For my book review I will be reading one of two books (whichever comes in on my Interlibrary Loan first): Swords & circuitry : a designer's guide to computer role playing games by Neal Halford, Character development and storytelling for games by Lee Sheldon. These books will help me greatly in creating a narrative for my Role Playing Game for Dr. Ferdig's class. My review will focus on the techniques described in the book as they apply to my educational Role Playing Game.
I've decided for my Positioning Yourself in the Field assignment that it will be way too much this semester for me to research tech coordination for school district and I'm just going to bring in some of my research on RPGs so that I can focus on one thing and do that much of a better job on it. Along with this I plan to explore the areas of test prep using games because only by seeing where we are and where we've come from in the field of educational gaming can I hope to create my RPG and have it improve upon current issues in educational gaming. I figure it's a lot broader than just focusing on how FCAT is created, but it's narrower than educational gaming in general and it will greatly help my research for Game Theory and Design.
My RUBY book arrived from Amazon on Monday and I've read through the introduction. I'm very excited to get started on learning the language.
In class last week we discussed the paradigms of learning being Positivism (related to behaviorism and drill and practice), Interpretivism (related to constructivism and cognitivism), and Critical Theory (related to Realism). For each of these we looked at examples of technology that can be used to teach in these paradigms.
For class this week we have researched to find other examples.
Postivism
Typer Shark- Typer Shark teaches touch typing by having students type the letters they see appearing on sharks racing across the screen.
Geosense- While a much more difficult drill and practice Geosense shows a city of the world and the student has to click on a world map where they think the city is. It is however very addictive for grad students (I spent a few hours on it this week ^_^)
US Constitution Trivia- More of a Postivist Assessment website, the main part of it is a quiz on the US Constitution that is self checking.
Interpretivism
Terrafly- Allows your student to type in a city and gives lots of facts and charts and images that a student can explore
Exploring the Planets- Allows students to learn about the planets through graphics, charts and games.
The Biology Project- Allows the student to explore different topics in biology.
Chapter 6 of Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology is about Epistemology and the Design of Learning Environments. The Powerpoint below charts the chapter in what I feel is a much easier to understand and effective way than the book.
For Dr. Dawson's class I was torn for my positioning myself in the field assignment between either doing something for my RPG, or something to do with technology coordinating for the district or a school. After much debate I've decided to stick to the game idea. The game is going to take up so much time and I just think I'll be spreading myself too thin if I try to add another major project in this semester. So for the Positioning I'm going to do the research on what kind of research goes into educational games, and for the professional development I'm going to learn how to program in RUBY which is an up and coming programming language that is going to be extremely useful not just because it's what RPG Maker XP uses, but it's being predicted that it will be a major programming language for Internet and Web2.0 apps in the coming year. A quick look at Amazon shows 7 different books that are on preorder for this language as well as 3 that have been published this year. I ordered RUBY for the Pragmatic Programmer yesterday and it should arrive by Tuesday.
No matter how many times I read about learning theories, I do not understand them completely. It's not just me though. I polled every education major and teacher on my buddy list today and not one of them knew the differences between the theories. I understand Behaviorist Learning Theory, and Constructivism because they've been smashed into my brain over and over again and I think I finally get Situated Learning Theory now, but any of the others and I'm completely lost. I made a fun inspiration though that shows basic definitions of a bunch of learning theories.
On a related note, a sneak peek of the new season of Lost last night showed a great example of behaviorism. Sawyer is in a cage with a button that has a picture of a fork and knife on it. He pushes it. A voice says, "Warning". He pushes it again. "Warning." The man in the cage next to his says, "I wouldn't do that if I were you." As he's doing this, all I can keep thinking is if he gets shocked I'm going to be so excited to see Pavlovian experiments on this show! (A little twisted I know, but hey I'm excited when I can seem intelligent^_^) Sure enough, Sawyer pushes the button again and it shocks him throwing him back against the bars of his cage. That should help Sawyer learn that pushing the button is not a good idea just as the man in the cage next to his learned before. Check it out!
Blogger deleted my hw for EME5054. So here we go again and I'm backing it up on my email. TAKE THAT BLOGGER! :-P
As previously stated in my blog, I have no idea what I want to do once I graduate from the Ed Tech program with my Masters, but I started looking last semester at jobs on Monster and Chronicle, and I'm looking again for EME5054
So a few paths I'm thinking about are:
Tech Coordinator for schools- Even with this there are two paths that I'm thinking about. The first is involving myself in the classrooms at an individual school as the tech teacher and arranging Professional Development for the teachers, or working at the district designing technology curriculum which again would probably involve some professional development for teachers.
Educational Software Designer- Again two different paths, either in designing what the programmers will create, or actually creating the programs.
Distance Education- I'm interested in looking into developing Teacher Professional Development online which I started last semester.
College Professor- I'm really enjoying teaching my EME4406 lab, although I'm still trying to get into teaching college students. It's been tough getting all my educational ideas to apply to college level, especially as I'm teaching a class on secondary education. I am really enjoying it though and as I get deeper into the semester I'm sure I'll become more at ease with it.
So what do I need to become qualified for these positions?
I'm working on learning programming. One of my goals this semester is to learn some gaming languages. I'm starting with RUBY which can be used in RPG Maker XP, but I'd also like to learn some Flash, C# (I know a little C++ but could use a refresher), and I really need to learn to use Dreamweaver more effectively with CSS. I'm hoping that as I'm teaching EME4406 I'll be able to learn a lot more myself as I'm trying to teach my students.
