iRLO Reflection

     I really enjoyed making an iRLO. I had never heard of Scratch before this class, and although it was frustrating and difficult at first, I had a lot of fun making this project. I spent many, many hours and days making my iRLO and then re-making my iRLO. Even after watching the tutorial videos, it was difficult to figure out how to use each of the commands and how they go together to get the action you want. After some trial and error, I was able to get my final iRLO to be pretty much the way I wanted it. I would have liked to make the questions pop up randomly, but I couldn't figure out how to do that. I changed and practically re-made my entire project after we had our peers critique them. I received some very good comments and suggestions on my iRLO, and I used these comments to re-make my project. I had to change many things, such as making the project more interactive. I also did not realize that the green flag was such a powerful "start" command. At first, I did not realize that the green flag command could be used to set things back to the original, start position. After some more trial and error I was able to make my project reusable and interactive.

     I think that Scratch is a really cool tool. Designing this iRLO helped me to see that I definitely want to make more iRLOs, in the future, for my classes. I think that iRLOs are fun, engaging, and can be very educational. I really like the idea of using and designing iRLOs to make mathematics (and other classes) more fun for students. This project opened my eyes to see how "games" can be used effectively to educate my students on the material we are learning. Sharing my iRLO with my peers allowed me to get some extremely helpful feedback; it also allowed me to see errors in my iRLO that I had not seen before. Overall, I had a lot of fun designing my iRLO, despite the frustration, and I will continue to make more iRLOs as a teacher.