Monday, September 3, 2018

Getting it Done

In an earlier post I shared out summer "to do" list. Time to reflect on what I did and didn't get done.

Here is the list:
  • Learned the Basics of MakeyMakey
  • Build a 2L water bottle rocket launcher
  • Read Make it Stick
  • Started learning how to use RPG Maker MV
  • Updated Classcraft Sentences, Random Events, and Behaviors

In short, I did all of them, and MORE!

Played with MakeyMakey and my Chromebook using Sketch. Easy stuff and I'll try incorporating it somewhere this year.

Built that 2L water bottle rocket launcher. Now to develop a plan for its use at school.
My 10 yr old daughter testing out the launcher.


I read Make it Stick and I also reworked my question bank and thinking in regards to spacing, interleaving, and recall. I've also become more vociferous in my position that learning styles are bunk. I'm not going to get into more detail on my teaching philosophy regarding learning styles here, but will save that for a later post. Suffice to say, varying instruction has value, just not the value generally attributed to it.

RPG Maker MV is a very robust, easy, and fun game maker. I spent a few hours everyday learning its in and outs. Got through the beginning tutorials. The problem was that I didn't end up with an end product I can use yet and feel that valuable summer time could have been spent doing other things to improve my class game experience.

I went through most of my Classcraft stuff. Now I need to finish up some quests. I really want quests to work better this year and have more student completion of them. Part of it is the art of the "initial success". Most good games don't have you fail immediately. You have a series of easy successes to train you in how the game system works.

Wow. I did quite a bit. I also got first place at a martial arts competition and earned my blackbelt. Also spent four days at NYS Master Teacher conferences learning about science and science education.

A successful summer I'd say!

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