Play‑Doh Fun Factory

Robyn Hrivnatz

Last week we talked to Robyn Hrivnatz, she works for Microsoft as part of the education program. She works on curriculum development and over seeing the educator trainer program. Before working for Microsoft, Robyn was a teacher. Robyn has always had a love for teaching kids and technology. With all of this experience she has found out that today's kids are like microwaves, they want everything instantly. She also talked about how to use social media to our advantage in our personal and professional life. She said we should take advantage of things like LinkedIn to help us with potential employee.

Makey Makey

Last week in class we used a kit called Makey Makey. It was a box of wires and a motherboard that somehow helped us play a video game. You could tell we didn’t really know where to start. We all started to pass around the items inside the box, the box itself and started searching the web. We first started with plugging in the USB wire to the computer and connected it to the Makey Makey board. Then, we started focusing on the tiny white wires, which is where we went wrong. They were actually not necessary for the first part of our project. After that we tried connecting the color wires to objects, such as a banana and play doh. We even cheated a little and reviewed some YouTube video that really helped us out. We then realized we would have to have one wire connected to ourselves.The items we were told to bring to class included bananas, celery, play-doh, and aluminum foil.  Although we had gotten the board to connect and light up as instructed, the Mario Brothers game was not connecting. After much trial and error, switching and attempting different wiring, we decided to try out Frogger. Apparently all the failed attempts were not failed, yet the computer game itself was not responding. We soon switched over to a letter format, where each of these prompted a guitar string to play a song. Overall, it was interesting and fun.To overcome our issues we really needed to work together. Luckily, everyone was very open to trying different things. The group members interacted with respect and worked amicably together.   This was definitely a fun trial and error project overall. We wish we would have been able to have a bit more playing time after it took us so long to figure everything out. But the pizza was definitely a plus as well! All in all, very nice experience.

Connected Educator

 In Chapter 9 Connected Educator talks about learning and how the classroom are affected by technology. There is so much information out in the world that teachers want to bring into the classroom and, with the use of different types of technology it is possible! The classroom is continuously changing due to technology. This will not only benefit their students, but also the educator. Teachers must consider the four major components of learning 2.0, these include knowledge, pedagogy, connections, and capacity. Knowledge involves building classrooms with collective intelligence. Pedagogy challenges teachers to focus specifically on the students’ passions, creativity, and innovation.  Connections involve teaching and showing students how to create personal learning networks to increase their knowledge. Capacity encourages us to remain open minded to each other to learn something new. The chapter also addressed the moral purpose of teaching and the need to do something powerful to promote change in your school or classroom.

The Cooper Hewitt on Twitter

This week on Twitter, I tweeted a video of The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Cooper Hewitt is the only museum in the nation devoted exclusively to historic and contemporary design. It educates, inspires, and empowers people through design by presenting exhibitions and educational programs and maintaining active publications. It is the mission of Cooper Hewitt’s staff and Board of Trustees to advance the public understanding of design across the thirty centuries of human creativity represented by the Museum’s collection.