3D Printing

There are many different and interesting ways to incorporate 3D printing within the classroom! Below are some ways that 3D printing is effective:

1) 3D printing makes learning active – Students are said to learn best when they are interacting and applying their skills towards something. 3D printers give students this experience because it is a hands-on tool. These type of printers encourage teachers to create activities that can take concepts from theoretical to practical. For example, a great biology lesson would be for students to create an anatomical heart.

2) Encourage real-world understanding – According to this website, https://resourced.prometheanworld.com/use-3d-printers-classroom/, a trainee teacher developed a 3D bee prototype in hopes of increasing the bee population. 3D printers put learning into a student’s real-world environment, and students can see the importance behind lessons in real-world problem-solving!  

3) Boost digital engagement – Students become way more engaged in a lesson if they are interacting and involved. 3D printing allows this to happen when students are involved in a hands-on activity such as using and learning how to use a 3D printer.

Some examples of how 3D printers are being used are below:

1) Create interactive maps – Real-life cities and maps can be created by students with a 3D printer. Also, students can create historical locations with a 3D printer!

2) Create a human skeleton and/or internal organs – As previously mentioned, students are able to create anatomical models so that they can understand and teach others about the parts of the human body.

3) Create real-life structures – Students are able to build world-famous buildings such as the White House, Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, etc.

As you can see, 3D printing is not only a great tool for students to use, but they are also an essential tool in order to unleash a student’s learning and creativity!

Scratch for the Curriculum

Below are five scratch lesson plans that I found for Middle School aged students.

1) Balloon Pop - This game has the user pop ballloons with your mouse. One point is added for each balloon, and one point is deducted if you miss a balloon. https://github.com/zleap/Scratch3_BalloonPop

2) Valentine’s Day Scratch Lesson: Hearts and Arrows - This lesson includes and introduction video and three short, step-by-step tutorials. This is considered a starter project and includes game design concepts that are built in. Students are able to add on their own features. https://www.createcodeload.com/valentines-scratch-lesson/

3) Create Your Own Haunted House Adventure Game - This lesson allows students to build their own haunted house with detailed instructions. http://blog.wecancodeit.org/download-haunted-house-materials-for-your-own-computer-workshop

4) Build Your Own Talking Tom - A complex lesson that involves building your own Talking Tom. The instructions provided allow you to add commands to the puppet and control the execution of Scratch codes based on sensory inputs of the doll. http://http://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/resources/magic-mazescratched.gse.harvard.edu/resources/build-your-own-talking-tom-toy-scratch-and-arduino

5) Magic Maze (Scratch 2) - This is a fun lesson plan created by a teacher that provides detailed instructions on how to build a maze in Scratch. http://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/resources/magic-maze

Below are two videos of myself building the Balloon Pop game. I faxed some challenges including navigating Scratch because I am not an expert yet and  a slow internet connection. Enjoy!

Gamification Delivery Systems

I have researched three different tools to gamify my future classroom. These three tools are: 3D GameLab (Rezzly), Socrative and Kahoot!

3D GameLab (Rezzly) is a tool that applies game thinking and mechanics. “Players” (students) complete “quests” (assignments). As the players complete their quests  they “level up” to reach their educational goals. They can also earn experience points, rank, rewards and badges.

Socrative is a “space race” which has students race spaceships across the screen by answering questions correctly. Students can compete with other students or by themselves. Students can also customize spaceship icons.

Kahoot! Features music and multiple choice questions. Students must answer the questions quickly and correctly on their devices. There is also a leaderboard that is updated after each question. Students get featured if they have a big score increase or impressive answer streaks.

Below is a pricing table for each of these classroom games:


Tool.                                            Pricing.                                                                      Link
3D GameLab (Rezzly).              Basic - Free.                                                           www.rezzly.com
                                                   Educator - $9.95/month
                                                   Legendary Educator - $20.45/month

Socrative.                                   Free - 50 students
                                                   $59.99/year for more features
                                                   $99.99/year for higher ed and corporate level.    
                                                                                                                                  www.socrative.com

Kahoot!
                                                   Kahoot! - Free
                                                   Kahoot! Plus - $1/month.                                       www.kahoot.com
                                                   Kahoot! Pro - $3/month

VR, AR, and MR with Intel

Virtual reality (also known as VR) brings your reality into a 3D world. Real Sense technology uses deep learning to train a computer to do the same. Real Sense technology also uses 18 million 3D points per second! This type of technology is embedded into all kinds of machines such as: drones, robots, 3D scanning devices, intelligent mirrors and VR handsets.

