Intensive Day 5

My week long intensive has come to an end.  Friday was the last day. The main focus of the day was to  deliver and listen to presentations that we had worked on all week long with our groupmates.  My groups topic was game based learning.  There is a lot of work being done in game based learning which was nice because there was plenty of literature.  In our attempt to find a gap in the literature we found that many authors realized the different types of gaming options and needs between males and females, but there was no empirical data that showed that males and females are motivated differently when it comes to games.  It seems obvious that males would be motivated to play one type or style of game and females would like another; and often times we see games designed particularly for a specific gender, yet, we found no data proving this to be true.
   The two other groups topics were "Mobile devices" and "Open Content."  Both topics are very interesting and necessary topics to think and talk about in the edutech field.  I will probably be tweaking the topics that I currently have my students do and include the topics listed above as well as augmented reality.  Very interesting technology, I am curious what that might look like in an educational setting.

Intensive Day 4

Today was designed to get our hands dirty.  The main focus of today's lessons were in the multi-media elements of instruction.  Mainly, digital photography, audio, and video.  I did not capture many news things or ideas today.  What I did capture from today was affirmation of what I do in my classroom.  We spent a great deal of time with Photostory, Audacity, and MovieMaker.  All three already have a place in my classroom.  I did enjoy the Audacity activity, I will look into stealing a portion of that in the future. Today we also got to take a few minutes and look into mobile technologies.. ipad's specifically.  This is an area I would love to learn more about and utilize in my classroom. Even though my knowledge of the use of them in the classroom in slim, and that one small problem. Olivet does not have any for me to use in the classroom.  Perhaps one day they will have a place.