CIG697
Educational Technology Portfolio
Content and Pedagogy
1) Technical Concepts and Skills
The first of my two artifacts that I will use to highlight my mastery of technical concepts and skills is a project I completed using LiveCode. This video shows the how the slot machine I created operates and the code behind the betting and adding credits buttons.
For this artifact, many skills were required for successful completion. Because of all the code that had to be created for this program to work, it was quite the challenge. This was my first venture into coding and I had a great time with it. Because coding is like learning a new language, it was difficult figuring out how to accomplish the tasks that were required to make the slot machine function. Trying to get the code to work was basically a process of trial and error. Editing the code when something didn't work properly meant looking line by line to figure out what generated the bug.
The outcome of this assignment was a functioning slot machine that I created with only a couple months of LiveCode experience. The accomplishment I felt in completing this project was immense and furthered my interest in learning more about programming. While this piece is not educational in nature it still highlights many skills that I gained that can be transferred into educational technology. I have always had an interest in design. When I was an educator, I would often design my own worksheets, activities and assessments using tools such as Smart Notebook or Microsoft Word. Using LiveCode in this capacity has expanded what I can create. Admittedly worksheets have their place, but they are not the best tool for active engagement. On the other hand, creating your own simplistic programs can be.
The second of my artifacts that highlight my mastery of technical concepts and skills is my Not Tetris board game. In order to create this game, I utilized McGonigal's traits of games and within the paper, I detail how they were used within my design.
This was my first endeavor into making physical board games, so it was difficult to narrow down ideas. Because the project was so open ended, the brainstorm process became very important in coming up with and narrowing down ideas. As I outline in the document, many ideas for how the game would be played were tossed around. Using the ideas and growing off of them quickly showed which ideas were viable and which may be difficult or unrealistic to execute.
The outcome of this was a board game design that was creative and challenging. In fact, I still play this game with my friends because of how much they enjoy it. This project taught me how fluid the creative process is. Even after many playthroughs and edits there are still so many more ways to make the game more enjoyable and efficient.
Furthermore, through the creation of this artifact and incorporating McGonigal's traits of games, I can utilize these experiences when I design games and content with gamification in mind. I learned a great deal about gamification can enhance student learning and support the ideas and motivation that is inherently integrated within games. Utilizing gamified features aids in that all too important active engagement piece that I mentioned in my professional philosophy.
2) Instructional Design
The first of my two artifacts that I will use to highlight my mastery of instructional design is a math tutorial that I designed with LiveCode. In this tutorial students learn what a ten is and how to add them. This tutorial was geared to first grade students and the Nevada Content Standard NBT.1.1 and NBT.1.4. This idea originated from an educational design project that I had done earlier in another class. This tutorial is similar to a lesson I taught as a first-grade teacher, so it covers actual standards and content that is required for first grade mastery.
As with other instructional design projects I have done, I utilized Norman's considerations to create this design. I feel that this design highlights the use of two of these considerations: appropriate mappings and designing for errors. To ensure the design utilized appropriate mappings, I made sure that all buttons and icons looked like how they should be used and were in positions where the user would understand the immediate action associated with it. The linear page bar at the bottom highlights mapping as well as it shows the user where they are in the tutorial and where they can go.
This design also designs for errors. In this design I made use of rev speak prompts to let users know when they made a mistake in the tutorial. Ensuring that the user understands the content is important and errors in understanding should act as a stopping point for users to review information. In order to accomplish this, I created stops in the program during the practice checks to ensure students understood mistakes in their understanding before moving on. Within the self-test section though, I took away those stopping points so that users could see how many errors they made and what concepts they should review.
The second of my artifacts that highlights my mastery of instructional design is my I-3 design project. In this artifact I created a home page profile and two different program designs for a fictitious reading program website called ReadNow. This program was geared toward the primary elementary grades and whose purpose was to teach basic reading and comprehension skills to users.
For this project, I feel that I focused on simplifying the structure of tasks. I geared these tasks towards younger students who have difficulty with reading skills and comprehension. To simplify the structure of the individual tasks I made sure that games and activities within were skill specific. This allows users to focus on the skill that they are having trouble with. The kindergarten activity for reading practice has been simplified and streamlined. Students understand the task they are given and how to go through the task efficiently. In that activity I also use appropriate mapping to aid in the layout and immediate feedback with click to read text.
For the first-grade activity and the second grade activity I focused on using appropriate affordances. Navigation buttons are arrow shaped allowing immediate understanding of what the buttons purpose is. I used the same thing with highlighted text, allowing the user immediate understanding of choices made and buttons that can be clicked. Finally, I use appropriate affordances in the first grade lesson where students can easily manipulate word boxes in the activity by clicking and dragging to the correct location.
Utilizing these Norman's considerations ensure that my design is intuitive and easy to use. When a design is created using Norman's considerations, it helps the learner free up cognitive processes, allowing them full processing power to attend to the content at hand. The opposite of which, poor design, leads the user experiencing cognitive dissonance between understanding how to use the design and understanding the material at hand, undermining the designers original intent.
3) Technology Integration
The artifact that I will use to highlight my mastery of technology integration is a first-grade sorting activity that I created using LiveCode. This design stems from my ReadNow project and the first-grade activity. Because I had learned to code simple programs using LiveCode, I decided to create the design I had made semesters prior. Like many of my other designs, this comes from an actual center activity I had students do in my first grade class. In this activity, students would instead use scissors to cut out the words and glue it onto the paper once they finished the sort. With this technology incorporated version of the design I followed the similar physical design it was originally based on but because it was a computer-based program, it allowed me to incorporate help and self-check tools allowing immediate feedback to the user unlike the paper version.
This activity aligns with my professional philosophy for technology integration because it highlights how technology integration can be beneficial for student engagement. Engagement with the content is important for ensuring students are actively involved and learning from the content. In contrast to my original paper activity, this version has immediate feedback which improves engagement. Because of the added help tools, a video showing the different vowel sounds to help students who may not remember and a prompt to read instructions, users are able to attend to the content where before they may have quit because of issues that they couldn't resolve on their own and receive immediate assistance. Additionally, the self-check acts as another feedback tool to increase engagement and is something that can't be easily achieved with traditional paper means, unless you provide the answers prior to the assignment. This can easily be done, but leads to the temptation of viewing the answers prior to doing the activity. With this program, answers are only shown after students attempt to answer. This gives students the ability to engage in the content and then view if their understanding was correct.
While I haven't had the opportunity to test this program, I believe that this would have been engaging to my students back when I was teaching, especially for those who may have needed help but were unable to seek me out. This was originally a center activity that students had when I was teaching reading groups but because of my focus with the group, I couldn't provide immediate feedback. Those who may have struggled with the task either because they forgot the sounds or because they didn't understand, inevitably lead to disinterest with the task. Using technology, I could have had the same activity for students to do but with the added benefit of immediate feedback for those struggling users. Technology is an important tool in active engagement that can help solve the issue that many teachers struggle with, the act of giving immediate feedback to students.
