With my eight-week CEP 811 Masters of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) course at Michigan State University (MSU) coming to a close, I will reflect on key points from the course. Our assignment this week is to focus on assessments and evaluations of our progress/growth, the program, the course, and the elements of the “Maker Education” movement.
Professional Assessment & Evaluation: After deeply engaging with Maker Education for the past few weeks, do you see yourself implementing any of these ideas in your classroom or workplace? Why or why not? If you are thinking of integrating these ideas into your classroom, how will you evaluate their effectiveness? How do these ideas align with your curriculum or job expectations? Speak specifically to the Maker Kit that you chose and offer your own assessment of its effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) in aligning to your work.
“Maker Education” was a concept I was not familiar with prior to this course. Using the MaKey MaKey Maker Kit in this course has challenged me to develop new ways of teaching concepts using it. I have found that it is a very innovative tool. In the future, I hope to use this in my classroom and make my Maker Experiment Lesson Plan a reality. I would like to do this for a few reasons.
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The Makey Makey kit provides an easy set-up for students to create and completely engage in the activity.
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This lesson would completely shift the focus from a teacher-led learning approach to a student-centered discovery-basedapproach. This allows students to take ownership of the learning process and learn concepts by experiencing the process.
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The use of the Makers Kit is possible only through collaboration and participation. It is pretty difficult to complete the production method and “add workers” without a group. Each person in the group must participate and discuss production methods in order to move on and achieve the objective.
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It allows students to hypothesize what they think will happen, question concepts, experiment/create to test their questions, and finally reflect upon what they did, saw, and learned. This is great for retention problem solving and self-assessment.
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And finally, it is fun! Learning should be fun. When learning is interactive, engaging, and fun, it creates an emotional bond to the content and provides for lasting academic impacts while also achieving the short-term objective.
The Makey Makey lessons are essentially games in your content. It adds the element of PLAYING to the academic setting. James Paul Gee discusses the role of “gaming” in education. He explains that they provide constant feedback and are an excellent assessment tool.
I believe the same concepts hold true with the Makey Makey lessons. While the instantaneous feedback element is not there with a Makey Makey project, I believe it makes up for it in creativity. The MaKey MaKey lessons give students a great deal of power in their learning and gives students freedom to solve problems in new and creative ways. This way of teaching will equip our students with the 21st century critical thinking skills, ingenuity, and autonomy they need to be successful in our technological world.
In terms of assessment and evaluating the Maker’s Kit’s effectiveness in the classroom I think you have to approach it in three different ways. The first, is a formative check as they are working, second is a summative check on their reflective blog posts, and finally a project-based format for final evaluation that demonstrates mastery of the objective. I had no problems teaching my curriculum standards using this tool.
My concerns are getting the funding for purchasing the six Makey Makey kits and getting other teachers who are not familiar to buy in to this method. Also, in teaching seniors, there may be some pushback initially when implementing a lesson like this into the big scheme of my subject. Chances are good that students won’t have been exposed to the “makers movement” style of teaching and anytime there is change it can be met with challenges. In the near future, I hope to get the funding, support, and time to develop multiple Makers activities for my economics class.
Personal Assessment & Evaluation: How do you evaluate your own growth and work in CEP 811 (and your MAET experiences so far)? (You may wish to revisit the syllabus to see the MAET statement on evlauation.) How does this statement resonate with your experiences so far? Do you have suggestions for improvement or alternate methods of the evaluation of your work?
Over the course of this class, I have seen much progress and growth in my approach to learning, technology integration, and re-imagining teaching. I have done a great deal of thinking about repurposing and rearranging my classroom to better meet the needs of the 21st century learner. I have got to experience what it is like to be an inventor using my MaKey MaKey kit. I even made a little song with my Banana Bongos.
I have got to take ownership in my learning and reflect on my assignments right here in this blog. I think this course really challenged me to think “outside the box”. When I first had the task of developing a lesson using the Makey Makey I was nervous and frustrated. I didn’t really understand how I could use this seemingly 6th grade-level science tool in my 12th grade economics class. Then working in something from the thrift shop to teach with seemed very strange. This was a challenge. The final result, however, is in my approach to teaching and learning. It has given me creative ideas and helped me find my subject (economics) in so many areas of life. Practically everywhere I go I can find a lesson idea. The development of the Makers lesson really helped me understand the power in discovery-based learning.
I would say one of the biggest takeaways from this course was collaboration and expanding my PLN through Twitter. During our conference proposal project, I got to work with colleagues from this class to develop a proposal about using blogging in the classroom as a tool to measure student growth. This allowed me to research and critically think about what I was doing in my MAET courses at MSU. The use of blogging allows for so much potential in learning and collaborating. I am still just beginning to delve into this tool myself. Measuring student growth and defending the learning goals you have accomplished through this self-reflective tool is something that I look forward to continuing as a student and include in my classroom as a teacher. Thanks to my instructor in CEP 811, Sean. She has been an involved instructor, provided constructive feedback, and been clear on expectations from the beginning. I have enjoyed the course and look forward to my next challenge in the MAET program at MSU.
REFERENCES:
Edutopia. (2010). James Paul Gee on grading with games. [Video]. Retrieved from http://youtu.be/JU3pwCD-ey0
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