AHefner : My Classroom

MY CLASSROOM : Education Initiatives

My Classroom

For the past 3 years, I have taught the regular Technology Applications. I am very excited about the opportunity to focus on more advanced projects in video game development, movie production, and robotics this year. In addition to Technology, I will teach a semester of Outdoor Education to the same students. We will be using the Project Wild curriculum provided by Texas Parks and Wildlife, as well as that which I have written for outdoor camping, fishing, and orienteering skills. These are my two favorite hobbies, so I am fortunate to be able to enjoy them myself while passing them on to others.

TCEA Student Contest Participation & Appointment to Select Planning Committee

>2005 Student Contest Success!! DMS placed 2nd in the State for Overall Number of Wins with 11 top winners! READ MORE!!

>Student Computer Arts Competition Planning Committee
Recently, I was selected as one of seven educators across the state to serve on the TCEA Student Competition Planning Committee On this committee, I have assisted in the redevelopment of the rules, procedures and logistics for the 2005 event. It is a great honor to serve, as my students have participated in this competition for the past 3 years. Last February, we had many successful wins. The opporunity to help accelerate learning in technology has been very rewarding.

Life Skills Game Development

Recently, I began a collaboration project with some of my advanced gaming students and the Life Skills teacher at a nearby high school to develop learning and entertainment games for children with limited mobility or dexterity. The games will be modified to respond to the Intellitools Intellikeys touch pad used in most Life Skills programs and serve children who are unable to use a regular keyboard and are limited to a one or two switch communication system. This will be a year-long pilot program in which our ultimate goal is to provide a product for other teachers to use and create new games as needed that work with Intellitools. Currently, the available games are overpriced and scarce for teens with disabilities. We are targeting an audience of teens with muscular dystrophy or similar disabilities who have had enough of Reader Rabbit! Unfortunately, many software publishers think a 15 year-old MD child is still intellectually in 3rd grade...

Video Game Programming

This year will be our third year to offer video game development in class and after school. It has been a successful curriculum for our school in many ways. The lessons integrate math and science concepts with programming, while engaging the students in creating their own video games. They love it! Currently, I am working on more specific math and physics integrated lessons. I have also hosted workshops for other teachers interested starting a video gaming program at their school. This has become a new passion of mine after seeing the improvement in math scores of my gaming students.

Future Cities Simulations Coach

For the first time, our school will participate in the Future City Competition and I am coaching a team of students for the contest before and after school. This exciting opportunity for our students to use SimCity software, design and build their city, select a section to fabricate a scale model from, and present their project before the judges. They will document their design process from beginning to end, successes and failures of their Sim choices, and analyze the data gathered from their project city. This initiative is a collaborative project with our math, science, and technology teachers and has grown from 6 students to 29 in two weeks! It will be an exciting adventure!

MOODLE Web-Based Instruction- http://www.ahefner.com/moodle

>Campus Forum Pilot Program
In an effort to create a campus-wide online community, I have developed a Moodle community and am hosting it on my server. Moodle is a free PERL based online community package that can be downloaded and installed to a web server. It contains modules for creating lessons, journals, tests, chats, forums, calendars, and much more for teachers to develop an online presence. It is currently being tested by three DMS teachers for delivering Technology curriculum, assignments, grades, and news. If all goes well, we will transfer it to the local intranet and make it an available resource for all teachers on our campus. So far, so good!

NECC Convention Presentations

>National Educational Computer Conference
In June 2004, I was honored to be asked to present my Online Chess Communities Curriculum at the national convention. It was an exciting opportunity to share my ideas and learn about others. My presentation was categorized in the "Global Gallery" with other presentations that integrated technology and global learning or learning abroad with classroom curriculum. The lessons utilize a gloabal chess community site to teach communication methods, Internet safety and nettiquette, while learning to play chess with people across the globe.