u • ti • li • za • tion
"the act of using processes and resources for learning" (Seels & Richey, 1994, p. 46)
"the act of using processes and resources for learning" (Seels & Richey, 1994, p. 46)
As a teacher
At the switch to emergency remote learning, I introduced the faculty at my school to Google Classroom and FlipGrid, making video tutorials and in-service trainings for how to use these tools. Students and teachers transitioned to Google Classroom as the schoolwide standard because it made students’ organizational lives easier. Students enjoyed using FlipGrid to connect with each other while speaking Spanish during emergency online learning.
I also had to think about what instructional technology students had access to so that I assigned feasible projects. For example, if I wanted to assign a video project, did the students have a camera or phone to film with? Did they have a capable computer and editing software to edit the footage?
As a product developer
Utilizing Redshift software requires a laptop, desktop, or Chromebook, so if the students only have access to phones or tablets, they would not be able to use my instructional software. Therefore, diffusion of my software technology would be hindered by which schools/classrooms had capable hardware and bandwidth. Additionally, school firewalls would sometimes block required resources to run our games, which required extra coordination with IT personnel to remedy.
In the case of the swing dance course design workshop I created for the Learning Media Design class, I chose to use Google Drive products (Slides, Docs, Sheets) so that they could be collaboratively accessed between the stakeholder and I. The teacher in question only had access to a mobile device, so I knew anything we did would need to be able to comfortably fit on a small screen.
In the case of Unity game-development tutorials online, other game developers on YouTube use screen recording software and Unity to disseminate information and skills about specific game development techniques to me and others. The biggest problem I face is, when using tutorials online from other creators about game development, I can get overwhelmed at the breadth of information and resources available. My solution thus far as been to have a clearly defined, focused learning goal when looking up an online resource so as to avoid getting overwhelmed with information.
Recent utilization successes include using YouTube instructional content created by others in order to learn the skills required to develop games in Unity.
Because of the recent shift to developing Redshift games on my own, my approach to utilization currently centers around using instructional materials online developed by others to learn new game development skills. Whereas in the past I was more focused on choosing resources for others to use, now my utilization efforts are spent on choosing which resources made by others would be best suited towards my current learning needs.
