I was pretty exhausted this lecture, so I feel like I couldn’t participate as much as I would have been able to otherwise. I was glad that we got the chance to discuss some of the concepts surrounding technology in education and the conversations seemed fairly productive. There were a lot of really useful resources in the Mural, and it was nice to get the chance to check out a few of them as a class. I found it a bit hard to stay focused and engaged when we were just discussing different resources, their principles, and what they can be used for. Going into more depth with them could be an easier way to make me think of applications for them. I think checking them out as a class or even individually at the computers would be a really good activity and allow people some time to experiment with the programs and see their applications. That being said, I definitely have a mental list of things I want to experiment with now. The University of Colorado PhET simulations are especially interesting to me. They seem like they’d be really useful in a science classroom as either resources or mentor texts for students interested in creating a learning tool as an assignment of some kind. MURAL seemed really useful, but I’m kind of hoping they update it a bit before I’d use it in a classroom. There is no mobile site for it and trying to access digital whiteboards that way just leads to a page prompting you to download the app. Said app isn’t actually all that useful either. It’s “view-only” which means that people using their mobile devices won’t be able to do anything but watch other people collaborate on the whiteboard. In the context of an in-person classroom this would be redundant as the board would likely be projected and displayed in the class anyways. It still seems like a useful tool to use in a classroom but there might be alternatives. I’ll definitely keep my eye on it and see if they improve mobile support