Author Archives: John Houwers

I feel this close to the end! I had my EdTech 592 Portfolio submitted to the TaskStream this week for final review. While graduation will be done virtually this year, I’m excited to know that it’s basically a formality at this point. As for my Maker journey, it’s coming to an end for this class,Continue reading “Week 15 Journal”

This week has been quiet on the Maker front. With everything happening with the emergency distance learning in my district, I had gotten a little behind on my Portfolio. And not just the Maker Portfolio that was the goal for this course. This is my final class in the Master’s of Educational Technology program, soContinue reading “Week 14 Journal”

I was happy to have been given the suggestion to make all the Makey Makey projects related a few week back. That made the Instructional Unit project for this week much easier. The best part of the week was being able to see how easy it was to incorporate these Maker projects into a normalContinue reading “Week 13 Journal”

Tutorials are important in adding to the comfort level of new users of any digital device. While some people are willing to just jump in feet first and see what happens, many are not so confident. The creation of tutorials adds support for those learners that are a little less confident things will work out.Continue reading “Week 12 Journal”

Week 10 was a challenge. The development of a third Makey Makey project wasn’t the issue. Instead, I was working non-stop preparing my district for emergency distance learning. As the only person in our district technology department with a teaching degree and experience, I was relied heavily upon to help the teachers in the fiveContinue reading “Week 10 Journal”

This week I became more comfortable with the Makey Makey. My initial impression about the device changed somewhat when I learned that you can remap the device. You don’t need to keep using the arrow keys, space and enter for everything! For my simulation project, I had three vehicles traveling on the same stretch ofContinue reading “Week 9 Journal”

This week was my first experience with the Makey Makey. I struggled to get it to work at first, which was slightly frustrating. One of the causes of my frustration was from my current view of the device. It essentially lets you change the input device. While the device is neat, I’m struggling to seeContinue reading “Week 8 Journal”

This week I learned to use loops and repeat while creating simulations. Even though the simulations were mostly modifications from programs that were already created, it was interesting to see how the “forever” loops were used to repeat commands. Being a math teacher, I found the repetitions through having a condition met to be veryContinue reading “Week 7 Journal”

This week was a chance to work with conditionals, simple if-then statements and if-then-else. I really enjoyed the challenge of creating a simulation. While working through the projects this week, I was challenged with with keeping items from repeating. The “not” command was what I learned would do the trick for me. I also learnedContinue reading “Week 6 Maker Journal”

This week was working with variables. As a former math teacher, I felt very comfortable with this topic. I did become frustrated with some of the limitations with the mathematical functions. I wanted to make things cleaner, keeping the slope in fraction form, for example. I did enjoy learning about how lists work in Scratch.Continue reading “Maker Journal – Week 5”