WEEK 3, Frog Jump and Design Brief

Frog Jump activity

The workshop started with activity on designing a frog that can jump. We needed the cardboard, sticky tape and a rubber band. My partner and I started by sticking the frog on the cardboard paper. We folded the cardboard paper into two with one side longer than the other. We rapped the rubber around the folded line, the energy from the rubber band helped to lift the frog up when we flip it with a finger to make the frog jump. This is an engaging activity for the primary classroom.

Before starting the activity, the teacher will discuss safety issues with scissors and rubber bands. In this type of activity students use different skills and strategies to arrive at different answers.There is no right or wrong answer. If it did not work the first time, students could try different skills the second time. This helps children with problem solving and deep thinking skills. They can share what they created with the whole class. Pre-service teachers enjoyed this activity and I think students in the primary school will enjoy it more. Ativities with paper, scissors, sticky tapes is always good for engagement of students' learning. They can make paper planes, all sorts of paper crafts etc.

The second activity was game creation.
QUIA Mingling at a party (English exercise)
This exercise is very good to test students knowledge of words like two, too and to.

MATCHING GAME



I made this matching game which can be used to match world capitals. What a great way to teach children capitals and countries in the world. Quia website has got great fun activities for children. It could be used for making up a quiz in any subject area. The quia activities could be used to teach different aspects of litracy and numeracy-teaching vocabulary, spelling and multiplications. In geography- ordering the planets, surveys, evaluation etc. This website is mind blowing and is a great resource for teachers and students alike.

The two major influences that shape our lives are information and technology. Literacy and numeracy are so important for the future and so is technology. These subject areas are important for employment, enjoyment and life enhancement. If students are not competent in dealing with information technology, they will become less capable in operating in the future world. Technology is important in todays educational world. Some of the questions we need to ask ourselves are: Does the use of internet allow students to do something that can't be done another way? Does the use of technology allow students to do somethings in a better way?
What do the students need to learn and how can they learn it best? What can these tools do for the students?

Students can easily get bored by sitting and talking all the time. They need hands on activities such as information exchanges, data base creations, electronic publishing, information searching, peer feedback activities as we did in our webquest and problem solving activities that promotes deep critical thinking and collaborative learning. Teachers complain that there is no time to integrate technology but there are lots of sites that are free that can give teachers ideas of how to inco-operate technology into their curriculum and CyberBee is one of them.

http://www.gamemaker.nl/
http://gamedev.sourceforge.net/

Adventures of CyberBee.