One of the first things that I did in the program involved finding a web host and using Adobe Dreamweaver to begin coding a website.  Coding in html is not something that I had ever done before.  Eventually the process took me intro another direction as I needed to switch to the inhouse website editor provided by my web host.  This move helped to make this website look more professional and polished than I was able to do by hand coding.
The process through which I learned coding was a good exercise in how to find information on the internet to create something I've designed.  Having never done anything like that before it was satisfying when it finally worked.  My crummy coding became overly messy and I decided to start over and use the website builder that came with my web host instead of continuing.  Had I had another person to look at my coding and give me suggestions on how to clean it up I might have continued.  The process of building it was useful to show how much technology can be a stumbling block for some people and that there are sometimes easier options available to us that we need to consider when designing. 

In ETEC 6550 I used SmartSparrow to create an adaptive learning review lesson for AP US History students.  It reviews one part of a Key Concept regarding life before the arrival of the European explorers.  The lesson includes remediation when the student gets an answer incorrect to questions that are directly related to the Key Concepts that College Board has created.  The Key Concepts are the basis of which College Board creates all questions that are on the AP US History exam.  The last portion involves practice of short answer questions based on the same Key Concept. 
Below are a series of pictures of some of the things I included in my Smart Sparrow adaptive learning project.  The first picture is the title screen.  The second picture is the learning objectives as spelled out by College Board.  The third screenshot is the College Board created video lecture that illustrated this particular key concept.  The fourth picture is a practice of terms associated with particular Native American Groups.  The fifth is a hotspot map where the students need to identify where four Native American groups were found.  The sixth is an example of a multiple choice question.  The seventh is an example of the remediation that students will receive if they get a multiple choice question wrong which is a different video on that same key concept.  And the eighth screenshot is the short answer essay practice the students get at the end of the review lesson. 
Adaptive learning I believe is a great tool for review of material.  I  think that the best way to utilize the power of adaptive learning is to create review lessons for high stakes tests such as the Advanced Placement test.  The reason that I think this technology is better suited to review rather than learning the lessons the first time is because the one thing that adaptive technologies lack is the interaction of students with each other.  They work great for learner-content interaction but falter when it comes to interacting with other learners.  Using adaptive learning platforms like Smart Sparrow to review will individualize the review for the student and give them many opportunities to practice what they've already learned without burning them out on the content. 

Technology isn't the end result.  Using technologies as an end is not only wrong headed it is difficult to implement.  Technology should only be considered the tool with which good educational design is implemented.  When you start with the technology and try to form the lesson around it the lesson is there benefitting the technology instead of it benefitting the students.  The technology itself is only the means.  The learning objective has the be the ends.