Aspects Of Educational Technology

Technology Educating Younger Minds

      According to Karehka Ramey (2017), "we use technology in education to improve on the way we learn in our classrooms."As some people might say that technology is becoming more advanced in our daily lives. It has become an essential aspect that accomplishes our tasks with ease. One advantage of this is through the use of an online educational game that gives students the opportunity to engage in learning activities such as Math, English, and Science. furthermore, as a group, each of us started to find a game that best suited our major "Elementary Education."From my experience, I found it time-consuming looking for the best game that would captivate our audience. 
      As time went by, we all came to an agreement upon using Mr. Nussbaum's "Cash Out."This game serves to test an individual's knowledge of mathematics. The objective of the game was to figure out the correct change back to a valued customer that comes in and out of your store to buy groceries. During the process of examining this game, we've determined "Cash-Out" was fairly simple enough to understand basic options such as selecting the difficulty level, displaying hints, and showing change amount. We recommended that second and sixth graders can play this game; we also noticed that adults can try too. This website https://mrn365.com of Mr.Nussbaum leads to other teaching materials that educators can use in their classrooms. 
      One factor that we found most challenging in this project is creating the presentation. Our first choice of a presentation tool was Wix. Although, we found Prezi as a better presentation tool than Wix that lets students organize their ideas into various creative templates. We also used Google Keep as a form of communication for our classmates to access our links like Prezi and Cash-Out. At the end of our presentation, We gave our classmates the chance to do our “Google Survey” to evaluate our progress. In creating our presentation, we try to best target our main audience. 
         As an educator, I recommend using Cash-out as a learning activity that students can use to hone their mathematical and monetary skills. In general, Math has become a major struggle amongst students who lack the skills of counting money mentally or physically. "Many people don't experience sufficient time to get math lessons, and they fall behind as the teacher moves on" (Fleming, 2018). During my time in elementary school, I've struggled with learning concepts of Multiplication and Division. In the future, I want to see my students use "Cash-Out" as an activity if they ever chose to buy items at a store.  
         In conclusion, technology is constantly evolving in our education culture where we depend on computerized tests. In this project, we were able to utilize materials such as Google Keep to our advantage because it gave us the opportunity to send links to our audience in our class. On the other hand, most argue that online educational games don't improve on student's ability to learn. According to the website article; Game Learning (2018) "Learning and technology shouldn't be viewed as two competing things, but rather as partners in the fight to help educate children." I believe that this fact is true because I witness kids every day enhancing technology at a young age. 







                                                    References


Karehka, Ramey. (2017) How to use Technology 100 proved ways. 
https://www.useoftechnology.com/how-to-use-technology/


Gamelearning. (2018) Why are Educational Video games are so helpful to parents.
    why-educational-video-games-are-so-helpful-to-parents-teachers-and-students-5-reasons-to-embrace-game-based-learning


Grace Feleming. (2018) Why Math is Difficult- Math and Brain Types. 
     https://www.thoughtco.com/why-math-seems-more-difficult-for-some-students-1857216