State FBLA Conference

We just finished the 2011 State FBLA Conference in Charleston.  Our students enjoyed themselves and we had two 1st place winners, two 2nd place winners, two 3rd place winners and six other events with places in the top five. 

One of the highlights of the conference was the guest speaker, Eddie Slowikowski.  This is the second time that I have had the pleasure of seeing him speak.  See the video taken at the conference.

Rowan's Journey Into Physics

The ?RIDDL3R$? team is making progress.  Check out their team page!  Each team member is doing their part and the game is starting to come together.  There is still plenty to do, but I am sure the end result is going to be great!

I will be out of class on Monday and Tuesday next week for the State FBLA Conference.  About half of my class is involved and will be attending also.  Then we will have to work hard to catch up the rest of the week!

Making Progress

Sometimes it seems as if we aren't making any headway but I've been checking out each teams' progress and I am seeing nice examples of artwork and programming.  Some of my groups are correcting their own programming errors and moving right along.  I am really getting excited to see the final product. 

I would like to welcome our principal to Globaloria.  She is attending a workshop this week and my students are looking forward to seeing what she does with her wiki page.  I know that some of the students have already added her as a friend.

Before you know it, it will be May and time for presentations.  We still have a lot of work to do!

Five Days in a Row

Believe it or not--we just completed a five day week!  I don't think that has happened since before Christmas.  I'm really hoping that the groundhog was right this year.  An early spring would be great! 

We made more progress this week.  I am hoping we can start getting more accomplished.

SNOW DAZE!

Well here we are again! It is beginning to look a lot like last year.  We had school 2 1/2 days this week.  Just when it seems like we are making progress, another storm comes along.  We managed to make it through semester tests and missed the first day of the new semester. 

It looks like we will just have to make the most of every class that we are able to get in.  Hopefully the students will be able to get a completed game done by May.

New Year's Resolution

In my last post, I came to the realization that it was time to refocus.  Now that I have filed my second quarter progress report, I am making a New Year's Resolution.  With that said, I am setting a goal to blog at least 1-2 times a week and to challenge my students to blog even when they don't have a specific prompt. 

I also plan to increase the amount of time devoted to checking my students' wikis, blogs and learning logs.  When the students come back from Christmas break, time seems to begin moving even faster than previously.  Then before you know it--it's the end of the year! 

Time to Reflect

It seems like time is starting to speed up.  I did pretty good until the end of October and then it seems like everything started happening at once.  First my hard drive died in my desktop computer and I lost all my files. Then I hit a deer on the interstate and totaled my car.  Throw in a couple of fundraisers for the junior class and the end of the six weeks and I realize that I haven't written a blog entry for about a month.

So it is time to refocus and get back on track.  

Nice to have visitors!

Last week Denise came to visit and brought a guest from the Entertainment Software Association.  We had a nice visit and it helped jump start the students' game ideas. The students were more enthusiastic after sharing their ideas.  Thanks Denise!

Playing Games

I don't play a lot of games in my free time.  When I do play games, I like to play Spider Solitaire or Text Twist.  I also like strategy games, but do not have a favorite one.  I am looking forward to seeing the games that you make this year.  Because you do play a lot of games, I think it will help you come up with a fun and interesting game.

Mini Game Project

We have been working on the mini game project the last couple of days. There were a few difficulties to be overcome. The machines seemed to take a while to open Flash.  After the file was downloaded, we found a few that were corrupted and had to be downloaded again. Needless to say, we did not get much accomplished in a 45 minute class period.  Hopefully we can get done tomorrow!

Check out what we did in our mini workshop yesterday!  Scroll to the bottom of the page and look for the Mini Workshop October 7th heading.