4 p.m. free period, TIC:
...many of the boys in this class are playing Unreal. the girls are either still working on their websites, or chatting on AIM.

bits of conversation overheard:
jeremy-"rocket launcher" kati-"fine, it's a sphere." fermezy-"oh sh*t. wanna check out this railgun?"

more to come.

10:44 p.m. ... where does the time go these days?

anyway, today's topic in TIC was intriguing for me, on many levels. not the least of which was the gender thing was an issue for me way back in the first Internet Classroom, at which there were only 9 girls out of 29 students in the class. over the years, i strove hard to equalize the mix (being an ATDP admin and admissions person as well), with varying degrees of success, more in TIC and less in AIC. i'm pleased to say that, while the 38.5% of girls in TIC this summer doesn't quite "balance" the class, gender-wise, it's still far and away the best percentage, of all the computer-related classes at ATDP. (see stats on the TIC daily schedule page)

one of the things i look forward to doing after ATDP ends, is going back and reading the journals written in previous TICs on the "gender" question. i'm not sure what i'll find... whether things have changed since five summers ago, as far as the thinking that kids have on this issue, or whether they've stayed basically the same. it should be interesting. i'll keep you posted... or you can just keep coming back to this weblog. ;-)

on a related issue, i was very pleased to notice that Quad (Jon L.) and Kass (Cynthia N.) of AIC chose to respond to the TIC journal question, and wrote it up in their weblogs. (go to their weblogs of July 5th). actually, Spark (Jon B.) also responded, but sent it in an e-mail instead. it was a beautiful and touching piece of writing... i wonder why he didn't weblog it instead... that would have been a perfect entry. oh well, different strokes for different folks i guess.

first TIC student 'proselytized' to use manila/weblogging ;-) ...
Jonathan Shelley's TFrally weblog.

11:54. oh wow. that worked. ;-) check out Sparky's weblog now. if you're reading it past July 5, click back to that date on the calendar.

{ net.casting }
^