There were two technologies in Chapter 12 that sound really exciting to me. The first was the Handheld Augmented Reality Project (HARP), because I'm familiar with a couple of augmented reality video games that are coming out, but I had no idea about games being developed for educational purposes. I've seen a trailer for an augmented reality horror survival game called Night Terrors, which analyzes the surroundings of your home and then makes crazy/terrifying things happen as you look at your surroundings through your smart phone while trying to survive while there's some sort of paranormal thing coming after you in your house. Obviously this is not appropriate for schools, but seeing the possibilities of handheld augmented reality games is so cool! It's completely immersive and looks so real. I think the possibility of combining math, language, and critical thinking skills into an augmented reality game would be so cool for a classroom. It allows the students to be up and moving and interacting with something, which is a great break from sitting at a desk all day, and it allows them to truly immerse themselves in a lesson. Incorporating this kind of game into a school day will further a child's comprehension of different concepts because they're practicing the lesson in something that feels like real life. The other piece of technology that I loved was the electronic paper. I had no idea this was being developed and when I first saw it, my jaw dropped. It's another eco-friendly alternative to books and printed handouts, just like e-books on tablets, but it can be folded, rolled, etc. and is apparently unbreakable. This sounds great for elementary students who are prone to playing with and dropping things. Electronic paper is cloud based, so you can just change what handout is appearing on each students piece of electronic paper instead of printing hundreds of different pieces of paper throughout the year. I was also blown away by the fact that the price is set to be under $100 once electronic paper hits the market. I hope that doesn't mean its $99.99, because I think this would be awesome technology to have available for each student in a classroom.
Digital Divide
[I was unable to listen to the podcast because CAS was down when I was working on my blog post.]
PowerPoint for Information Dissemination
I've been working with PowerPoint since I was in third grade, so I consider myself pretty well-acquainted with it. One thing I learned through this assignment and that I'm very glad to know, is how to edit the template within the Slide Master. That was something I'd never done before and it's so helpful to know now. I'm sure that I'll use PowerPoint countless times throughout my career as a teacher. I'm very excited to work on the PowerPoint for interaction assignment that's coming up because that's something I haven't learned how to do with PowerPoint so far.
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