Mack's Blog

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Category: Personal Learning Networks (page 1 of 1)

November 25, 2019 / 0 Comments

Coding

We had Rich McCue come into our class today again and this time he was speaking about coding! I have a little bit of experience in coding. I took CSC 100 and we were required to do a lot of assignments centred around web design and using cyberduck.

In Rich’s blog post he outlined a couple different coding programs used in classrooms right now. His blog is linked here: https://richmccue.com

An this specific blog post is linked here:https://richmccue.com/2019/11/22/introduction-to-coding-4-educators/

The specific programs Rich outlined were:

  • Scratch
  • Grasshopper
  • Hour of Code
  • TinkerCad
  • Code BC

We had the opportunity to use one of these programs during class time and I chose Scratch:

https://scratch.mit.edu/

Here is a little video on how you can create the infamous flappy bird game on Scratch:

From my experience:

It was pretty easy to use and very fun. There is a lot of freedom to create what you want and all of the coding options allow you to do all sorts of things. Here is the link to a little animation I made:

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/editor/?tutorial=getStarted

Coding in the classroom:

I can definitely see how something like scratch can be used in the classroom. The amount of things you can do on there is amazing. Since there are so many different backgrounds, characters and prompts a teacher could use this program for any class; history, science, ELA, social. It is very engaging in my opinion and I only used it for a couple minutes. I think that introducing coding into the classroom is a very good idea and it is exciting to see it being implemented. Its stuff like this that makes me excited for the future.

November 4, 2019 / 0 Comments

Minecraft!

This class was so much fun! Who would have thought you could do so much with a game like Minecraft. This is what our society looks like now a days in terms of technological advances and using technology in classrooms and Minecraft is a perfect way to learn while using technology! On my Wednesday visits i quickly realized that a strong interest the class shared was in Minecraft. I also realized that gaming on youtube is a huge interest of this kids. Here is one of the most popular Minecraft youtubers:https://www.youtube.com/user/TheDiamondMinecart

Here is one of his most viewed videos:

This video of his has 2.4 MILLION views on meaning 2.4 million people have watched it. This is a crazy number to think about and i can bet that most of those 2.4 million were young kids.

 

I havent seen much of Minecraft being incorporated into education but what these young students were talking about it sounds like SD61 has successfully done just that. I thought this was the coolest part about the whole class: One of the students we had with us today said that they used Minecraft to create an ancient world for social class. They were in survival mode so they had to sleep, eat, and fend off predators which i thought was so cool. Thats just one of the ways this game could incorporated into schools and classes but i think its a pretty good example of how far you could take this.

This is the resource they use, it is called Minecraft EDU:https://education.minecraft.net/

Here is a youtube video outlining how Mincraft EDU works:

October 28, 2019 / 0 Comments

PSII

Our PSII visit was very cool! Meeting the principal, Jeff Hopkin, was very informative and interesting. He obviously knew a lot about his school and it helped me understand the motivation behind the creation of PSII as well as the interworkings of it. I was very surprised at how small the school was but it was amazing to see the types of things they fit into the space. There was the sensory room which was very neat, they had multiple secluded group study rooms, a couple large meeting areas and of course it was very technology oriented.

I do think the whole inquiry technique of teaching is cool. I can definitely also see how it works for students in some cases but there is a limit. I really dont think that this type of learning and teaching is for everyone. This is true for me because i know that if i was in a school like this i would be completely lost. I would really like to learn more about the implementation of schools like these but i do not think that they should become the norm in the future. Making these schools the norm not be very beneficial to students as a whole in my opinion.

This may be my lack of information and experience talking but all that being said, i am very open to learning more about this and i am definitely open to incorporating it into public schools just in a toned down way. (Kind of like in Rebbeca Bathhurst Hunt’s class from what i heard)

Check out what PSII has going on here: learningstorm.org

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