John Gives Me a Hand and I Have a Good Day.
Well, yesterday sucked, as I already enumerated. The day went very poorly, kids weren't learning what I was trying to teach them and I might as well have stayed home.
After school, I was pondering my failings when John Cochrane came into the room. He is my compadre on the staff, teaching History and Geography. He had heard me grousing about my day earlier and wanted to see how things were going. I told him about my failures for the day and we talked about them a little.
Just so he understood things, I gave him a little demonstration on the board of what I was trying to teach. He gave me some good input and some suggestions. We brainstormed for awhile. Then I came up with my "Town" idea. He said that it sounded good. I spent an hour or two putting together my "The Body- A Mystery in Tiny Town," PowerPoint Presentation.
I did the presentation today in two classes. It worked. The kids got it and zoomed through my Introduction to AutoCAD stuff, getting twice as far as yesterday.
Here's how it works.
1) First, I am describing to the kids the four different methods of inputting information into AutoCAD. To demonstrate these methods, I walked them through a short story about finding a body in a corn field in Tiny Town.
2) The day starts with the kids waking up and eating breakfast, then leaving for school. There is a nice grid pattern of the town, with streets numbered Zero through 5 (5th Avenue) and A through E (Elephant Blvd.) On the way to school, we stop at the coffee shop, the skate park and then the school. Along the way, the kids have to write down the different street intersections that we passed through on our journey. This is analogous to the "Absolute Coordinate" system of entering information in AutoCAD, each point entered must be labelled exactly based upon the coordinate system.
3) On the way home, the kids first have to go to the library, then the park and then to the cornfield, where there is rumored to be a body. This time, however, there aren't any street names, just the N,S,W,E directions on the grid. How to get from the school to the library? Go 1 block West and then go 1 block South. Easy stuff, right, we all know how to "Go One Block West." This is analogous to the "Relative Coordinate" system in AutoCAD, you define the destination by indicating how far along the X and Y axis you would like to go FROM WHERE YOU ARE.
4) Once we get to the cornfield, there isn't a grid anymore, just the directions N, NE, E, SE, S, etc. To find the body, the kids have to get across the bridge and around the pond. How to get to the bridge from the Road? According to the scale of the map, head 400 yards North-East, and so forth. This is how AutoCAD does Polar Coordinate entries, indicate how far you are going to travel with your line and what angle you would like to move and you draw your line.
5) Once the kids found the body, the police arrive and bring the town psychic to look for clues. The psychic concentrates on the body and then says, "You'll find something THAT way" (I point in the general direction) "Go 300 yards!" This is analagous to the Direct Distance Method of data entry in AutoCAD, you use the mouse to indicate your starting point and then stretch the mouse in the direction that you need to go. When you have the right direction, you just input the distance and the line is drawn.
After the kids wrote all of the steps down in the story, using all four of my methods, we started up AutoCAD and then retraced our steps in the story. This time, however, we plotted our points and lines in the program.
It worked like a charm.
We moved on and recreated fairly complex figures using each of the four input methods and even had time to get to rectangles before the end of class, with an extra 10 minutes of play time at the end.
MUCH better than yesterday, where I couldn't even get through two of these four input methods without kids screaming and hollering and throwing up their hands.
The neat thing was that today, I managed to show the kids that they KNEW all of this information already, all they need to learn is how to put the information into the computer.
After school, I was pondering my failings when John Cochrane came into the room. He is my compadre on the staff, teaching History and Geography. He had heard me grousing about my day earlier and wanted to see how things were going. I told him about my failures for the day and we talked about them a little.Just so he understood things, I gave him a little demonstration on the board of what I was trying to teach. He gave me some good input and some suggestions. We brainstormed for awhile. Then I came up with my "Town" idea. He said that it sounded good. I spent an hour or two putting together my "The Body- A Mystery in Tiny Town," PowerPoint Presentation.
I did the presentation today in two classes. It worked. The kids got it and zoomed through my Introduction to AutoCAD stuff, getting twice as far as yesterday.
Here's how it works.
1) First, I am describing to the kids the four different methods of inputting information into AutoCAD. To demonstrate these methods, I walked them through a short story about finding a body in a corn field in Tiny Town.
2) The day starts with the kids waking up and eating breakfast, then leaving for school. There is a nice grid pattern of the town, with streets numbered Zero through 5 (5th Avenue) and A through E (Elephant Blvd.) On the way to school, we stop at the coffee shop, the skate park and then the school. Along the way, the kids have to write down the different street intersections that we passed through on our journey. This is analogous to the "Absolute Coordinate" system of entering information in AutoCAD, each point entered must be labelled exactly based upon the coordinate system.
3) On the way home, the kids first have to go to the library, then the park and then to the cornfield, where there is rumored to be a body. This time, however, there aren't any street names, just the N,S,W,E directions on the grid. How to get from the school to the library? Go 1 block West and then go 1 block South. Easy stuff, right, we all know how to "Go One Block West." This is analogous to the "Relative Coordinate" system in AutoCAD, you define the destination by indicating how far along the X and Y axis you would like to go FROM WHERE YOU ARE.
4) Once we get to the cornfield, there isn't a grid anymore, just the directions N, NE, E, SE, S, etc. To find the body, the kids have to get across the bridge and around the pond. How to get to the bridge from the Road? According to the scale of the map, head 400 yards North-East, and so forth. This is how AutoCAD does Polar Coordinate entries, indicate how far you are going to travel with your line and what angle you would like to move and you draw your line.5) Once the kids found the body, the police arrive and bring the town psychic to look for clues. The psychic concentrates on the body and then says, "You'll find something THAT way" (I point in the general direction) "Go 300 yards!" This is analagous to the Direct Distance Method of data entry in AutoCAD, you use the mouse to indicate your starting point and then stretch the mouse in the direction that you need to go. When you have the right direction, you just input the distance and the line is drawn.
After the kids wrote all of the steps down in the story, using all four of my methods, we started up AutoCAD and then retraced our steps in the story. This time, however, we plotted our points and lines in the program.
It worked like a charm.
We moved on and recreated fairly complex figures using each of the four input methods and even had time to get to rectangles before the end of class, with an extra 10 minutes of play time at the end.
MUCH better than yesterday, where I couldn't even get through two of these four input methods without kids screaming and hollering and throwing up their hands.
The neat thing was that today, I managed to show the kids that they KNEW all of this information already, all they need to learn is how to put the information into the computer.
posted by silverpenny at 1:32 PM
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