Creating a Container Garden Design Document
The Dick and Carey Instructional Design Model
Georne' is a teacher at Tyler's Journey Daycare located near the Indianapolis State Fairgrounds. She reached out to me to help her create a container garden. Having prior experience with writing and implementing gardening grants, I created a design document using the Dick and Carey model to create a container garden and to train staff about teaching about plants and maintaining a garden.
Staff training to teach preschoolers about gardening.
Factors Affecting Praise as a Motivator
A Literature Review
Praise is considered an essential practice in any classroom. However, not all praise is equal. There are many factors that affect the effectiveness of praise. The factors explored in this literature review address: type of classroom (regular ed or special ed), age, gender, and culture.
Gamification
Letter Seeds
This game was created in Stencyl, a game development program, for my class about gamification. It is a game about creating words and is aimed at K-3rd grade.
Screenshot from Finding Home Game Pitch video.
Screenshot of the objectives page from the Finding Home Game Pitch video.
Small Scale Design Experience
Finding Home
Finding Home is based on a prompt about an instructor, Bob Reckowsky, who wanted his students to be engaged in their history class. I created a game about the Japanese internment camp experience in Manzanar. The game starts with our protagonist, Ai Sato, saying goodbye to her best friend, Betty, because Ai's family is forced into an internment camp. The contrast between their two worlds will be reflected in the letters that the girls send to each other. Ai's family was allowed to carry one personal item into the camp. Ai's father brought seeds from his garden, Ai's mother brought her koto (a stringed instrument), and Ai brought her baseball glove. Using these three items, I created three overarching goals with many small tasks needed to be completed to reach each goal. I focused on gardening, the performing arts, and baseball since these three things were positive experiences that many internees wrote about to balance the tragic historical events that will also be discussed in the game.
Case Studies
We learned about three distinct theories of learning and were asked to create case studies for each theory. I used my experience when I worked in tech company that utilizes Agile and Scrum methodologies for Behaviorism and my experience as an elementary school teacher for cognitive load theory and constructivism.