Final Reflection of iRLO project

I thought after my fist submission that I was not going to have to change too much on my iRLO project, but after reading my peers comments I knew there was going to be more work done. I put a lot of effort when I first created my iRLO (earlier blog post goes into more detail) and I also put a lot of work and time into the second submission.  Professor Boyer talked about really making your "game" interactive and useful for the students who will be playing it.  I thought that if I kept score that that would allow for much better feedback. It took me a while to figure out how to apply the scores in Scratch though.  At first I played around with the program on my own and then I looked at peers Scratch projects to see if anyone had used scores, but was unsuccessful in understanding how they programed them into their projects. My next source was Professor Boyer. It only took him a few minutes to figure out the situation. It was actually a very easy process.  He also was able to help me with including my player's name into the feedback they'd receive on each answer. I've learned through creating my Scratch project that yes, technology can indeed be scary and seem overwhelming, but technology is all about practice, practice, practice! The more you practice a tool the better you will understand it (evident by Professor Boyer's quick skills).  Also you need to make time to just play around and explore technology tools also. For example, I wanted to make my numbers random for my players so they are always receiving different problems each time they play and I figured that process out by just looking over other peer's Scratch projects.  It took me at least an hour to figure out just this one step, but it was worth it! This project, like many more in this course, is something you can not really be taught much about.  It is a project where you teach yourself and I find these types of projects to be the most beneficial. 


I thought this project was very beneficial to my future as an educator because it taught me that technology is about practice (like I just stated above). It also taught me how many different areas you have to consider before sharing a project or activity with you class.  You have to make sure that it is going to be an activity where your students are getting immediate feedback (if possible) and it also needs to be very interactive to keep your students engaged! Also you need to consider what specific are of content you are covering, because you want each and every activity to be appropriate and meaningful in you classroom! Because all my peers have also created projects, I can look through theirs and possibly use them in my future classroom! Therefore, this project can be looked at as a great resource! I'm glad we were introduced to Scratch because it taught me a lot and I had never heard of such a tool! It was challenging at time (very challenging!) but in the end I believe it was worth it. :)