In the 1960's systems were set up in labs that gave people a taste of VR. In the mid-90's products hit the surface like Nintendo Virtual Boy. There was a big breakthrough in these past couple of years when high quality displays and sensors were coming out of the phone market. This started to be reproduced for doing high quality pull request at afforable prices.

VR transports a user to another artificial location, and AR (augmented reality) keeps them where they are and brings in stimulated objects/scenery to augment what they are seeing in the real world around them. There are three things that Real Sense is working on in the lab right now:

- Working with partners on state of the art products to drive them further.

- Partner products that are integration next-gen technologies that might be things like wireless head mounted displays or displays incorporating Real Sense technology.

- Proof-of-concept around ideas that they have of how they might improve the experience in the future and have not been proven yet.

VR is believed to evolve by higher quality, simulations will get more real and products will be less expensive.

A term that I have never heard of, and recently learned about is mixed reality (MR). This is sometimes referred to as hybrid reality. MR merges real and virtual worlds in order to produce new environment and visualization where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time.

Augmented Reality: AR Runner

The AR Runner app is definitely a phone tool to use on your smartphone. It encourages movement and cognition as you try to follow the lines to enter the circle in order to reach the finish destination!

When I first open the app I am presented with this image below. As you can see there are options for a single player, challenges, local multiplayer and to view the leader boards. I did not have anyone to play with, so instead of choosing the multiplayer option, I went with the single player option.

After I selected the single player option, I chose the 2x2 meters challenge.

I then chose to go with the, "Normal" game mode.

There were other options after this with shapes. I played both the triangle and hexagon option. The image below is from the hexagon option. I had to walk to each of these cylinder circle points.

This was my overall score near the end of the game.

I also wanted to add my numbers based on the leader boards when I played the hexagon game and triangle game.

Video Game Seduction Secrets

Throughout the article titled, “The Seduction Secrets of Video Game Designers…”, Keith Stuart (the author of the article), has outlined topics/considerations that are important to players and game designers. I jotted down a few of these topics while reading the article, and I will expand on them more below.

Autonomy – This term means to govern yourself or a person who wants to make independent decisions. Stuart suggest that this is an important element to players and game designers. For example, within the game, The Sims, the player has total control over the virtual humans. They can even decide to give a human life or death throughout this game.

Story – Compelling plot twists and shock used from movies are proving to be an important consideration to game designers/players. Narrative games are also a popular factor throughout games.

Disproportionate Feedback – Players are rewarded greatly for achieving small/simple tasks in a game. Stuart compared this to a popular game called, Call of Duty. When an enemy is shot, they explode into chunks versus just collapsing to the floor. Pixelated firework displays at the end of a puzzle game such as Peggle, is also something that is important to players/designers. Stuart said it best when he described disproportionate feedback as “an endorphin come-on”.

Failure – At first, this topic did not seem plausible to me. However, when I read more throughout the article, I understood what Stuart was stating. Researchers at Helsinki School of Economics’ Mind lab found that players received pleasure when they lost a life in the game. The design team of the game, Burnout, noticed that players enjoyed crashing the cars because of the realistic animation that happened.

Mentimeter

Mentimeter is a presentation software that allows you to create interactive presentations. Students will be able to actively participate in lectures through Mentimeter as a formative assessment tool. Students can see their answers to a quiz appear on a screen, and they can also provide answers anonymously throughout the presentation.

To use Mentimeter, you need to first sign up.


After that is done, you are presented with a "Your presentations" screen. You can choose to upload your own template or begin creating one. Throughout this screen you are able to also input quizzes, polls, open ended questions, etc.



If you want your students to be able to ask you a question through the app while you are presenting, the student simply presses a button that says, "Ask a question" and then types in the question.



As the creator of the presentation, you can choose to show results of a poll/quiz, or you can hide results.



Link: https://www.mentimeter.com/?utm_expid=.W_W3ZYfoTc2eTb2-Ghh6hQ.0&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theteachingspace.com%2Fblog%2Fbackchannels