Today was quite an interesting day. Students were given the opportunity to create their own virtual garden on yates.com.au. This website allows students to create a garden however they would like in any creative way. They are given options to choose the set up of their garden in either an L shape or a Square. There are options for different vegetables, trees, flowers, bushes, stone settings, and furniture that they may choose from. The only requirement we had of students is they must include what is offered by the program that they will personally be planting in the community garden. For them this meant that they must include: lettuce, radishes, spinach, and radishes in their garden. Rainbow chard and Kale were not offered and therefor exempt from inclusion in the garden.
During this time there were 5 boys only and we allowed them to listen to music while working, as long as they remained focused on the task and completed the assignment before leaving. Most students finished creating their garden within twenty to thirty minutes at which point they must show where they placed the required vegetables. Before they were allowed to finish up, screen shots were taken of their garden to show the coordinator of Tech Club who could not be there that day.
I feel that students truly enjoyed doing this. It is time consuming in a good way when someone gets into the program. However there were several students who did want to go as simple as possible by including as little as possible. Because no other guidelines were given other than the required vegetables it was easy for students to do the bare minimum with no enthusiasm to do well. From this it shows how important it is to give more guidelines that students must follow for easier tasks that may be fun for them to complete easily.
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