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 ...

Last spring I attended an brilliant technology conference at Region 4. I was introduced to several different tools that could be used in my classroom. One of those such tools was symbaloo. I've created a brief tutorial to get you started with symbaloo...enjoy! Brief tutorial on Symbaloo

Constructivism  I've spoken about the Behavioral Theory, so now I'd like to look at the Constructivist point of view.  " As far as instruction is concerned, the instructor should try and encourage students to discover principles by themselves. The instructor and student should engage in an active dialog (i.e., Socratic learning). The task of the instructor is to translate information to be learned into a format appropriate to the learner's current state of understanding. Curriculum should be organized in a spiral manner so that the student continually builds upon what they have already learned." (Jerome Bruner) This is how we are encouraged to teach and its the way I think students learn best. The educator is to facilitate learning, while letting students explore and build onto what they already know. Memory: When one is learning something new, that information should be tied to already existing knowledge. In class the educator tries to connect informati...

This week my studies continue with the reading from William Kist's book 'The Socially Networked Classroom'. Chapter 3 has many points I found interesting.  "Some districts end up becoming locked down with unsupervised surfing strickly prohibited."(pg 47) Though this is one way to make sure students don't find themselves in areas they shouldn't be, it also creates difficulties for the educator in using technology in the classroom. Years ago my campus had us so locked down, we couldn't even get onto Youtube. Now, I'm not saying Youtube is pristine with information, but it has some really good videos and songs to engage students. How, for example, am I supposed to convey the power of lightning without showing the raw power via video? My campus finally cleared youtube for teachers computers and I was able to show instructional videos, snippets of videos to support the lesson, or music videos to engage students in the lesson, such as the Lab Safety Ra...