Sunday, November 25, 2007

End of 8823 Course

I learned so much from each one of my classmates in this course. All of the presentations were wonderful, and it was great to see the wide variety of topics that were chosen. I have also probably doubled the number of websites I have bookmarked! Everyone shared so many fun websites which I am excited to not only use with my own students, but with my son. I appreciate all of my classmates’ thoughts and insights in this course.

My experience in this course has been similar to those that my classmates have reported. Since I work for an online university, I have been familiar with a variety of technological tools in education, and felt very comfortable entering this course. As I have done the readings and read the experiences and perceptions of my classmates, I realize that there is still so much out there that I have yet to experience.I know that as a faculty member in an online institution, I am responsible for being a leader in the adoption of new technologies, not just one that follows along later. I am excited to continue to explore the new available technologies, and look for ways in which they can be implemented in my institution.

Even though this blog was started as an assignment for this course, I am going to keep it going at least throughout the rest of my program at Walden. It has been a fun way to reflect on the topics of each week. So, I will say once again…

Until next time…

Monday, November 19, 2007

Simulation & Gaming

We have previously discussed the concept of “edutainment,” a term coined by the software industry to describe programs that are both educational and entertaining. This week’s topic of study focused on a couple of aspects of “edutainment,” simulations and games.

Once again, I enjoyed the discussion which asked each class member to post examples they found of each: simulations, simulation-games, and games. I posted a fun simulation of a volcano from the Discovery Channel website (http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/pompeii/interactive/interactive.html). For my simulation-game, I posted http://www.nationstates.net/. Finally, as my games, I posted a site with Battle Ship, Checkers, Tic-Tac-Toe, Scrabble, and other logic, reasoning, or strategy games (http://www.superkids.com/aweb/tools/logic/).

It’s always fun to see the sites that my classmates have either found for the assignment, or have been using in their own educational settings with their students. There are definitely several that I am going to check on; not only for my students, but for myself and my own son.

Until next time...

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Emerging Educational Technology Tools

Once again, I have been amazed by all of the possibilities for technology use in education. This week's readings were on wireless networks, cell phones, PDAs, and other wireless communication devices as classroom tools. The two articles from Campus Technology magazine outlined and discussed many, many possibilities that I had never thought of in the education realm.

It was also very informative (and entertaining) to begin viewing my classmates' projects. Everyone is so creative! There were some that introduced new technologies and some that added to my knowledge in more familiar areas. A couple even helped me understand a little bit better some of the concepts and technologies that we have already discussed. I look forward to viewing the remaining projects.

Until next time...