Chapter 3-Simulations

Committed learning principle, practice principle, situated meaning principle are the three that I think are most important to learning, because of the focus to learning, the repetitions, and being put in situations outside of just memorizing stuff, it will allow you to think about situations.

The Sim World is a great simulation game, also creating people on the Wii and playing interactive games with your Mii character.  I wouldn't allow my students to do to much except for walk around, let them have money to go spend as a reward for good behavior, good grades.  I believe too much Sim world can make you lose your self in to the game and that's not good.

Simulations are very fun and can enhance learning tremendously if done properly, like a lot of stuff in this class, if used right will work great, if not used right can be disastrous to learning.

Jonassen, D. (2008) Meaningful learning with technology (pp. 44-58) Upper Saddle, NJ: Pearson

-Richard Smith

Rubrics, clickers, and Inspiration-Richard Smith

Technology based rubrics are a great help in assessment, not only for the student, but for the teacher as well.  Rubrics set a standard of what is to be expected and makes sure the students know exactly what the teacher wants the student to cover.  Sometimes the teacher leaves the assignment too broad and students dont get good grades because the teacher didn't specify what he/she wanted.  So any kind of technology based rubric is good to have for proper understanding.

Clickers are interesting devices, they make the classroom seem like a gaming environment, which could possibly help a lot of students these days because of the video games that they play.  Clickers are good because all students have a chance to answer, not only just the smart kid.

Inspiration is a great tool for core teachers, it can help students by allowing them to see graphs, charts, all the visual stuff for the visual learners in the classroom, with a lecture and the inspiration software it covers a lot of learners needs and seems pretty user friendly.  Kidspiration would be fun for the younger students to have in the classroom because of the younger age set up, it follows along with all the toys and games that students played with before school, and now they can continue the progression. 

Rubrics are essentials in the classroom for full understanding of an assignment and to let students know how you will be grading them, clickers would be fun devices to use and will majorly increase learning, and Inspiration would be great software to have for my middle school and high school students because of the visual and in depth aspect of the software.

-Richard Smith

Digital Storytelling-Richard Smith

Digital Storytelling is a way to include technology in the classroom, Kate Kemper describes that technology is critical in the classroom and that digital storytelling is a great way to include this idea.  Storytelling used to be the teacher or students just standing up and telling a story, now students or teachers can record something and show it to the class through a projector, power point, etc. 

Mathematics is very abstract and is one of the hardest subjects for students to grasp, just practicing it daily may not be sufficient,  technology could be a key component in the math classroom by using graphing calculators, using online math games, using math with digital storytelling using numbers for the importance of the story.

Television is very possible to learn from, it is in fact one of the most efficient learning tools in my opinion, I learn a lot of things watching the history and discovery channel, the hard part is getting students interested in watching these types of shows to help with learning instead of watching sponge bob or something that they learn nothing from, but I believe television shows are starting to focus more on helping learning  material in today's life.

references:
Jonassen, D. (2008). Meaningful learning with technology (pp. 200-201). Upper Saddle, New Jersey: Pearson.

-Richard Smith