From the desk of Mr. Walters

One of the projects students may choose in my CIT 7 & 8 classes is Sustainable Design. The Goal: Design and advertise a home for a 4-person family living in the US using (around 3,000 sq. feet max) at least one Sustainable Architecture principle or Green Energy Source. As a part of the project, students will demonstrate a variety of technology fluency skills in the context of completing the following components: Research (tagged to your student Diigo account and our class Diigo group). Scale Floor Plan drawings (rendered in Google Sketchup or MS Visio) Student Choice 1: Promotional Materials Interior design Moodboards Landscape Design Plan Elevation Renderings in Sketchup Pecha-Kucha presentation of project as endcap (last week of class). In addition, students will regularly participate on an online community on Edmodo that includes multiple schools across & outside of the country. One of the challenges of providing a choice of complex projects in which stud...

Okay, So I feel like I'm always ranting.  I go forever without posting, and then something annoys me, and I go off. I'm really sorry about that... really... I am.  Sometime soon, I'll write a non-ranting post.  Today, however, the Juvinalian Muse is upon me. The Quest for Authentic Instruction & Fluency Building In designing my current curriculum for CIT, I was heavily influenced by Cool Cat's post, " Get Past Teaching Apps: Build and Use a Student Technology Toolbelt ".  I am particularly interested in building my students' technology fluency, which is defined in Cool Cat's post as: the ability to determine and use the appropriate technology tool(s) for the task at hand in a manner that allows seamless transfer of created objects and documents to flow easily between the selected tools without outside intervention. I also want students to be able to think critically and solve problems within a computing environment.  I focus quite a bit on teaching...