Project Based Learning Project Based Learning is when students take their abstract ideas from paper and then build them. They make prototypes, problem solve, and reconfigure their ideas until they have built a workable solution to whatever problem they are trying to solve.
|
Sparking New Creativity Sparking new creativity is an integral skill for students. By learning new ways to think and look at the world, they will make changes and discoveries that have not been discovered or thought of. The idea of "makers" is sparking student growth.
|
New Teaching Ideas This last section is for teachers to re-look at what and how they are teaching their students important skills. New tools and ideas are being created every day and teachers need to be able to incorporate those new ideas to enhance student learning.
|
|
This Mythology Unit was a semester long project in the New Media Text and Tools class that was part of the Master of Arts in Educational Technology. We were challenged to create a unit that would incorporate several different pieces of technology that would enhance student learning and that would spark new thinking. We were not replacing good teaching strategies, merely changing how they looked and how we used them in the classroom. The video is an avatar that I made about New Media Text and Tools and how it can impact our teaching.
|
|
This was part of a class on how to use different types of assessment in the classroom. One of those types happen to be how to use games as a way to assess your students. We were able to play around with Minecraft and the video showcases my final attempt at creating an assessment. In this case, I played around with the idea of having my students use Minecraft to create a fun and explorable project that outlined a certain section of Odysseus' journey home from Troy. I chose Cyclops Island, but my students have several other adventures that they could use for this project.
|
This was another semester project in which we used creativity to create meaningful connections and projects within a unit of our choice. I chose of Mice and Men because it is one of my favorite units to teach. We based a lot of our projects on specific parts of a book called Sparks of Genius. Each stage asks students to change their viewpoint and generates some fun activities for students to create.
|
The video is a mash up that I created specifically to showcase my definition of "Maker" learning.
|
This video and infographic was one of the first projects that I worked on in this program and it is an idea that has been the basis of everything I have been working on. The maker movement challenges teachers to let their students explore new possibilities and ideas. It allows them to make mistakes and question how those mistakes could lead to new solutions. Click the button under the video to see the full project.
|
"The greatest promise of learning technology lies not in what we have always done better, faster, or cheaply but rather in providing kinds of learning experiences that would be impossible without technology." (Means, et al.) References:
Means,B., Murphy, R., and Bakia, M. (2014) Learning Online: What Research Tells Us About Whether, When, and How. New York: Routledge. |
This quote exemplifies the ideas of using technology in the classroom that I learned in my coursework and is something that I keep in mind when I am building lesson plans. We are not replacing good teaching practices; we are merely changing up how and what we use when working with students. Technology has changed teaching, and the infographic that is linked in this section showcases the direction that schools are moving into.
|
|
This project challenged us to understand the life long learning that we wanted our students to gain from our classrooms. I used a tool called Toontastic and created a video that explains the types of life long learning that I want my students to achieve. The lessons they learn in school need to be applicable to the real world and it's another thing I strive for when teaching English.
|