Technology Jedi

Game creation for the classroom has been a goal of mine for many years. I've been to many flash creation classes trying to create such games, but I never had enough time to really get in and play with flash to learn it. Recently, my class was assigned a task to create a game with questions about social media.  I'm all about free stuff nowadays and I've used many Jeopardy games in my classroom, so I did some searching and found this. Wow, this was so easy!!!  Social Media Arcade Game I love asteroids, as its one of my all-time favorite games. I wish you could have seen my cat jump when I yelled seeing that my questions had been easily turned into an asteroid game! So go to  Another game I created was using Quizlet, which I've discussed before in my blog here. https://quizlet.com/_40imb7

AR-Augmented Reality Assignment Just recently I created my first AR for my course. Wow! I can't tell you how excited I was about this. I wish I'd known about this last year, as I could have really used it in science and social studies. As of now I'm thinking of my daughter and her learning to read.  I just can't express in words how absolutely fascinated I am by this possibility. I found a TED talks on AR. I encourage you to watch it and wonder if it gets you excited about all the possibilities as it does me.  TED Talks AR Another helpful link on AR is found on Youtube here.

Cognitive Learning Theory.  This is the last of the pedagogical theories I’ve read about. When I first read the word, I was confused as I thought it was constructivism, which I had just covered in class. The article by, Kaya Yilmaz, says “cognitivism is a relatively recent learning theory and its features are not well known or are confused with constructivism by teachers” (p.204). This was certainly me, and for good reason, as constructivism is a theory created off of the cognitive theory.  Behaviorism Theory  Yilmaz clears up the differences beautifully stating that “The behaviorist approach was basically preoccupied with objectively observable and measurable teacher and student behaviors through a stimulus-response framework. Even though behaviorism did explain how behaviors got changed, it failed to account for how conceptual change occurred” (p.204). For more on this refer to my Behaviorist Theory blog here .  Constructivism Theory  “Learners do ...

Final chapters of Socially Networked Classroom           I found several interesting points in “Socially Networked Classroom”, that I’d like to share here. At the beginning of chapter 5, Kist talks about using Facebook in the classroom. I’ve often wondered if that was possible because I like how groups are setup. I have a photography group, poetry group, and game group that I setup myself for use with family and friends. Kist said, “I found only one teacher who used Facebook as part of a school assignment” (p.97). This teacher works with college students, so even that instance was in higher education. How was Facebook used?            Apparently, the teacher, Brett, setup a private page that he, his students and other professors could see and post to. “As each group began to blog and produce podcasts about their issue some local university professors played a crucial role” (p.98). Brett created a separate ‘alter ego’ where ...