ALA days January 13, Jan 18

These days we were focused on specific teaching topics for the MIDI programming. The students had seen the MIDI programming earlier, and were able to explore the crickets and MIDI boards. Thursday the 13th Gabe and Saafir and I set up for all the students to explore the programming more, and learn how to not only program tunes they would recognize, but use the light sensors to help randomize the sounds. We did the same setup for tuesday the 18th. Thursday was a problem because EVERYTHING would break or not work. The one thing we just can't safeguard sometimes is hardware problems. Saafir and Gabe and i spent most of the time troubleshooting for the non-working crickets, MIDI boards, transfer crickets, and computers. THe groups were able to learn how to program the MIDI boards more proficiently in spite of the technical difficulties. THe tuesday group worked on every level that the thursday group had not. I had checked and rechecked the hardware and most everything worked during the actual studio time. I was very surprised by the focus of the tuesday group after having a week of discussion with them that was less than stellar. The Focus of wedneday's time at the museum will be to put all of their MIDI knowledge to good use.