Journal Blog 8

With the technological advances that are happening daily, there is no reason that they should not be used in the classroom to facilitate, assist, and augment lessons.  The products that could be used vary from document cameras, interactive whiteboards, student response systems, digital projectors, wireless presentation tablets, and student Net books are just a fraction of what could be used in the classroom.  I envision a classroom in the near future using interactive whiteboards with wireless presentation tablets so the teacher can move freely around the room.  The students would use a response system and enter their answers to questions as they are asked and each would have personal Net books with the newest Educational software installed on them.  I picture the classroom organized into small groups to facilitate cooperative learning and so the teacher can walk between groups to provide assistance when it’s needed.

         As a future teacher, I would like my classroom set up in a very similar way.  I want to use technology within my classroom to augment my lessons.  I would like to be able to use the technology that I mentioned to do this effectively.  My classroom would be arranged in angled rows and divided into sections so that each student will have easy views of both the front and sides of the room where I would want the whiteboard and digital projector set up.  I would want to move around the room so I’m not tied to the front of the class.

Journal Blog 7

Teachers can use virtual environments to educate students.  Here are a few such virtual worlds that can be effectively worked into the curriculum of a class..

1.     1.  Second Life is a virtual environment that was created and accessible through the Internet.  Users create avatars and can interact with others, explore, and socialize.  A teacher could use the Second life Virtual environment to have students visit virtual campuses and take virtual field trips.  More than 700 educational institutions have set up campuses in second life for use as educational tools.  The students can participate in distance learning and socialize with students of other schools or cultures.

http://secondlife.com/whatis/?sourceid=0410-sergoog-slSecondLife-wisl&gclid=CK-l3f-Pg6UCFSMd5wodmlcMNw

2.     2.  Augmented reality simulation is designed to engage people with real life experiences.  Using handheld computers, information is supplied to the participants. In one game setting, the users had to discover the source of a toxic spill using the handhelds and interviewing virtual witnesses.  This would be a good tool to use within a school to get the students involved in discovering something.  They would have to investigate and come to conclusions of their own using the information provided.

http://education.mit.edu/projects/mitar-games

3.     3.  Epistemic Games are games that are designed to get people to learn to think in innovative ways.  I would use these games within my classroom to get the children involved and to think “outside the box” to learn different ways to approach a problem.

http://epistemicgames.org/eg/

4.     4.  Quest Atlantis could be used in my classroom by having the students create their personae and going on the virtual quests that are educational activities. Completing Quests requires that members participate in real-world, socially and academically meaningful activities, such as conducting environmental studies, researching other cultures, calculating frequency distributions, analyzing newspaper articles, interviewing community members, and developing action plans.  The concept is modeled after an online role playing game.

http://atlantis.crlt.indiana.edu/start/index.html

5.     5.  The River City Project is a multi-user virtual environment for learning scientific inquiry.  The students will use their knowledge of today and travel back in time in a virtual environment to try and solve problems from that time.  The world is based on authentic sociological, and geographical conditions of the time, the students’ work together in research teams to investigate the reason for a town’s illness.

http://muve.gse.harvard.edu/rivercityproject/index.html