8-31-10 Malone Dining Room

Director of Business and Finance Wendy Barnhart inquired about ideas pertaining to a study of Malone Dining Hall...

• How could organization and flow change for greater efficiency?
• How could lines be diminished?
• Could the capacity and/or flow change to allow for more schedule options?

I asked...

Sent: 8/31/2010 5:08:30 PM

Subject: Fwd: Re: Cafeteria study

"Any chance of students helping/directing this study of the flow and capacity of Malone? Great project-based, place-based learning opportunity. A REAL problem to deal with that matters to them!"

Mrs. Barnhart liked the idea of student participation and study. Anyone interested?!

8-31-10 A Question About Schedule

Does our daily schedule allow for deep learning, especially when the class time is chunked as 50-55 minute blocks? What if we wanted to explore the campus, work in the organic garden, develop a complex project? Would a double-period allow for more experiential learning?

What about pass times? Can we get where we need to go and do what we need to do in 5 minutes? What if pass times were 10 minutes? How could we make this work and not lose instructional time?

8-24-10 KP Duty

What would it take to encourage us to clean up after ourselves at lunch?

• Have the students realized that if they banded together and cleaned up their own mess, then NOBODY would have to report for KP?
• What methods do teachers use to monitor KP? I saw Ms. Dobbs use rubber-band bracelets today.

8-23-10 Cell Phones

• How could cell phones be used as learning tools in class?
• What are the key reasons why students are restricted from using the cell phones during the day?
• Are there schools that allow student cell phone use as a learning tool?
• Could we collect data about Synergy 8 students using their cell phones as learning tools?

8-19-10 Art-Sci Plasmas

On Wednesday, August 18, 2010, Mrs. Gough and I embarked on an exciting adventure with twenty-four eighth-grade students. We are piloting a new course entitled Synergy 8. For now, I will resist defining the course because the students are constructing their collective definition in the first few days.

As part of the course, we will all keep "observation journals" or "observation logs." In the logs, we are simply and succinctly recording observations in our community. Different people are using different methods. Over time, we will discuss our methods, our observations, and our questions that arise from the observations. The picture here, actually a Power Point slide, was originated with my iPhone. After snapping the picture, I emailed the image to myself, inserted the image into a PPT slide and jotted a few questions. Finally, I recorded the date, time, and observer.