Alice

Alice is a program introducing students to computer programming in a 3D world.  I am not a big gamer and was not real excited about this assignment.  After getting to know the program, I was able to begin programming my video.  It was frustrating and being a perfectionist was never satisfied with the results but I could see how kids would enjoy using this to create.  The negatives I see are the time it would take to teach the students how to use the program and the time taken to set up the video versus the time using the actual science content.   

3rd World Farming

3rd World Farmer is a simulation giving the student first hand experience to the decisions, problems, and successes of farming in third world countries.  The player encounters civil war, droughts, disease and governmental influences.  The player acquires livestock, tools, and buildings based on profit.  Part of the profit has to be used to plant new crops.  After several minutes of play, the player begins to learn the benefit of diversifing.  It is an advantage to have a variety of crops while incorporating resilient crops they can count on and taking risk on less resilient crops that provide a higher price.  Livestock are wiped out by disease and theft, so once again it is a good idea to diversify the types of animals the player buys.  Investing in tools, such as shovels and plows and buildings the player increases the yield of their crops and livestock.  If you are able to build up a substantial amount of money, the player can invest in a well and crop insurance which has benefits during times of drought.  The player is also given opportunities for extra money by growing opium poppies, renting land to militia or allowing companies to rent land for wastes.

Meaningful Learning Assignment

This assignment used the Analyze level of Bloom's Taxonomy.  We were to compare and contrast the different models of Learning from technology and Learning Using technology.  Creating the Venn Diagram ensured we would look at how the two models related to one another and organize our data to reflect our thought.  The creation of the diagram could be seen as the level of Creation, but I feel Bloom meant for this level to create something new applying the knowledge learned.  We basically reflected on the information and organized it in a form to show our perspective.