How DESIGN Transpired and Inspired

What an amazing journey this project has been for my students and I. Friday's fishbowl discussion and liveblog went very, very well, and I cannot help but to feel quite humbled by everyone who is involved. First and foremost, I have been lucky enough to work with Anne Smith for the past ten years and she has truly become my right hand. We have team-taught since the beginning and it is so great that we can work so closely together and accomplish great things for our students. Of course, our fearless leader is Karl Fisch. With his vision and passion, he has helped turn this project into an incredible opportunity not only for our students, but for many people across the world. Finally, my students are awesome. They have been ready and willing to try whatever I seem to throw at them, and they do it with a great curiosity and sense of humor. They have seen me at my best and worst over the last few weeks and they continue to give me the benefit of the doubt, which I am truly grateful for.

Amazing things have been happening in our classroom. On Friday we had Darren Draper, Sharon Peters, Jeff Whipple, and James Folkestad join our fishbowl/liveblog discussion. We also had several teachers from AHS come and observe our discussion, and a few of them jumped into the live fishbowl, as well as the blogging. Students thought it was "cool" to see our guests up on a big screen, compliments of MeBeam. Discussion was quite good too.

I have to keep in mind that I have two very different sets of students in my 3rd and 4th hour classes. One class is generally very chatty, while the other is quite reserved. I hope to encourage both classes to over-prepare next time so that we are not constantly re-hashing what has already been said. But otherwise, I have been thrilled with the progress so far.