Literature
Below are three essays on important topics in the field of Educational Technology.
Essays
Making a Generation of Makers
In this essay, I advocate for the mainstream adoption of a maker curriculum. Making is at the heart of the constructionist learning theory and it most naturally mirrors the way students learn outside of the classroom. Experimentation, trial and error, collaboration, and creating tangible products are key elements of the maker movement and all of these elements are already being implemented in classrooms in a piecemeal fashion. The time has come to teach students in the way they naturally prefer to be taught and utilizing a maker curriculum is a step in the right direction.
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)
Several Fortune 500 companies have been implementing a BYOD policy for years, yet in most schools, taking a phone or tablet device out during class is grounds for detention. In this essay, I make a case for BYOD implementation in schools by weighing the pros against the cons and looking into how well BOYD policies have worked in settings both inside and outside of the classroom.
Video Games in High School Social Studies
The use of video games in school is not an entirely new topic but it is one that is still hotly debated. Video games have been utilized with a varying degrees of success in STEM education for years, but evidence of video game effectiveness in social studies classrooms is scant at best. I think it is time to look into video games in social studies, but not before we learn to evaluate them based on their potential educational value. This essay both looks at the historical precedent for video games in school and also prescribes a metric by which educators might measure whether or not a particular video game can be a useful learning tool in their course.