Cycle One begins - new students

The new semester has begun and I will be conducting my Action Research Project with the Computer Application students at my school.

The class consists of 19 students: 2 Seniors, 2 Juniors, 2 Sophomores, and 13 freshmen. This is a unique cross-section of students for this class - I have never had so many freshmen in the class before and the class is smaller than usual. Overall, there are 12 boys and 7 girls.

I will be conducting a survey next week of their computer skills but by the results of the assignment given when I was absent, these students already have good formatting skills in Word.

The assignment was a way to introduce themselves.

• The Word document title was: I Am The One Who ...
• Then then created a bulleted list of attributes about themselves, such as: has blond hair, who plays soccer, who loves to read Harry Potter, etc..
• The end states: I am ... "name".

The students formatted the document with different fonts, colors, sizes. The end results were very creative and revealing about their personalities. It was a great way to introduce each other.

Since the make up of this group is pretty unique, I feel that I need to spend some extra time developing camaraderie among the students. They are going to be doing group projects so I will spend some time working on class environment and communication among the students. I have introduced Moodle to the students and have posted some fun discussion boards to encourage postings and discussions.