Artifacts

Computer Coding with Scratch

This artifact was designed to teach basic computer coding using a website called Scratch. The project is interactive where you can press an arrow key and have two soccer players kick a soccer ball to each other. Scratch is an effective tool and can be used educationally to not only teach basic computer coding skills, but also computational thinking. To do this project, I utilized this skill by having to think in an algorithmic way and use a systematic approach to create this little interactive scratch project. As someone who had never done computer coding before, this was challenging. I first needed to familiarize myself with Scratch and basic coding to put pieces together to make each part of the project do what it was supposed to, when it was supposed to. Ultimately, I was able to place myself right where my future high school students would be and break each step down to complete the task.

Simple Show Multimedia Project

Multimedia Assignment

This artifact was a multimedia project that consists of an informational video about how music affects the brain. This project required quite a bit of computational thinking to complete. I first needed to break down each slide/frame and decide what I needed to put in it. The organization of this project was broken down in a series of three parts, e.g., content selection, major points, and frame design. This type of project can be used well in a creative writing class for students to express their writing in a fun way through a creative video.

Design Prototype Artifact

This project was an instructional design project that was meant to present a thoughtful, professional instructional plan/activity that integrates computational thinking concepts and skills in the PreK-12 curriculum. I used FigJam AI to render this activity. For this artifact, I designed a unit lesson plan for 10th-grade English students centered on George Orwell’s Animal Farm. The overall goal of this lesson plan was to help students analyze and understand the novel’s political allegory while integrating aspects of computational thinking. In this unit, there are opportunities for students to use decomposition, pattern recognition, and algorithmic thinking to break down the essential aspects of the novel. This type of project can be used instructionally not only to incorporate methods of computational thinking but also to help students better understand how to apply this to their own community.

Concept Mapping Assignment

Concept Map Artifact

This artifact was created using Miro, which is an instructional design tool that’s used for collaboration and innovation. This assignment is a mind map that is meant to represent my technology journey of being digital. This tool can be used instructionally to incorporate elements of computational thinking in a lesson. This tool can also be used instructionally to help students brainstorm ideas and understand major concepts in lessons. This tool will help students explore these concepts further and allow them to collaborate with their peers. This type of mind mapping tool also allows teachers to see how students are understanding lessons.