On Monday July 2 I finished transcribing the last of the interviews from week 5. Them we went to teach our class that afternoon. The students worked on drawing out their digital desktop designs on poster paper. I walked around the classroom and asked them questions about their designs while they worked. I was somewhat surprised to see that about half of the designs were just a regular Mac or Windows interface with specialized applications. All of the students were very intent on their designs and they all seemed to work very hard. We also had the students write short advertisements for their desktops as if they were going to sell their design to a large corporation. Many of the advertisements included information about how fast it was, how it helps students, and a cost that ranged from $200 to $1,000.
On Tuesday morning I left Atlanta bright and early and went home to Maryland. I had a great time seeing my family, catching up with friends, and going to my cousin Keeley's wedding. After spending a week at home, I flew back the following Monday and began work again on Tuesday July 10. While I was gone the students, obviously, still had class on Monday, which Sarita taught. During this class the students went on the computers and designed their desktops further in a digital format.
On Tuesday I spent a good part of the day working on my website because it seemed a bit disorganized and was beginning to annoy me. You can now see my more organized website right now, explore if you like, but very little of the content has changed. On Tuesday I also planned and wrote out the lesson to teach on Wednesday. I posted the lesson plan on our wiki on Wednesday and then we taught the lesson that afternoon. During the class the students got a printout of the design they created on Monday and put it on a poster paper. The students then passed their designs around the classroom and each student used the blank space on the poster paper to write down things they liked and things they didn't like about their peers' designs. I found it very interesting to read the things that they liked and didn't like.
On Thursday Sarita and I began to talk about my final paper for my research this summer. She explained that if I am going to write a journal/conference style paper then I might as well write one for a conference and try to submit it. So I spent a good deal of Thursday reading papers from the International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, which is the conference that we are hoping to submit my paper to. I also worked on writing the first draft of the Methods section of the paper.
On Friday I continued working on the first draft of my paper as well as writing my journal for this "week." Additionally, I looked at our wiki and updated the lesson plans that had changed and added the lesson plans that were not up yet. Overall Friday was a busy day, but nothing really excited happened, but that's okay because it turned out to be somewhat relaxing.
Week 1
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Week 2
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Week 3
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Week 4
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Week 5
Week 6
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Week 7
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Week 8
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Week 9
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Week 10