Group work thoughts

Started group work in the freshmen classes this week. Now, group work was never really my strength, so it's a little scary for me to do that. The groups worked well, overall. Sixth block seized on it and used the time well, so they get huge amounts of credit for doing so well with it. It is going to take some time to perfect it, but I am pleased with how well things by and large went. I've always been something of a control freak, so doing this is a huge stretch for me. There are some definite kinks for me to work out, especially with the more unmotivated students, so it wasn't a cake walk, but I am encouraged by what I saw and by how the students handled it.

I still have some work to do with the students and blogging. Some have set up the blogs but have yet to actually do the blogging, which is somewhat disappointing. I am going to try to get the laptop cart in my room this week so I can reinforce things, and will rely on the learning teams to help each other out with this. If I have the students working in learning teams so often, then in theory I'd only need something like 7 or 8 laptops in my room; one per team. I'm thinking that perhaps I could go through donorschoose.org or something like that to get the laptops donated to my classroom. That would be super sweet, and it's certainly worth a shot. (256)