Edutopia Video Reflections

These are Four Technology Integration videos that I watched on Edutopia.

“Teaching Teamwork Through Video Game Development”

            These groups of students are supposed to create an educational video game for a fifth grade class that they visited.  Before creating the game, the high school students went to the elementary school and found out as much information as they could on the students, such as what kind of music they like, what cartoon characters they like, etc.  During the process of making the video games, the fifth grade students actually came to the high school to play some of the demo games and to give feedback to the creators.  By doing this, it allows the high school students to go back and edit their games to the elementary students’ liking.  This was a great idea created by the high school teacher.  Mostly every kid plays video games, including high school students, so by creating something for younger kids that you yourself do is fun, but also educational.

“Academies Raise the Bar at a Comprehensive High School”

            Laguna Creek High School is located in Elk Grove, California.  It is a very diverse school.  One class focuses learning physics by launching rockets.  Instead of long and tedious lecture notes, the students tend to understand the material better by actually do the experiments.  The class creates their products using alternative energy production such as wind, solar, biofuels, geothermal and hydroelectric.  The high school partners with many green businesses that provide expertise and mentorships.  In the long run, it has been proven that academy students test better and are academically stronger.

“A Magnet School Attracts Students to Careers in Health”

            Bravo Medical Magnet High School is located in Los Angeles, California where 80% of the students take a bus to school.  Also, it is 40 minutes to school one way. Bravo High School is a medicine and health career themed school that has 85% free and reduced lunch.  One class uses technology for athletes and people who play video games to measure bio-potentionals, blood pressure, and vital signs.  Only three blocks away is the University of Southern California Medical Center.  Here, they actually work with college’s tools and conduct experiments with each other.  The majority of these students are considered “at risk” because of their academic level.  The school knows that not a lot of the students are going to go on and became doctors and nurses.

“Dea Flores Turns Video Games into a Winning Science Fair Project”

            Dea Flores is a student at Bravo Medical Magnet High School in Los Angeles, California.  She created an experiment for her physiology class using biofeedback equipment and video games.  She hypothesized that people who play video games more will have a lower stress level.  She measured students’ brainwaves by putting electrodes on the their forehead and one on their ear.  Every student played the same game on the same device.  Even though she really didn’t reach a solid conclusion, she won first place in the category that she was placed in.  She said that she also wanted to test athletes and their stress levels.