Month: December 2017

Summarized by Shah Khan

Amazon and Arizona State University joint hands for fascinating venture for their smart campus endeavors. Firstly, ASU with the partnership of Amazon, redesigned Tooker’s House Dorm life. Every engineering student was provided with an added facility of Amazon Echo dot which reinvented the dorm life in Tooker’s House. Furthermore, ASU aims to enhance voice technology development techniques in their coursework.

Students will be introduced to new courses which will target to enhance their existing knowledge on voice technology. Students will be enabled to incorporate their theoretical knowledge into practical aspect and they will develop their own applications for Amazon Echo. It is a splendid initiative in the field of voice technology.

Bibliography:

ASU-News. (2017, August 17). ASU, Amazon bring first-of-its-kind voice-technology program to campus. Retrieved from ASU Now: https://asunow.asu.edu/20170817-asu-news-asu-amazon-dotstooker-house

Summarized by Mary McCann

Most students feel that classes get less fun and more  difficult after Kindergarten. This is due in part to more student testing and less student play. Mitch Resnick, author and researcher at Massachusetts’ Institute of Technology Research lab, feels the strain of school is due in part to less time for student experimentation. Resnic is also one of the creators of Scratch, a system that allows both adult and kids to begin coding by creating short animated clips.

He is a believer in “The four P’s: students making projects, around their passions, collaborating with peers, and maintaining a playful attitude” (Kamentz, para. 14). This focus on guided play and experimentation allows students the opportunity to explore their own interests while being able to make mistakes and learn from them. Rather than the traditional lecture mode of learning, learning through exploration can help  students to be more invested and interested in the subject.

References:

Kamenetz, A. (2017, Sept. 18th). How to make every grade more like kindergarten. nprED. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/09/18/550448626/how-to-make-every-grade-more-like-kindergarten

Summarized by Saad Khan

The gamification gets more complex once we move from primary school students to middle school students. Hopscoth is a good transition from drag-and-drop learning to bringing more creativity with coding.

Hopscoth and other web-based coding games work well hand-in-hand with Blockly games. It has elements of fun games but it introduces the students with proper coding terminologies.

Swift Playgrounds is yet another great app that helps students make that transition from web-based coding games to word-based coding. It does contain the elements of drag-and-drop, but it the blocks actually contains codes in it, and the students are able to write the codes in the blocks.

References:

Ford, M. (2017, October 19). Coding Across the Curriculum. Edutopia. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/article/coding-across-curriculum

Summarized by Sangyoon Park

Educators want their students to grow into great digital citizens. The author suggests that teachers distinguish between professional social media and personal social media. Share student and student leadership case stories. Give students the opportunity actually to produce. Make room for questions and answers. Share your blog posts with new educational technology tools. Post pictures of your school project and share your achievements with your students. Be sure to post positive stories so that your students’ friendly and good behavior is strengthened. Connect with people who can share good material.

References

Randles, J. (2017, October 6). 9 things teachers should share on social media. ISTE. Retrieved from https://www.iste.org/explore/articleDetail?articleid=1058&category=Professional-development&article=9+things+teachers+should+share+on+social+media