The third day of MEET started with a bang: Year Three stole our white board. In all actuality, it wasn't that exciting. I just went to the Ross Building, took a board from Sam, and walked back to the ORT lecture hall.
Alice gave today's lecture: Introduction to Objects. The students learned about objects, fields, methods, classes, instances, constructors, the dot operator... and perhaps became overloaded with so many new words and concepts. Here's my cliche 'back of the lecture hall picture' of Alice:
I've discovered that's it's extremely difficult to watch a lecture about material you already understand. I keep thinking about all the different ways I would say something, or different examples I might give. However, the beauty of MEET is that I get to say all of those things during recitation later in the day. :-)
Rather than joining Boaz and Basar for another round of self-empowerment, our students got to join Sandra for the untitled Fun Activity. During the first part of the activity, the group was split in two, and each side stood on one side of a sheet. Each group selected one student who sat behind the sheet. When the sheet was dropped, the seated students had to say each others name, and whoever said the name first won.
It might not sound that exciting in text, but the kids get really into anything that is remotely competitive. It was the first activity that really helped bring the whole group together, and we could see a marked improvement in their interactions after this activity.
Then there were nuts. Same old, same old...
More exciting (not really, but graphically pleasing), was the creation of a logo. We broke up into groups of 4 or 5, and created a logo to represent all of us together. My group drew a star of life (the EMS symbol!), and drew a symbol for each of us in the bars. Mustafa drew a computer, Katia represented herself as element Krypton, Ranan chose a smiley face because she is an optimist, Rawan drew a basketball. I of course drew DNA to represent my Bio background. At the center, a semicolon!
Someone had cute shoe laces...
We enjoyed lunch outside, then headed back in for recitation. Ted had prepared an awesome example for recitation. After going through the material, and a few small examples, the students worked through a Java version of the tortoise and the hare in RaceCars. After writing out the code, two little RaceCars, along with 5 helium-filled balloons were used to reenact the scenario in real life. It was pretty awesome! Of course I was too enthralled with the activity to snap pictures, but after it was over, Nadine took the balloon representing the theWinner variable, and brought it with her to lab.
Lab was much less of a challenge today, as the kids finally had their accounts. We also separated by recitation, so I only had to deal with my 10 kids. They didn't have an excessive number of questions, so there were many moments were I was able to relax and go all paparazi on them. Yahia, Fadi (behind the pole), Roni, and Katia:
Katia (again!), Rawan, and Michael:
Noura, Omri (behind pole), and Sagy:
They eagerly typed away, and all of them successfully completed the lab with more than enough time to spare (a sign that the lab was not challenging enough, most likely.) It's worth noting that the students have terrible keyboarding technique. A large percentage of them use two fingers and more or less hunt and peck to type everything. Poor keyboarding technique is quite a crime these days...
Following ice cream and a post-lab mini-recitation, the kids went off to the land of not-MEET, and we headed back to the apartment. I actually ate something other than falafel! Mike and I cooked up some pita burgers with hummus, onions, olives, and cheese. Delicious.
The most exciting apartment occurance of the day? Lightbulb changing. As mentioned previously, we have ridiculously high ceilings. High ceilings make for difficult lightbulb-changing experiences. Ridiculously high ceilings make for entertaining pictures. Enjoy.
Quote of the Day: "Really it's all connected, they're like Siamese twins hoes." (me...)
Next Post: That Time Froy Gave Lecture in a Recitation Room Without AC (title subject to change, pending availability of a different room...)
1 comment:
How many MIT students does it take to change a lightbulb?
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