Looking Ahead: Dreams Never End

by Yongbo Chen

In a journey, we will never go far if our eyes always focus on the things we pass by. Looking back will reflect what we have done and understand more about our current situation. And Looking ahead will give us a direction where we want to go.

As a person born in a small and poor village of China, my environment could not satisfy my desire for knowledge. Therefore, to know more about this world was a dream that led me to the world outside my hometown. It had been a long way for me to US. When I was in high school wanted to be an architect - to build, nevertheless, I chose Software Engineering in my college after the first contact with computer, via which I could build more than buildings and nurture my dreams.. During my undergraduate study, I acquired comprehensive knowledge of software engineering. The most important, I learned how to learn and use new technologies. In the meanwhile, a new field of educational games brought me to a new world of integrating playing and learning. I became an educational game developer and earned the chance of working at MSU till now. The more I have been working on educational games and software, the more I feel confident with my new dream to integrate technology and education, which pushed my applying for the MAET program to extend my theoretical knowledge for the future. Now I am nearing the end of my master’s degree, but life and learning continue beyond the school. Dreams never end, nor the learning. In the two fields I have been working on, how can I keep learning and growing as an technology professional?

Conclusion

As a dreamer, my dreams never end as well as my learning never ends as a learner. What we learned in MAET program is just a good start that leads us to the right direction. We all have a long journey ahead. Lifelong learning takes place throughout life and in a range of situations that can support us all the time. The knowledge we have learned and will be learned in the future will help us to eliminate the roadblocks on the way only when and where we know how to apply them. To do is the only way that we can achieve our dreams.

Reference:

Cuban, L. (2010). Confusing technology integration with instructional reform.

Looking Ahead PDF

Educational Games

This is the age of new technologies. Educational game is one of the new cool things introduced to schools for teaching and learning. Many people agree with that video games are engaging, but may not believe they are effective in teaching and learning because of the argument between “play“ and “learn”. Besides MAET program, I also finished a certificate program of Serious Game Design, in which I learned a lot of principles that are being used by brilliant game designers in game development and teachers in teaching at school. Good educational games that follow those principles can organize learning in a deep and effective way to make people learn and enjoy learning by playing games. To educational game developers, it’s always one of the most difficult problems to make a educational game fun with learning content and purpose well-delivered. Therefore, continuing mastery of more theoretical knowledge of serious game development and education will be an important part of my future learning plan. Knowledge is useful only when it’s put to practice, so using the knowledge I learn about educational game development is an important part of my future working plan. I am glad I know some serious game developers and professionals via my serious game class, who will be a big support in my professional learning network. I always dream of learning can be as easy as what happened in the movie, The Matrix, that you could just take a nap and learn something in the process, then you would yell “I know Kung Fu” after you waked up. It may not be an easy goal, but at least I hope the learning can be as interesting as playing video games.

Development and Support of Educational Technology

Another part of my future is to develop new educational technologies and to provide technical support to educators and learners. As Punya Mishra mentioned in one MAET class, almost everything that is artificial -- the clothes we wear, the cars we drive -- is technology, whether low or high technology. Technology is being used in our daily life, and the same applies for educators and learners. We live in the age of information explosion that everyone should try hard to not be lost and drowned, but we have to admit that the classroom has not changed as much or as fast as the world outside schools.Learning is never an individual task as well as teaching today can’t be practiced in isolation any more. I believe most educators want to bring and utilize more technologies to the classroom. Using technology for educational purposes, however, is not simple, for educators nor is it for experts with technology. Educators most likely already know what they want to accomplish with the use of technology, so when they seek technology, they are seeking a new way to use it more than a technology itself. Through my experience in MAET program, I have gained knowledge of what technologies educators are using and what kind of issues they may encounter in teaching, so I asked myself what role a technology person should play in education to make his professional technical knowledge public and communal. One of the problems of why teachers end up not using and benefiting from technology as much as they’d like to is confusing technology integration with instructional reform (Cuban L, 2010). However, from my experience I believe that the problem does not lie with the teachers, but with the support from technology experts. Technology experts who are working with educators or in education field should gain the knowledge such as what’s taught by MAET program, to have a better understanding of what they are able to provide for the teachers and students as well as to play the role of repurposing technologies and developing new technologies for educators based on educators’ and learners’ perspective. Learning more about what is really happening in classrooms has brought my desire to offer higher quality work and services by combining the technological and educational knowledge.