FNDS 6233 - Week 6 thoughts

     I have had the opportunity to work on assignments individually and collaboratively this semester in FNDS 6233.  When working by myself, I sometimes wish that I had a partner so I could tell him or her ideas and receive feedback.  Working with my team, I am able to hear the different opinions of my team members.  This allows me to think outside of my current thought processes and analyze the idea from a different perspective.  Working with my team members can take more time.  Instead of being able to start an assignment at my leisure, I have to coordinate with other group members and find time to discuss the objectives of the assignment.  Technology has made this easier through the use of asynchronous tools, however, this still requires planning and coordination.  My personal preference for learning is to learn the material on my own, and then discuss what I have learned with others.  The team experience allowed me to do this, and opened up new ideas on topics that I had not thought about.  Although team experiences require more work and planning than individual work, they also provide a greater learning opportunity.  I sometimes cringe at the idea of a team project, but after its completion, I look back and see what a great learning experience it was. 

FNDS 6233 - Weeks 4 & 5 thoughts

     According to Howland, Jonassen, and Marra (2012), design games and animations are used to motivate students to understand concepts in a memorable environment.  I found this to be true when working on my Alice video.  I first had to work through the Alice tutorials so that I could become familiar with the software.  I was motivated to complete this task because I knew I would be creating my own unique creation in the program.  There were many decisions to be made once I started working on the video.  I had to come up with an idea for the video first.  I decided to create my video on the BP oil spill, and then I had to use problem solving to figure out how to incorporate all of my ideas into the Alice software.  Many times I would have to rethink or rework an idea about my video because I was not familiar enough with the software to fully incorporate the idea.  I would also research how to make an idea work within the software using tutorials on the Internet.  Throughout this process, I realized once I learned how to manipulate a character in Alice, it would remain in my memory so that I could repeat the process on another character.  I realized that this type of meaningful learning would enable me to retain the information for a long time.  Designing animations and games are great tools to enable my future students to understand concepts in a meaningful way.

Howland, J., Jonassen, D., & Marra, R. (2012). Meaningful learning with technology (4^th ed.). 

     Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. 

FNDS 6233 - Week 3 thoughts

The 3^rd World Farmer simulation is a game where the player controls a farmer’s family and the choices they make in regards to what to plant, what livestock to raise, and what to build.  Every year the farmer’s progress is reported and shows what happened that year and how much money was earned, if any.  I chose to focus in the beginning on planting corn, a very durable crop that produced the lowest earnings.  I wanted to try and earn some money to be able to purchase technology, buildings, and livestock.  I was lucky the first few years and the corn was not affected by the famine or civil wars.  I was able to save enough money to purchase a well, a storage house, and some tools.  I then diversified my crops so that I would still bring in some money if drought hit one of the crops and killed it off.  The turning point in my game was when I saved enough money to buy crop insurance.  This guaranteed a return on my crops each year and my savings grew from there. 

One other key aspect of the game that might get overlooked is the health of the farmer and his family.  If their health is not good, they will not be as efficient at working the farm.  In the first few years, I let their health suffer.  I saw how this was hurting production.  Starting with year 4, I began to check on their health levels and buy medicine that allowed them to regain their health.  This strategy worked well as all of my family stayed alive and worked for the farm.  I feel that I had a very lucky game and was fortunate to end year 18 with over $17,000.

FNDS 6233 - Week 2 thoughts

The team activity in week two required us to compare and contrast the ISTE’s National Educational Technology Standards and the Elements of the 21^st Century Skills Framework.  We also had to explain which elements or standards were more important and give reasons why.  Finally, we had to create a visual display showing our analysis.  I believe this assignment falls in the highest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy, the creating level, also known as the evaluation level.  In order for us to create the visual display, we had to remember key facts from the standards and elements.  We also had to understand, apply, and analyze the facts in order to compare them with each other.  After coming to a consensus on the most important parts of the information, we still needed to create our own work explaining the key components of the NETS and 21^st Century framework.   This assignment clearly involved higher level thinking and I will most likely be able to recall some of the key elements and standards in the future.

FNDS 6233 - Week 1 thoughts

     I was able to read two interesting articles on technology integration.  The first article,

“The Pedagogy of Technology Integration”, stated that teachers should not have a narrow mindset when trying to integrate technology into their lessons.  Integrating technology should be considered from the beginning stages of a lesson plan, and not just thrown in after the planning.  Also, the article pointed out that a broad definition for instructional technology should be used as this will help teachers understand the roles that technology can play in the classroom.  Technology should be considered as an important part of the learning process while teaching, and not a completely separate entity.  Teachers need to realize that technology in education should be considered when creating the strategies for instruction. 

    The second article was titled "Teacher TPACK and Learning Activity Types: Curriculum-Based technology integration reframe".  The main point that came across to me in this article is that when teachers integrate technology they should consider the pedagogy and content knowledge as well.  It makes no sense to pick out a technology and try to fit it to the students' learning objectives.  Instead, we need to look at the students' learning objectives and see what would be the best way to teach them.  Then teachers could consider the best way that technology could help the students learn.