This week you completed a brick for a technology. In your current capacity (teacher, etc.), how could you use this same process to improve your practice?. For example, could you use a brick to determine which instructional tools you use (or would like to use) or which curriculum resources?
Using the brick to determine instructional tools would be very beneficial to see what could be used or eliminated from the curriculum resources. Even though I have not created a brick, I have sat down with the technology team and discussed my goals for student projects and certain applications that could achieve that. Many years ago, I used an application that allowed students to upload political cartoons and then record their annotations and discussions. I cannot even remember this application because it caused so many problems. Approaching my team, it was as if we created a brick for this tool, and figured out that we did not see ourselves using this in the future, but we wanted something like this. That is when the team introduced Educreation. This is a wonderful application and tool that students can use and embed in their Wiki Space or share directly to me. In creating a brick for Educreation, we continue to see how this tool can be used in many facets and help in driving rigorous instruction. It would be great if other content areas used this application and we could build our library of HSHMC Educreations. However, this is one story of the many tools that are used. For example, ScreenCast-O-Matic, ALEKS, Empower, Zaption and Haiku. All these tools need to have a brick so our goals as educators are aligning with the tools that we are using!
Using the brick to determine instructional tools would be very beneficial to see what could be used or eliminated from the curriculum resources. Even though I have not created a brick, I have sat down with the technology team and discussed my goals for student projects and certain applications that could achieve that. Many years ago, I used an application that allowed students to upload political cartoons and then record their annotations and discussions. I cannot even remember this application because it caused so many problems. Approaching my team, it was as if we created a brick for this tool, and figured out that we did not see ourselves using this in the future, but we wanted something like this. That is when the team introduced Educreation. This is a wonderful application and tool that students can use and embed in their Wiki Space or share directly to me. In creating a brick for Educreation, we continue to see how this tool can be used in many facets and help in driving rigorous instruction. It would be great if other content areas used this application and we could build our library of HSHMC Educreations. However, this is one story of the many tools that are used. For example, ScreenCast-O-Matic, ALEKS, Empower, Zaption and Haiku. All these tools need to have a brick so our goals as educators are aligning with the tools that we are using!