ccolgan

Week 9 Response

I’m taking Beyond Bits and Atoms with Dr. Blikstein, so I’ve been very immersed in the Maker Movement, teaching coding to kids, and building animals with the laser cutter this quarter. As an assignment for that course, I visited a maker space at Barron Park Elementary School, part of the PAUSD. Smita Kolhatkar, the head of… Read more Week 9 Response

Week 8: Informal Science Learning

This week’s readings looked at how scientific habits can be formed, fostered, and adapted. Crowley et al.’s look at parents’ explanations to their children featured specific, though “inconclusive,” evidence of its findings that parents explain scientific phenomena more to boys than to girls. Parents have go beyond simply bring their children to the museum, they… Read more Week 8: Informal Science Learning

Week 7: Math

The Zhang article made me wonder how students’ interactions with online math games have changed in the age of YouTube. From Ashley’s talk last week, we learned that kids are no longer using Google to search for content. In the article, from November 2012-October 2013, 6% of traffic to coolmath-games came from social media sites including… Read more Week 7: Math

Week 6: Writing is fundamental

This week’s reading focused on the role that storytelling and writing can have on a child. It’s so important to consider how and why someone wants to tell a story–sometimes it’s just a matter of giving a person the right tools in order to create a master storyteller. That might be a robot toy like… Read more Week 6: Writing is fundamental

Final Project Idea

Looking at media literacy/digital literacy for pre-teen/teenage girls. Group: Corinne, Jessie, Shelley

Week 5 Post: "Chocolate Covered Broccoli"

Brenda Laurel coined the term “chocolate covered broccoli” in her 2001 book, Utopian Entrepreneur. It’s a phrase that gets thrown around so much in educational research that it’s starting to lose its meaning. But I really thought it was the perfect term for Granic, Lobel, and Engels’ approach to exploring the possibilities for serious health… Read more Week 5 Post: "Chocolate Covered Broccoli"

Stardoll Technology Review and Redesign

Stardoll.com (http://www.stardoll.com/en/) is a platform for children and teens to build fashion dolls and play games within an online community. Colgan_Assignment 1 I explored Stardoll in our first day of class, but I was left with so many questions that I just had to go a bit deeper into this fascinating product. I’m not alone.… Read more Stardoll Technology Review and Redesign

Week 4: Fröbel's Forgotten Gift

In reading “Fröbel’s Forgotten Gift…,” I couldn’t help but remember Barbie Fashion Designer from my own childhood. I didn’t own the game, but I begged my friend Victoria to play whenever I was at her house. As I recall, it was a fairly open-ended design project, though firmly within the Barbie world of “Dream Date”… Read more Week 4: Fröbel's Forgotten Gift

Week 3: Quality's The Thing

The readings this week proposed ways of exploring children’s media usage that seemed to reach a consensus that it is not the platform, but rather the quality of the interaction (game, video, or in-person play) that will affect learning outcomes. In “Putting Education in ‘Educational’ Apps: Lessons From the Science of Learning”, Hirsh-Pasek, Zosh, et.… Read more Week 3: Quality's The Thing

Corinne's Parasocial Relationship

When I was a kid, I really identified with Clarissa of “Clarissa Explains It All.”  She was WAY COOL.