Hello and thanks for visiting. On this page, I will record some of my learning from ASTE 6470, an elective course in the USU Career and Technical Education PhD. In this course we discussed the use of technology in the classroom through many lens’. We discussed ethics, equality, purpose, and practice. We looked at near 100 digital tools and how to use them. We talked about having plans for implementation and teaching the tools. We discovered tools for teacher effectiveness and automation. We discussed amazing tools that enhance learning.
Podcast
This was the best assignment I have ever been given in all of my education. I have been wanting to start a podcast for a few years. I have studied how to do it. I have listened to many podcast. I just never got around to hitting record—well, that hurdle is now overcome.
I have set a goal to produce one podcast each week on the topic introduced in this first one—Focusing on Best.
mira
During a week when we were supposed to find a tool we had not discussed in depth, I happened to find mira mentioned in an assigned article. I checked out mira and am so glad I did.
Mira is a collaboration presentation tool that integrated with Zoom and Canvas. With mira you can create whiteboards, mind map, manage projects, build flow charts, and so much more.
I am looking forward to trying out some collaborative white boarding and mind mapping.
Canvas
Canvas is not new to me—or any other student of the last two decades, but new to me was creating a course in Canvas from the perspective of the teacher. I was pleasantly surprised at what Canvas can do in course building. There were something there that I have not seen teachers use. The UI was fairly simple.
This training and exploration was so useful as I know I will be using Canvas for the courses I will be teaching. It’s ability to manage so much of the content and assessment, it will be useful in both in-person and virtual classes.
3D Printers
This is cool tech. Ok, more than that this stuff is amazing. Education should be training us for the future and 3D printers are printing our future. In researching for this project I was blown away as I read about medical students working to print organs with lab produced tissue. 3D printings application in the sciences and engineering is phenomenal.
For my field, I think it would be amazing to teach a coordinated class with advanced students who already have some skills in 3D printing and teach a entrepreneurship course on making money from 3D printing a product.
Video
This project was just plain fun—and I learned that I know almost nothing about video editing, but want to learn so much more. The project was interesting in that it required so much more than just recording and posting the video. The editing process was a challenge also enlightening. I explored bot iMovie and Adobe Premier. Premier was by far more difficult, but offers so many features.
I will be using video as a supplemental learning to with any course I have in the future. I will actually be creating a FAQ of sorts with short videos explaining complex issues that come up in the material for the course.
