As with our previous presentation, the time spent playing around with Ozobots in the Nusdeh Yoh library highlights the difficulty of trying to envision a use for a particular piece of technology in the absence of educational context. I’m not sure how I’d work Ozobots into any subject I hope to be teaching at the secondary level. A useful product to have in the back of my mind should I fail to find my dream job out of the gate, however. My main takeaway from this presentation has less to do with the technology itself than it does with how students operate within the learning environment. Whether we were trying to teach Ozobot to love (unsuccesful) or getting Ozobots to fight one another (inconclusive), everyone in our group was fully engaged and working closely together. Technology in the classroom can thus be an effective tool for eliciting learner engagement, cooperation, and creativity.
Month: September 2019
I recently took part in a tablet themed learning opportunity with Sandra McAulay. The presenter was enthusiastic, and discussed several potentially useful apps, though to this blogger’s eye most appeared better suited to an elementary than a secondary setting. This is not to suggest that tablets, or even some of the apps which were demonstrated, have no place at all in secondary classrooms, but I think this first impression on my part speaks to the difficulty of trying to integrate technology into the classroom taking the technology itself as a starting point. That is to say, when integrating technology into the classroom I suspect it may be easier to start with a learning goal and then find a way to integrate the technology into it. Trying to figure out how I would use tablets in the classroom without having already formed a lesson outline in my mind has been a frustrating intellectual exercise. I think this is a longwinded way of saying that while some interesting ideas were introduced I won’t really know how or if I will be able to utilize them until the opportunity actually presents itself.