World 1-2: Design of Technology Supported Learning Environments (ETEC 510)
The world of ‘design’ was another world that I did not know existed prior to my MET learning journey. I know that design is considered when creating something for an online environment – a website for instance – but I did not realize how much research and terminology is involved! It was in this course that I learned an important term: affordance. While creating any online space, I now know to consider how the user will interact with the site for the first time. How do I incorporate familiar tools? What affordances will be unfamiliar? If I do use unfamiliar tools, how long will it take the user to adapt to the new environment?
I have included this animated gif - not to poke fun at this man, but to illustrate that affordances are important when designing. Did the designers consider someone of his generation when creating the app or smartphone OS?
As a part of the studies in this world, I learned how to code a wiki entry. I have lots of experience coding in HTML for web design, however, I did not realize how different wiki code is! There was a definite learning curve, but I was glad for the experience. Below is a link to a wiki entry I wrote on Google Glass, an augmented reality mobile device (now defunct) that I was extremely interested in at the time.
A highlight in this course was reading Papert’s Mindstorms (1980). In this book, I was introduced to the idea of constructivism. In his book, Papert describes how children, using the "language of math" and constructivism, could program and learn from problem-solving using robots. Upon further exploration, I learned that LEGO has a Mindstorms division that combines LEGO and robots. To this day, I run clubs at my elementary school where I get to have students learn the “language of math” with coding. In addition to collaboratively working together to learn, they are using YouTube as well (as mentioned in World 1-1).
I have included this animated gif - not to poke fun at this man, but to illustrate that affordances are important when designing. Did the designers consider someone of his generation when creating the app or smartphone OS?
As a part of the studies in this world, I learned how to code a wiki entry. I have lots of experience coding in HTML for web design, however, I did not realize how different wiki code is! There was a definite learning curve, but I was glad for the experience. Below is a link to a wiki entry I wrote on Google Glass, an augmented reality mobile device (now defunct) that I was extremely interested in at the time.
A highlight in this course was reading Papert’s Mindstorms (1980). In this book, I was introduced to the idea of constructivism. In his book, Papert describes how children, using the "language of math" and constructivism, could program and learn from problem-solving using robots. Upon further exploration, I learned that LEGO has a Mindstorms division that combines LEGO and robots. To this day, I run clubs at my elementary school where I get to have students learn the “language of math” with coding. In addition to collaboratively working together to learn, they are using YouTube as well (as mentioned in World 1-1).
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