Thursday, January 8, 2009

A final day of preparing for presentations

     Thursday dawned bright but chilly. Ahmedabad’s climate is listed as either “arid” or “desert” depending on where you are looking.  It has trees and grass, but it looks very much like Milwaukee in mid-August – and we are in the middle of winter right after the monsoon season. So there’s dust everywhere.

      Although the sun is bright and it’s been around 80-85 degrees during the day, the temperature dips rapidly when the sun goes down, and sweaters become almost a must.

       Not a whole lot of fun today since it was the day the students finished their projects. There was much angst, flurries of activity, and not a single team hit the 4 p.m. deadline. We finally took a break for lunch with only two teams having completed all three parts of their projects: a magazine story, a slide show and a video. The problem was the video. We were forced to use a Microsoft software, which we should have recognized meant all sorts of unforeseen problems.  We are very lucky we brought Carole Burns, who is a genius with computers.

      Still, the biggest problem wasn’t due to Microsoft; well, it was in a way because the complexity of MovieMaker delayed one team so long that a team member who is a reporter for the Times of India got called into work and his team can’t finish their video since parts of it are on his personal computer.

      Despite this setback, the projects look wonderful. Tomorrow I’ll post the class website so you can see for yourself.

      It’s been a long day – I’ve worked about 12 hours. Carole is still in the lab, and I’m going to make a couple more checks before calling it a night.

      And, of course, I have to pack. We leave immediately after presentations tomorrow.

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