The Start of Something...

Using techology in the classroom... I'm nervous already.


I've never been the most tech-saavy person I know. I'm usually one of the last people to upgrade my technology. About a month ago, I bought a new cell phone. My old one was about six years outdated; the new one is only outdated by three years. Hurray, upgrade!


These newfangled phones you youngins use these days confuse me. I remember having to borrow my friend's iPhone to make a phone call not too long ago. That thing has so many pretty icons, but I couldn't figure out how to use the actual phone function. I find this very sad. And don't even get me started on my complete loathe of texting...


My favorite part of the first day of class was definitely the discussion about educational games that many of us remember from elementary school. I used to love to play The Oregon Trail and Number Munchers. At the time, it was very obvious to me how Number Munchers enhanced our curriculum: basically, you're a very hungry frog trapped on a game board that consists of thirty boxes. Within each of these boxes is a number. In each level, the top of the screen gives you a characteristic of all the numbers you need to eat in order to complete the level. Such characteristics include "prime number," "multiples of x" (as seen in the image to the left), or "equal to x" (if there are equations in each box.) All the while, you are trying to dodge these monsters who desire a number-munching froggie sandwich. The game was decently challenging for my third-grade self, and it made learning prime numbers fun.


Then there was the Oregon Trail. In elementary school, I wasn't really sure how this game was supposed to teach me anything. I mostly got giggles out of writing the names of my classmates as members of the wagon and watching to see which diseases would eventually kill them off. I always got frustrated because whenever my other friends would play the game and use my name in their wagon, I was always - by chance - the first one to die, usually of chlamydia. Maybe I need to get that checked out... When I was in college, I played this game once more for kicks, only instead of using the names of my friends, I used my least-favorite physics equations. I didn't try to kill them off that time, but all of the equations perished before reaching Oregon. I guess that means there is no physics in Oregon. Lucky.


Anyway, the point of that tangent is that Oregon Trail was fun, but I can't really say that I learned too much from it at the time. As an adult looking back, I can understand the thinking skills that it tries to impose upon children. It basically teaches them that there are consequences to every action and that there isn't always a "right" answer to every question.


Overall, I am looking forward to starting a class that focuses on using technology in the classroom. I feel, as somebody who is usually years behind current technology, that this is a class from which I will greatly benefit (assuming, of course, that my klutzy tendencies don't get in the way and cause me to damage said technology.)