ILP "Participation" - Tech Sandbox

When I went to the Tech Sandbox, I learned a whole deal about the new technology we could implement in our classrooms in order to increase student's learning experiences and get them excited about the material they are learning in the classroom! This included things like 3-D printers, Smart Tables, Smart Boards, Virtual Reality (Google Cardboard and Oculus Rift), Note Taking Apps and Devices, and Letter/Shape Recognition Tools. They showed us how to use each form of technology, and gave examples of how we could apply it to specific lessons as well as classroom activity in general. For example, when students are learning about the human body, a teacher could use virtual reality equipment and download an animated simulation of a journey through the human body in order to give students and incredibly in depth look at the material, as well as make the lesson a ton more exciting than reading about the circulatory system or parts of the heart in a textbook. After class, I looked into if there was any virtual reality videos for math concepts, and there was! It would be awesome if I could include material like this in my lesson, since I believe it would really get the students excited about concepts. Another example was using a Letter/Shape Recognition Tool. You attach this camera sensor on the top of an iPad in a stand, and place shapes and letters compatible with the app software under the camera based on the question it is asking on the app. It was definitely one of the most unique things I saw in the Tech Sandbox. I could totally see this being used in younger-aged classrooms when they are learning how to spell and complete gaps in words. They said it also has higher level capabilities of dealing with mathematic concepts, and I would've been really interested in seeing how that worked and what type of things it asked about. I might go back and look into that more so I can see if I'd be able to use something like that in the future. Overall, a lot of the examples of how to use the technology were oriented towards younger-aged classrooms, and not high school like I intend to teach. So, as we were going through the tour, I tried to think a lot about how I could mess around with the technology to make it more appropriate for older students and orient it for more complicated lessons and material.

In Tech Sandbox, I probably spent the most time looking at the Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard. I have always been so fascinated by virtual reality and remember when the Oculus first got released, but I had never seen or tried one in person before. It was such a cool experience being immersed in this virtual world and experiencing it as if it was actually happening around me. I also got to keep one of the structures that the 3-D printer made. Seeing it being formed one small stroke at a time was really interesting, and I was astounded by the ability of the printer to create a printing of chains, with each individual chain linked together. I still don't know how it was able to do that, and I'm so excited for the future of 3-D printing to be more accessible to students who are interested in these types of technology. Lastly, I got to play around with Sphero. I was obsessed with the model of BB-8 they came out with when Force Awakens was released, but it was definitely out of my price range for something I probably wouldn't use too much anyway. It was so much fun to interact with and honestly really cool to think about how the technology worked. I was having a hard time thinking of how it could be used inside of a classroom, but it was a really awesome piece of technology and I think the creators had an incredible idea in making it. Overall, it was such an eye-opening experience to what us teachers of the future will hopefully have access to in our classrooms in order to provide better education and stimulating experiences to get students excited about school.

Here are some of the pictures I took during the field trip: