Open Educational Resource

Starting roughly ten years ago, OER has grown significantly. The purpose for this Open Educational Resource is to provide students and teachers/professors for resources to help with growth within education. Text books, games, supplies, and other materials used cost loads. The OER commons provide trainings for teachers, links to help guide lessons, and also has a support team that allows for custom tools. This is very beneficial to teachers who are willing to take a risk with trying something new to help students learn more, all the while saving money. Within the educational system, budgets are getting cut everywhere, which effects students' learning. When I navigated through the website a little bit, there were some parts of the site I found intriguing. I found a textbook resource for advanced algebra II that provided information on how to complete an operation such as radicals, exponents, and functions. Another thing that I found interesting was the use of simple objects, such as vinegar, baking soda, and a bottle to create a lesson. Adapted from a video from Zoom, students learn how to use these ingredients to create a rocket.

From the website infoKit, it provides information for higher education. Through this, professors and students have the ability to focus on learning the material. Within college, students struggle and have more than one thing on their minds. Personally, I always worry about not having the ability to purchase my books. With these resources, students have the ability to look at books and other items for free or at lower costs. Not only is cost a factor in the learning of students but so are the types of way students learn. Everyone learns differently. While some students can go to a class once and study the notes posted online or one needs to read the whole book and go to class just to make it by, this website from Slideshare provides videos and other methods of showing different topics of information. As mentioned, students learn differently, and these sites are a good way for each person to individualize their education. Through the Hewlett foundation's website, everyone has the ability to provide monetary donations, play an active role in spreading the word of O.E.R. and this site also provides deeper explanation of what Open Educational Resources are. It also provides information how it can effect the world's education.

Through O.E.R., students and teachers have the ability to focus more on the material rather than how to get the resources or tools to provide this information. Educational institutions have great costs which effect students and teachers. If this was limited, students would learn more and professors would have a more enjoyable time going through the material.

Flipped learning

In this video, it explains the method of Flipped learning. It allowed for a viewer to see how the school day is run and explains that students are doing different activities and projects within the classroom while they are learning at their own pace. Flip learning allows for the growth and the development of the children at a holistic approach. Because of this, these children are able to grow to be an overall person. From Flippedlearning.org, the approach allows children to access information faster and more efficiently. This academic sucess causes the children to think postively of themselves and their academics. In eschool news it explains that there are misconceptions about this method. The reason for this is the misconeptions of flipped learning. Many seem to believe that Flipped learning is just a recording of a lesson. However, even though there are many videos used during the lessons, these videos are only, on average, 8-12 minutes long. Videos are also given as homework, but not for every homework assignment. This causes the students to start asking questions and form hypothesees on their own. Like traditional classrooms, there is still the need for the basic tools in the classroom, such as hands-on-activities and texts.

From an article on the University of Wisconsin-Madison website, students are working with innovative technology which makes lessons and other objectives easier and more efficiently. However, because of the need for certain technologies, students do a lot of work outside the classroom with less time to be with the professor, face to face. Flipped learning in colleges also allow for more productivity with classroom numbers being at a higher number compared to others. 

If more schools were to adopt the Flipped learning there would be a lot less drop out rates than there currently are. From another source off flipped learning, there is clear data from a school that has changed their entire school to the flip method. There is a huge drop in failure rates in the 9th grade that was looked upon. Some of these drops are close to 31% better than two years prior. Through this data and testimony to this curriculum, it seems that the future of education is going to turn to this to improve scores and dropout rates. I believe after reading many of the positives and few negatives, it seems that teachers will have to become more qualified and able to multitask, meaning they are going to have to pay attention to all aspects of the classroom. This is a good thing because students and the teachers will be held to a higher standard.

Some aspects have been greatly looked at, but one part that I don't think has been really looked at was the history and the idea behind it from the creators. It started in a small rural town and realized there was an issue with students leaving classes because of sports and other events. Through this brief education site, it provides a detialed explanation of how this platform began.

Since learning about this new form of education, it makes me wonder how my classroom is going to be when I become a teacher. Am I going to be recording myself a lot? Who would I be able to go to for help? This learning network is a forum of teachers presenting new and different ideas to help others solve a problem they are experiencing or help working on current lessons.

