First Day at ECC

Today was pretty easy to get up as it was our first day at ECC. The first day had finally come that we had been preparing for all semester. After we all ate some breakfast and drank our coffee, we grabbed our packs and hit the main road to walk to the ECC. Once we arrived, the school was a lot different then how I thought it would be. There were two main buildings and one freestanding classroom. I thought the atmosphere was very relaxed as all the classrooms were designed to be very open. We all seemed to take our positions pretty quickly. My group, the video group was introduced to the teacher of our class, Mars. Mars seemed very excited for us to get to work and really looked forward to learning all that we had to offer. His class was made up of about thirteen kids who were the oldest and most advanced.

Our Day began with a warm up, which consisted of Mr. Mars’s class and us. There was a student leader in front of all of us and we were instructed to follow his every move. It seemed like we were back in middle school PE as we all looked at each other awkwardly. This warm up had us rubbing our foreheads to doing jumping jacks in order for us to “stimulate our brains.” Although it was an odd experience, I think we all secretly had fun reverting back to our earlier education.

Once we all returned back to the classroom we started the regular class day off with a chapter of reading that we each read with two kids. Their reading was pretty good, only a missed word here or there. The level was probably compared to that off the 5^th grader, but there insight seemed to be at their own age level. The while school system was very different from our own, there was no grade levels, but just levels in general based on their knowledge and over all ability. Even though we had the “most advanced” class the ages ranged from 14-18. They seemed to like everything that other teenagers like, music, sports, driver’s licenses exc.

We finally took action and jumped right into what we came for. We put some questions on the board and had them answer on a separate piece of paper so we could assess their technology levels. Based on these results, we split them into groups. Each group was assigned one of us as a group leader with the exception of Mark who bounced around and helped us out. We went over shooting, recording, and hardware so they would be prepared to film tomorrow. After the school day was over, we were definitely exhausted but as we reflected back on it there was definitely a feeling of satisfaction.