University High School Students Can’t Wait to Show their Work

This year my students have really been into the video conferencing telecasts. Every day they come in and ask if there is one.  In addition to my regular class,  I am teaching a computer animation class this year for the first time. I spent the first month or so teaching my students how to use Flash, then we got into the bouncing ball exercise. When it was time to learn the foundations by bouncing a ball, I went up front and asked them all to draw a path and asked what needed to be done next. Without any discussion, the students taught each other the fundamentals, drew their entire project and had it finished within a few minutes. They had learned it all from the broadcast and then taught what they had learned to their peers. I was stunned. This was a class where the students were all new and had never animated anything before– and did not want to learn how to do it either. Due to scheduling issues, these students had spent the first two weeks of the semester in another class, and then got moved into my class. At first they were ticked off that they had been dragged out of the other class and stuck into mine. But now we are now finishing our computer animated ball exercise and they can’t wait to show your professional mentor Frank Gladstone. It is all they talk about.  They also love ACME program specialist Ray Seay. So, I thought you might like to know this.