Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Microwave Children


Professor Calderwood's class never ceases to take me completely off guard. If you've been following my blog, you know this is my Exploring Your Digital Portfolio professor, you also know we frequently get the opportunity to speak with amazing people around the world through video chat. We always get to find out about different people doing all types of jobs and the ways they have utilized what we have learned in class to further themselves in their careers. This week we  had the pleasure of speaking with Robyn Hrivnatz through Google Hangouts. Talk about digital-- Robyn works for Microsoft herself. She started out as a teacher and combining her teaching skills and the innovative new technology she was passionate about learning she was able to land a spot,  nothing short of a dream job, in Microsoft's US Education department. Here she is able to help teachers all around be as savvy as possible in their teaching,  and make sure that as the world grows; education is keeping up with all of this. Wanting to work for a large technical company myself I found this hangout extremely fascinating. We are so grateful that she was able to take the time to speak with us! Here is the hangout for anyone who is interested in all the interesting things we were able to find out. 
 



After speaking with Robyn Calderwood hit us with another mind-blower. In a simple explanation, we were put in groups with classmates and given an electric circuit board (called a Makey Makey), play-doh, tinfoil, bananas, a laptop, and told to control an online computer game with it. You might be thinking what I was, "excuse me?"--with a look of utter confusion. 
Turns out this was a team building exercise that turned out to be a lot of fun! We were able to circuit the Makey Makey to the objects such as the tinfoil and banana to control the different movements that we would usually do on a keyboard. So in other words, yes, we were playing Frogger with a regular household banana. Don't tell me that isn't awesome. Later we hooked it up to a CARDBOARD CUT OUT of a guitar to play Guitar hero. Technology is amazing and this was an awesome mimic of a future possible experience with coworkers. Thanks Cassandara, for the pictures! This was also all streamed live on our professor's Periscope.



In chapter 9 of the Connected Educator, we read about the incredulous and powerful tool the internet is even underestimated to be. The capabilities and the growth it continues to achieve are nothing short of mind blowing and it only continues to grow. Here we formulate communities globally, pull opportunities, share the innovations of the future, and are able to teach and share every which new thing INSTANTLY. Much like Robyn explained, technology has become as important if not more than the curriculum that has been developed over time, forcing people to up the ante, learn more and FASTER than ever. The internet can easily be considered its own world which unites everything in its power, and I cannot wait to see what becomes of the future because of it. 

No comments:

Post a Comment