Author Archives: elisecraig

The maker movement values human ingenuity, whereby students create and design products whilst engaging with the design process and has also resurrected constructionism within education (Blikstein, 2013). Instead of sitting and listening to information, students have the opportunity to engage in hands-on learning experiences where creativity is fostered alongside higher-order, design and computational thinking capabilitiesContinue reading “The Maker Movement and the rise of Constructionism”

Gaming and education Games are a method of creative release depending on the way they are used. I say this because there are many negative opinions about gaming which have impacted its use in education (Gee, 2005). However, by integrating digital and non-digital teaching strategies, we remove the dichotomy between the two and create anContinue reading “Is there more to gaming than we think?”

Virtual Reality (VR) has been around for decades, but has only recently emerged into classrooms. Southgate (2018) defines VR as an immersive 3D computer-generated world which can be a highly imaginative or realistic simulation. VR has different environments – one being on a desktop and the other through a wearable headset such as Google CardboardContinue reading “Virtual Reality and its uses in Education”

Many people’s experience with Augmented Reality (AR), began with Pokémon Go in 2016. It allowed players to immerse themselves into the Pokémon world through AR and Virtual Reality (VR). From this, many more technologies of the same nature began to be developed and produced and have started to slowly take over the education scene. StudentsContinue reading “Augmented Reality and its uses within Education”

Robotics is known for its presence in numerous fields of humanity such as medicine and manufacturing. However, over the years, robotics has slowly emerged into the education system and has undoubtedly transformed traditional pedagogical approaches. Robotics has the potential to foster creativity in students as they engage in higher-order thinking to generate and design innovativelyContinue reading “Robotics in the Classroom”

Computational Thinking (CT) has been recently regarded as a critical skill in modern education, as a means of adapting to the future (Hsu, Chang, Hung, 2018). As defined by New South Wales Education Standards (2017), CT is the thought processes used when formulating a problem and finding its solutions. Not only does CT regard theContinue reading “Micro:bit and Computational Thinking”

Scratch is a coding technology wherein design thinking is used to create interactive stories, games, and animations (“Scratch – About”, 2020). Design thinking is the ability to complete a course of actions aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. Scratch can be used as an engaging cross-curricular activity in most subject areas, and draws onContinue reading “Design Thinking within Education”

Emerging technologies have the ability to foster creativity within students. There is a wide variety of educational technologies which are capable of fostering creativity however, there are some that do not (Henriksen, Mishra & Fisser, 2016). I believe technology should be applied alongside teacher creativity, because without teacher creativity, students would not be able toContinue reading “Emerging Technology in the Classroom.”