Weekly Reflection #6

Educator spotlight for week 6 was Kara Dawson.

Kara has a very bright and inspiring outlook on technology in the classroom especially when it comes to Minecraft. Her talk on different applications to use in class was very insightful and something I will use in my future classroom and in my coming practicum. I thought the minecraft worlds where they can document the students’ findings was a great idea plus the additional tips to make sure the games run smoothly in the class. To follow Kara’s tips and suggestions, she showed us examples of how they were used plus a student project example. I think that was very powerful because of the subject matter, bringing social justice into the forefront of students who may not recognize the different adaptations made for differently abled peers. 

Following Kara the topics of coding and scratch was insightful and something I can see myself using in the future. We had made some things in Scratch but I struggled a little because I had never used this application before. After I had made something and I was happy to link the video, my computer would not let me open the file and so I restarted and ended up liking what I made the second time more. I think some of the pros and cons of using the tools discussed in class can be the fact that some students can take it home and do further exploration but that may be limited to other students. I believe that students should be interested in the method of delivery just as much as the topic, and as digital literacy is expanding these tools will be more prevalent and useful in every classroom.