in-class decision making

Personally, I used the Collaborating Method to handle the in-class decision making exercise. First, we discussed the problems of the exam format. Then we discussed the options that would possibly be advantage to all of the students. Knowing the fact that the exam-average of the whole class is very low, we came out with the idea to drop the lowest grade of the 2 mid-terms. Even though all the students in our row agreed with this solutions, we had absolutely no idea what the other students think, so we decided to go to other groups to see what they think. I chose this method is mainly I believed that this is the only way to get something out of the problem and we must be clam and do it fairly. Professor required a 100% class agreement in order for the "laws" to pass, so I believe it is very fair to everyone.
The class was very noisy and everybody was expressing his/her own options. I believe that if we could come out with a real check-list, which allows everybody to click on multiple options to correct the exam problems without writing his/her name on that check-list. So everybody has the equal right to vote, and all votes are kept privately. Overall I am very happy with the class decision. Hope everybody will be benefited with it.

yoyo egg

I am so glad that our group could successfully achieved "drop the egg" experiment and earned full 5 extra points. We first defined our ultimate goal is to find the best way to land the egg without breaking it and of course we knew that we only had 20 minutes to plan it. At first each member came up with their own ideas on how to do it. Then we analyzed the risk and chances of breaking the egg with each idea. Two team members actually came up with an idea which is to connect all the straws and tape the egg together, so we can safely land the egg into the floor without breaking/dropping it. The first thing came to our mind was, "is this ok to do? does professor allow us to do it? does the professor admit this is a good method and give us full credit? or he would say this is cheating." With all those questions in mind, we actually went up and asked professor Krupis, and confirmed that it is legit. So we cut the straws sideway, and connected them all together along with the egg. It came out very nicely and the actual length of the straws are far longer than 10 feet. We then tested the strength of the tape connectors by pulling the straws moderatly. We were so glad to see the bonding were very strong. Overall, we loved the experiment and our team members all contributed greatly.