Technological Education

The objective of the online educational game was to search for an appropriate game that can be utilize for educational purposes in a classroom.  Every individual in the class was grouped randomly. I got to be grouped with two other individuals. Both of my group members were Elementary Education majors. Although I am an Early Childhood major, it was not difficult for us to choose an online game because our majors are relatively similar.

As we were searching for our online game, we came to an agreement. The game we chose is called brain racer. We decided on this game because we felt like it was a challenging and motivating game for students to play. Edutopia (2008) states, “Properly used, technology will help students acquire the skills they need to survive in a complex, highly technological knowledge-based economy.” With this online game, my group members agreed that we would use this game one day in our classroom as a tool for our students who may need additional practice in math so they will become better at it.

After we have chosen our game, we were told to create a rubric based on our standards. This was really challenging at first because my group members and I never had to create a rubric for a project. We were clueless as to what we should do to start. So, the first thing we did was look through examples on google and also examples of what Dr. Cyrus has provided on moodle from past students work. As my group and I searched through various examples of rubrics, we finalized what we were going to put on our rubric. According to Bookhard (2016), “The main purpose of rubrics is to assess performances.”  As we evaluated the online educational game, the total score was 11-18. This means that the game is very educational and appropriate for the class.

Other than email, another technology tool we used is whatsapp. Whatsapp is a free messaging app that can be downloaded to smartphones. Since my group members and I all have whatsapp, I decided to make a group chat so that we can communicate easier.  In addition, another technology tool we tried to use to present our project was prezi. However, we had to choose another technology tool because we had technical difficulties with prezi. So we ended up using a technology tool called keynote. Keynote is a presentation software app developed by Apple. This was my first time using this tool so it was a great experience to work with it. It was really simple and easy to navigate. With regular power point, you would usually have to control your slides on the computer. A cool thing about keynote is that you can control your slides through your iPhone. Keynote is a technology tool I would use in the future to deliver presentations.

Current and future educators should be aware of the different technology tools that are provided because technology is everywhere. Through this assignment, I have learned a couple of different technology tools which can help me in the future. Again, I highly recommend current and future teachers as well as parents to use our game brain racer. I believe that the online game can help students understand math in an easy and fun way.

References:

Membership. (n.d.). Retrieved March 09, 2016, from http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/112001/chapters/What-Are-Rubrics-and-Why-Are-They-Important¢.aspx

Why Integrate Technology into the Curriculum?: The Reasons Are Many. (2008). Retrieved March 09, 2016, from http://www.edutopia.org/technology-integration-introduction