Vanadzor / Page 2

Students at work Saco flashes a peace sign. He's sweet--he always address me a "Miss". :-)

I had thought that this assignment would get a little bit tedious, teaching the same class three weeks in a row, but the Vanadzor group is so different than the one in Gyumri that it hardly feels like the same class.

For one thing, many of the students speak English well enough that I don't need to be translated and much of the time I am working one-on-one. Quite a number of them have been exchange students in the U.S., and it is interesting to hear about the places they've been: Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Texas, Niagara Falls and even Eugene, Oregon!

Vahagn, who is himself a graduate of a small college in Iowa, has learned a lot about web design (he was the translator for last year's class too) and has become a very able teaching assistant. He's also gets time here and there to work on his own site. He's loves to travel, so you'll be able to see his photos from various trips (recently he went to Karabakh, which looks fascinating), though the star of his site is sure to be his dog. As far as I understand it, her name is Crazy, or the Armenian equivalent thereof.

More students, and the network administrator Armen he's already built a great site: http://www.vanadzor.ru (in Russian)

The class got off to a rocky start--none of the software had been installed on the computers. (That NEVER happens in the U.S.... um, well, almost never.) I decided to go ahead and teach the class HTML (the code that underlies web pages). It's not too difficult, but it looks a bit daunting. This class had no problem with it, and they were able to construct the web page in the first exercise using no web design software. (Macromedia and Adobe, take heed!)

The class is significantly younger than the last group. Most of the Gyumri students were veteran teachers and administrators, while the students in Vanadzor are still in college or recently graduated. It is a decidedly different atmosphere. I joked that I am not certified to teach high school--there are times when you wouldn't realize it was not a high school class! (Sometimes even a junior high school class.... )

The class more than makes up for its rambunctiousness--they are very smart and very quick. I am running out of material to teach them! They grasp things right away and ask lots of (hard) questions. They are every bit as enthusiastic as last week's students, and have some interesting ideas for their class projects. We should have them posted on http://www.armeniaweb.biz by Saturday afternoon.

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