The first lab

In more ways than I had forseen, the first official lab day was filled with challenges starting with simply setting up the laptops and extension chords. Once we thought we were ready, we had to worry about blowing the power to the outlets and waiting for the custodian to reset, finding passwords for kids who failed to bring theirs in - even though this was posted as a requirement days ahead, competing for the kids' attention as they started messing around with the computers as I gave verbal instructions ( you'd think I would have been prepared for this), establishing email accounts for students who didn't have one and also overcoming safeguards set up by the school system, and so on and so on. At the top of the list were the students who had simply not read the text and were unprepared to discuss it once they accessed the blog. The activitiy with all its constraints is not for the feint of heart. In truth, though, there were so many positives. Natural leaders emerged - kids who stepped forward, willing to help other kids set up emails, troubleshoot the blog and so forth. Though it was high anxiety for me at times, I think kids really did think that this was a "neat" opportunity. Each class period improved as we ironed out the technical problems and as I rethought my instruction and management. Very humbling. I felt a lot like I did when I first started lit circles (book talk) in middle school and had administrators, parents, and kids from all classes converging for our event. Hind sight is 20/20, but it really is helpful to try to do some "what if's" ahead. There are, however, some things you can't control and can't forsee, so a sense of humor is crucial.
After thinking over each class event - also reading the blog itself- I decided that I needed "debriefing" time with our kids - as well as Keri. I gave kids a "focused freewrite" which followed a few questions I had typed out for them. I wondered about several things which I decided to pose to the kids as well. First of all, I'm reading the blog at home over the weekend, and I'm thinking about what a pain it is that I don't know yet who is who much less pseudonyms. I realize that as time goes, it won't be a big deal, but right now I'd like to know without having to work at it. I'm wondering if students know who's who. And how do they feel about comments coming from someone they don't know or someone anonymous? How do they decide how they want to sound? Is boredom or stupidity intentional? Cool? So I decided to ask. I also wondered what they wanted to get out of this. Have they set goals? Is this going to help them educationally? intellectually? Which activity do they learn more from? online journaling or traditional paper? Why? What is it that they are learning? How to write better, type faster, communicate, share points of view, learn technology? What is it that they'd like to learn from this?
After reviewing the responses, I'll make some adjustments. I also called the librarians again to see once again if I could talk them into the library classroom. I had had no problems with power when I took my students to the library classroom. Our librarian Debra stuck strongly to her feeling that we could not hog the room every week, but she might consider twice a month. This might help. Stay posted.