First Day
I had my first day at my new job today! In case anyone forgot, I am now a lead instructor for TechKnowHow Summer Camps. I had a hard time sleeping last night, and I seemed to have bad dreams about what might happen at work today, but thankfully nothing bad really happened. :)
It was great, actually. I only have six students, so that makes things much easier. I also have another instructor helping out (though since I am the lead instructor, I'm in charge most of the time and I do most of the teaching), and I also have a counselor-in-training (a teen who is volunteering) to help out. So the student-to-teacher ratio is pretty great.
The curriculum is pretty much all set for me, and I just took them through a couple of powerpoints to introduce them to the NXT and what they would be doing. They got into it right away, and most of them built baseball batters and pitchers, downloaded the program onto their nxt brick, and then played with their robots for a while. :)
The problem came in the afternoon. We were supposed to have the kids do a First Lego League mission in the afternoon, building their own robots and programming them to complete a mission, but unfortunately, we were missing our robot mat. I felt bad that I hadn't inventoried everything first thing in the morning, because if I had done so, the mat could have been delivered by the afternoon and we could have done the FLL stuff, but oh well. We had the kids just work on making more robots, doing bonus projects, like this guitar robot that a kid made (that actually plays music, too - it's awesome). The kids had enough to keep themselves busy, but some kids were making their own robots or "battle bots," as they called them, and wanted to program them to do different things, and I didn't know how to do that. The training sessions didn't really teach me that stuff well enough, and I didn't even have powerpoints to show them on it. Thankfully, the director came by with the robot mat (I had texted her to tell her we didn't have it), and she helped the kids with programming a bit, but seeing that I hadn't been trained in programming, and I had no powerpoint or anything to show the kids, she decided to have another, more experienced instructor come in tomorrow to help us out. I'm really glad, because even if we had gotten to do the FLL stuff today, it probably would have been frustrating when I didn't know how to do the programming. I thought that the curriculum was complete and there were powerpoints for everything, but there weren't... so it actually worked out for the best that we couldn't do the FLL stuff today. There are only four missions for them to do anyway, and they have four more days in the week, so it works out. :)
I'm really glad that so far things are going well overall, and it feels like a pretty relaxed job for the most part. Having only six students helps, and I'm already figuring out which student I need to keep my eye on, and which student needs to be included more, etc. The only thing I still need to figure out are more games we can play (indoors or outdoors) with only six kids. We had learned some outdoor games in training, but they were pretty much just for bigger groups. I had some of the kids play bananagrams today during lunch, but not everyone was interested in it. Playing cards might be a good idea, too. We'll see.
It was great, actually. I only have six students, so that makes things much easier. I also have another instructor helping out (though since I am the lead instructor, I'm in charge most of the time and I do most of the teaching), and I also have a counselor-in-training (a teen who is volunteering) to help out. So the student-to-teacher ratio is pretty great.
The curriculum is pretty much all set for me, and I just took them through a couple of powerpoints to introduce them to the NXT and what they would be doing. They got into it right away, and most of them built baseball batters and pitchers, downloaded the program onto their nxt brick, and then played with their robots for a while. :)
The problem came in the afternoon. We were supposed to have the kids do a First Lego League mission in the afternoon, building their own robots and programming them to complete a mission, but unfortunately, we were missing our robot mat. I felt bad that I hadn't inventoried everything first thing in the morning, because if I had done so, the mat could have been delivered by the afternoon and we could have done the FLL stuff, but oh well. We had the kids just work on making more robots, doing bonus projects, like this guitar robot that a kid made (that actually plays music, too - it's awesome). The kids had enough to keep themselves busy, but some kids were making their own robots or "battle bots," as they called them, and wanted to program them to do different things, and I didn't know how to do that. The training sessions didn't really teach me that stuff well enough, and I didn't even have powerpoints to show them on it. Thankfully, the director came by with the robot mat (I had texted her to tell her we didn't have it), and she helped the kids with programming a bit, but seeing that I hadn't been trained in programming, and I had no powerpoint or anything to show the kids, she decided to have another, more experienced instructor come in tomorrow to help us out. I'm really glad, because even if we had gotten to do the FLL stuff today, it probably would have been frustrating when I didn't know how to do the programming. I thought that the curriculum was complete and there were powerpoints for everything, but there weren't... so it actually worked out for the best that we couldn't do the FLL stuff today. There are only four missions for them to do anyway, and they have four more days in the week, so it works out. :)
I'm really glad that so far things are going well overall, and it feels like a pretty relaxed job for the most part. Having only six students helps, and I'm already figuring out which student I need to keep my eye on, and which student needs to be included more, etc. The only thing I still need to figure out are more games we can play (indoors or outdoors) with only six kids. We had learned some outdoor games in training, but they were pretty much just for bigger groups. I had some of the kids play bananagrams today during lunch, but not everyone was interested in it. Playing cards might be a good idea, too. We'll see.