At the semester break, Lucy and I agreed that we had become quite the witches over the computers. Being in charge of 2 labs and 3 mobile labs was definitely taking the fun out of Lucy and Ethel. (By the way, just what does a teenager do with the little round DELL icon buttons? I would love to know.) Our students tend to take things off our computers, like buttons, stickers, and the plastic fronts, yes the plastic fronts. So we did a little brainstorming and came up with this idea. Lucy typed up the general rules for using the computers and slipped them into sheet protectors and placed them around the labs. The 1st time a class came to the Lab; we would go in and talk about the contest that the class could win. Basically, follow the rules while you’re using the computers and your class will go into a drawing for a “Dessert Party”. In May I will randomly draw from the classes that followed the rules and we will make a wonderful dessert for that class. The more times your class comes to the lab and behaves, the greater your class’s chance to win. OK, this is working, but not really the way we had planned. This motivated some students but by far not all, and it takes the whole class to make it in the drawing. Who it has motivated is the teachers, they want this party bad. You should see them running around pushing chairs in and picking up paper, checking the computers behind the students. It’s wonderful. Our custodian has commented that the Library is a lot cleaner. So I guess Lucy and Ethel’s aphorism for this blog entry is "The ends justify the means".
