“Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity”
Artifact 1: Emerging Tech Wiki
Before this class, I had never heard of a wiki, except the site of Wikipedia. One our assignments was to collaborate as a group and use a wiki attached to blackboard to make wiki pages on two emerging technologies within Web 2.0, One was augmented reality and the other was Google Wave. I have to say that I really enjoyed using the wiki. It was a completely new experience to collaborating that really helps out when you aren’t physically together as a group. I also learned a lot about the two technologies not only from my research but from reading my group’s inputs and helping to edit it down to one substantial page. I could definitely see using a wiki page in the future with sites such as Wikidot.com and wikispaces.com. Also, within my personal philosophy of teaching, I can just imagine using this type of technology for assignments due to the ease in which students could collaborate while at home or even at school.
Artifact 2: Lessons In Logo
We were originally supposed to use the logo programming turtle art from the Sugar on a Stick program, but there was still a few kinks that we couldn’t overcome. So instead, we still got a preview of what logo programming is like through the free downloadable program called Scratch. This was one assignment that I absolutely hated. There is no real tutorial on how to use the software and it’s very confusing. I like to know how to use stuff and when there is no guide, I guess I get pretty upset. I feel that there should be more help options or even better descriptions of what Scratch has to offer. Children may have an easier time processing this type of programming but I would definitely never use this in my classroom. I feel that it is just too complicated and it holds nothing of educational value for students except in the area of art. By the time I eventually got something which you can see from the picture above, I could have easily hand drawn or even used paint for a much more intricate art. But overall, I only judge harshly because I just couldn’t seem to grasp the idea behind logo programming. I’m sure it does have it’s educational merits, just not for me.