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Technology Showcase
After reflecting on my time spent in the MAET program, I found no better way to summarize my Master's work than through the program motto: Explore, Create, Share. With technology as the common thread between all of my work showcased here, I feel that these artifacts have pushed my thinking as a student and as an educator. The works I've included are pieces that I am particularly proud of or intrigued by. While I have separated my projects into three categories, I feel that the "Explore, Create, Share" motto is an endless cycle of learning and that most of my artifacts include aspects of all three of these ideas.
EXPLORE
Networked Learning Project
In this video, I am stepping completely out of my comfort zone and trying to learn something new. Using only YouTube and Help Forums, I taught myself to make a homemade chicken pot pie. In the end, my pot pie was delicious (if I do say so myself)! I was really proud of my work and I felt very accomplished when I was done. This was a chance for me to step back and take a walk in my students shoes. Great learning doesn’t come from a singular source or activity. It comes from repeated exposure through several mediums.
Understanding Understanding
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In the video below, we explored the idea that students come to school each with their own unique schema of the world and how things work. With this, comes a large number of misconceptions. The point here is that background knowledge matters and should always be considered when presenting students with new information. Our group (Erin Dennis, Laurie Fernandez, and Pat Greeley) decided to focus on misconceptions that kids have about choosing careers in STEM fields. We chose this topic because despite massive involvement in the history of modern technology, we are currently experiencing a dearth of women in fields related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. We sought to ask girls and boys what they thought of the possibility of women entering these fields. We also wanted to talk with adult women who were and were not involved in STEM-related careers about why they did or did not choose to pursue a career in these fields.
We interviewed 10 kids from kindergarten to twelfth grade, along with four adult women in and out of STEM careers.
You can visit our full site, which includes all aspects of our work here or view our interviews below.
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Exploring Maker Education
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I created this video as a "remix" of my very first experiences with maker culture. It was one of the first videos I created. I never could have anticipated the ways maker education would change my teaching.
As I continued my exploration with maker education, I was introduced to the world of Maker Kits. In the video below, you will see one of the ways I was able to integrate Makey Makey with my teaching.
I created this infographic on the 5 w's of maker education as a way to share the importance of maker ed.
CREATE
Assessing with Minecraft
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In this video you will see an assessment that I created using Minecraft. The assessment is designed for fourth graders to assess their understanding of perimeter and area. As you will see in my screencast, students are asked to create animal exhibits for a new zoo. They must find the area and perimeter of their exhibit so that the builders know how much material to buy. After designing this assessment, I was able to pilot a similar assessment with a group of students in my class. The result was a high level of engagement from all learners. I have continued to incorporate digital assessments when ever possible.
Dream It
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At this link, I have created a technology based grant proposal for transformative learning using the backward design model. I chose to create my proposal based around our scientific unit of study on electricity and magnets in fourth grade. Many students have misconceptions about electricity and the flow of energy. My hope is to crush these misconceptions through a more focused study on how circuits work. This is why I have titled my project, Creating the Ultimate Circuit Challenge with Makey Makey. I’ve created a Dream It Project site which outlines my proposal. On this site you will find the five parts to my grant proposal: Project Description, Transformation, TPACK, Evaluation, and Key Issues in EdTech. This was my first time writing a grant proposal and it has inspired me to apply for other grants offered within my district.
Rubric 4.0
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Finding the “just right” assessment to measure student learning can be a daunting task at times. There are a variety of assessments out there, so how do we determine which is best? I created this rubric as a way to assess assessments. I use Rubric 4.0 as a guideline for creating assessments in my current practice.
SHARE
Webinar
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Have you ever noticed how hard it can be to pull kids away from a video game? What if we could engage kids on this level in our classrooms? Researchers have been exploring ways to do this through an idea called gamification. Gamification is the process of teaching content by incorporating game elements such as scoring, competition and rules of play. Considering recent rapid changes in technology, the use of technology to ‘gamify’ our classrooms is a possibility that could have a huge impact on education.
Adding elements of gamification may lead to higher levels of engagement and collaboration which may, in turn, lead to higher achievement. In this webinar, we discuss these and other potential uses, strengths, and limitations of gamification in the classroom. Our discussion includes experts, Liz Boltz, Professor with the MAET program at Michigan State University, Spencer Greenhalgh, PhD candidate in the Educational Psychology and Educational Technology Program at Michigan State University, and Carrie Heeter, Professor in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University. This webinar really revealed the affordances of technology as a collaborative and communicative tool.
How Do I Love Thee: A Synthesis in Three Parts
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Albert Einstein once said, “creativity is seeing what everyone else has seen, and thinking what no one else has thought”. Creativity is what progresses our world forward. Not only does it make our world unique, but all things are created using some kind of creative process. Creativity has been proven to positively affect student understanding, yet we often don’t make time for it in the classroom. In Sparks of Genius: The 13 Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People, Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein suggest seven cognitive tools as a way of developing creativity. In this white paper, I lay out an argument for creativity. I also created a short elevator pitch and Twitter message to support my thinking.
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