Getting to Know Each Other

The second day of class, syllabus information has been discussed so it is time to move on to the "icebreaker". Today's plan was to have the students meet a class partner. The purpose of a partner is so they have someone in class they can contact when they cannot reach me. Also some of our class activities will allow for working in pairs, so they are already paired up and familiar with the person they will work with later on.

I partnered them by having them choose numbers I had written on strips of paper because I forgot to bring the candy bars ( I owe them). Usually I would use the mini chocolate bars like Hershey's that come in different flavors. I would put two of each in a container and have the students each pick one, their partner is the one who chooses the same flavor. Then they get to know their partner by filling out a form with useful and random information.

Shortly after class began, ANGEL (our LMS) went down. I had planned for students to download the icebreaker document from ANGEL and print it out to use in class. They would get to know each other a little bit and then take each other's pictures for uploading into their ANGEL profiles.

Students were prepared for class today even if ANGEL was not, they brought their digital cameras or camera phones, and the USB connector necessary for getting the digital images they would take of their partners onto the computers, so we ended up doing that part first. After some technical difficulties, students had optimized their pictures and uploaded them to their ANGEL profile for viewing in our class roster. Then they got to know each other after I was able to download and print several copies of our partner activity icebreaker.