First Impressions

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We're almost a third of the way through the Exhibition Project, which is pretty exciting. Here's what I'm all fired up about:

• There are a ton of neat project ideas out there. Students are looking at deep issues, and looking at interesting issues, and looking at deep and interesting issues. I just tried to stay out of the way -- often the hard part was narrowing down the great ideas into something that was do-able.
• I'm excited about the types of projects, too! We've got a bunch of people making movies, which is excellent. Some of my favorite projects that I did in high school were the ones where I got to make movies. Good times. I'm suprised that so many folks want to do a scrapbooking product, but it works for me. My question is this: where have y'all come in contact with the scrapbooking project before? Was it a ninth-grade project or something in middle school or what?
• I think the use of blogger and delicious has gone fairly well, too. Both platforms are pretty simple to use when you get right down to it, and it's been fairly easy for me to grade, too. A bit time consuming, though -- I started doing some math on this yesterday, and I figured that if everyone does their full complement of 30 index cards, as well as their 15 daily progress posts, that's a minimum of 2700 posts that I need to read. Add in Product Prospectuses and a couple other types of posts that will need to be done, and we're talking about me reading well over three thousand posts by the end of March. So far it hasn't been so bad...

These are things that I'm not exactly concerned about, but have struck me as potential concerns to keep an eye on:

• I'm worried about folks falling behind. This is a big project with some demanding hoops to jump through, and while it's possible for folks to make it all up at the end, it'll be a painful, painful process. I probably need to be clearer about benchmarks during class -- "Today the goal is for you to have your eighteenth index card completed" kind of thing...
• Similarly, I'm worried about folks not having enough time to complete their projects. If you fall behind early, then you will sacrifice time trying to catch up, which means that there won't be sufficient creative time to do the projects justice. Benchmarks are the key again, I think.
• I'm also a little worried about what to do with folks when they have finished the research portion of their project and are in the creation portion -- but cannot do any of that creation at school. I'm thinking of folks who are making models or maybe movies. Most of that work has to be done outside of the classroom -- but those folks still have to come to class anyway. I'm thinking that it turns into the privilege of a study hall -- do the homework you would normally do at home so that you can free up time to be doing your project.

Those are my first impressions, for what they're worth. Agree? Disagree? Something to add? Suggestions? Leave them in the comments...

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