a poor day yesterday. Mismanaged classes, lack of discipline, etc.

I thought about things a lot, well into the wee of the morning, as is my wont. I decided to start over again with my 1st Period class. I misjudged things originally and was expecting too much of the kids to be able to follow my directions in a group project and produce what I was looking for without some direct intervention.

"OK," I said to the class at the start, "How many people are a little confused about what PowerPoint is and how it works?" About 7 kids raised their hands. "How many people are confused about Mr. Burkhard's project and what the heck he wants from us?" Everyone put up their hands.

"Well," thinks I, "I must need to start over again..."

We started with "What is PowerPoint?" Then we worked our way up. Using a generic Computer Term, "Computer," we went through every step of the project. First, we came up with a definition of "Computer." We came up with "A machine that processes information." Then, I had the kids help me illustrate that definition. We came up with a funny looking machinebox with gears in the center of the page, with a jumble of question marks on the left, with an arrow from the question marks to the machine. On the other side, there was an arrow coming out of the box, with an ordered list of question marks as output.

Then, we started making the appropriate PowerPoint slides. I started at the beginning, how to make a file, how to create a slide, how to change background colors, how to change fonts, etc. We made the definition slides, then started working on the illustration slide. We went step-by-step over the process of getting clip art from Bill Gates' website. Soon, everyone had their practice slides done. Most kids looked pretty pleased.

Mr. Jewett sat in on the class (first time he has done that since the quarter started.) Afterwards, he said that he thought that it went really well. He likes the way that I talk to the kids, the way I move around the room and the way that I did my demonstrations.

I felt like a much better teacher after that class than after yesterday.