Tech Play - Creativity Tools

The creative tools that I explored were: Google Drive (Docs), Peach Photo, and JeopardyLabs.

Google Drive (Docs) is a very resourceful tool for students because of the capability of using Microsoft Office programs like Word, Excel, Power Point and Drawing (Paint) all online. There is another tool that I liked to most and that I think students could use to create and share forms among their peers. The Forms tool allows you to create an online website that can be in a form of a quiz or test and it allows the creator to mix up the question styles of multiple choice, fill in the blank or an essay type format. This allows students to collaborate and build specific forms that can best suit them and practice in areas that they maybe weak in. It keeps a track record in an Excel format that helps the students identify what questions are being missed. This is great for student-centered learning and allows the students to be responsible in their own learning.

I chose Peach Photo as a tool to explore because I was determined to see how this could be something the students could use to be creative but yet learn from it. You would think that a tool that just uses photo would be one-dimensional but after playing around with it for a while I was able to see the affordance and what great benefit it could have on the students learning. Yes, it is just a website that does a slide show of pictures that you upload but you can also add questions to the pictures on a timed interval for you to answer them. Students could take pictures that they can relate to the learning objective and create a slide show that is unique to them and something that they will remember. How often have we heard, “A picture tells a thousand words” and with this tool is allows the pictures to tell the students information they need to know from what they create.  This again allows the students to have a choice in how they learn and promote an environment that is centered towards them.

JeopardyLabs speaks for it self in the name alone and there are so many students that enjoy games to help them learn. The basic to this tool is to create you own game with the questions and answers that you input into the program. Just like the real game the students can accumulate points with the correct answers that they give and can play by themselves, with their family or along with peers. This tool is fun and will keep the students interested in learning. The wide range of subjects that can be used with this program is great and the students could actually submit the games to their teacher for him/her to use for a class. I really enjoyed exploring this tool and had fun with it myself on creating a game with 8^th grade Pre-Algebra problems.

Out of the three tools that I've explore I choose to reflect more on the JeopardyLabs because of its ease of use but also that it is very versatile to with any core subject students want to use it with. The subject I will focus on with this tool will be math mainly because of the back ground I have with it. This tool fits perfectly within the TPACK model because it is a technology that is user friendly, the content that is used within math is as straight forward as you can get with any other subject that is out there and the pedagogy behind this tool with the use of Pre-Algebra yields a result that the student can learn from through its formative assessment. Math modules that are aligned with TEKS can be easily adapted to this tool and due to the sense that Jeopardy is recognized as a game the students would find more interest in learning to receive points as well as rewards that their teacher could provide to them. It’s just like any career that you have, when you’re enjoying and having fun at work it doesn't seem like work at all and that goes the same with learning.

For every task there is a tool out there that can ensure productivity but it’s only when you know about the correct tools to use that can make the task easier with a higher quality of efficiency that satisfies both creator and consumer. As you see with most things in this world there are always competitors and different avenues you can choose among a variety tools but it’s only the efficient tools that are relied upon and offer the best benefit for the task.