Experiencing Group

When first being told that we would have to write a paper and create a presentation in groups, I was not thrilled. Usually I am the type of person who would rather work on things like that by myself, and when I need help, I ask my own sources. However, when choosing our group members, and beginning to talk about our plan of action, I started to feel a little better. During the essay part, we all contributed equally, completing the assignment in a timely manner. It seemed to be easier for us because we had a set plan and we were all following it through. It made it easier for us because we all knew what section of the body paragraph we had to work on. Usually I do not like working in groups and I deal with it when we are forced. However, this group made me realize that not all group projects are terrible. It is nice every once in a while to get a group that cares, has the same work ethic, and is willing to put the time in to get the product completed.When figuring out the presentation part, we all slacked, slightly. It was very hard for us to figure out when, where, and how to complete this presentation. We decided to use Prezi.com as our chosen media for the presentation after creating a presentation through google docs. It was difficult to use at first becasue it was a new website for us, but after spending some time together as a group working on it, we have gotten it completed and it looks great.

Here is the wordle image I have made from my last post!

PowerPoint (Terrific)

When first getting assigned this project, I was not very thrilled. I was not a huge fan of PowerPoint and did not know how to use many of the features. However, after having the objective to create an interesting lesson through the use of PowerPoint, I have realized it is not as hard as it may seem. When going through the requirements, I was very overwhelmed and did not think I would be able to create a lesson through PowerPoint on the material that I have chosen to "teach." I put that in quotations because I really wasn't teaching...yet. When getting this assignment, I racked my brain on what I wanted to present. It hit me after a while; teaching how to draw letters. Learning how to read and write is a very important skill so I constructed a PowerPoint with the first four letters to jump start the "children" that would be viewing this presentation. Some of the things that I have included in the presentation were many pictures being matched up with the letters, two videos (one being a video that allows the children to hear how the letters are said) and pictures of a diagram that shows the children how to draw the letters. The video that is embedded into the PowerPoint is called Phonics song 2 and I think it is a great way for young children to hear the real pronunciation of a letter. As the presentation continues through, I included slides with the diagram of how to draw the letter and a space for a child to be able to practice writing it. Of course, this feature would only be useful if there is a smart board.

After working long and hard on the product, it turned out to allow me to actively involve all the children and still be educating them without many words. After everything was said and done, it would be a great feeling to be able to present to a peer and they can give me feed back, however, I missed class due to illness and I sorely regret not being there. Other than that, I have learned that PowerPoint is not as bad as what I thought it was. Another thing that helped me out with embedding a video into my PowerPoint was the use of a program called iskysoft. I was getting very frustrated with trying to embed the video from youtube, so I downloaded this. Not only did this help me fill in my requirements, but I also now can use it to download videos to my computer from youtube!

Two more for the blog roll

No Time for Flash Cards is a blog that interests me because I love crafting. Being in a fraternity, I have done many crafts such as making pillows and small trinkets for sorotities just to name a few. Creating something with my bare hands is something that I absolutely love to do and it gives me pleasure to be able to produce a product and people complimenting me about it. Because I like to be crafty, the possibilities are endless meaning when I become a teacher a lot of items used within the classroom can be created at a low cost. This blog posts many ideas of different projects that can be educational and fun for the children; not to mention it would be fun for me as well!

Another thing that I find iteresting is learning about history. I love the idea of where we came from, and learning the certain events that has happened to create the world we live in now. During my high school career, I decided to take my first AP history course (which turned out to be the hardest AP history class in the school.) The course I took was European History and it was interesting to learn the things I did and to follow some of the monarchies. One of the things I found most intriguing were the views on women. Here is a blog about the women during the renaissance. History Harlequin: Bite-sized Pieces of History talked a little bit about women and their standing within society and analyzed how dowries worked. To me, this is utterly insane how life used to be during the renaisance and how poorly women were concieved. I believe that the study of European history is a good way to understand how the alliances and natural born enemies between countries developed and understand why our lives are the way they are now. This blog is just a glimpse in the history of Europe, but it is a good start to look into it even more.



My beliefs about technology and learning

The use of technology is a wonderful thing, but there are also many issues that comes along with it. Having technology is a useful tool, but should not be taken advantage of it. By this, I believe that it should be used as a tool and a tool only. I have had classes before that have been strictly technology based and I personally did not like it. I would still prefer the teacher being the one to present the information, lecture/teach it, and help students through the work that has been assigned. I do, however, believe that technology can help refine skills and make things easier on the student. When I stated that it shouldn't be taken advantage of, the class should be able to still learn from the teacher,  not the computer. Using technology also comes with it's issues. One being losing information, certain videos or pictures not loading, documents, and powerpoints not loading just to name a few. I have dealt with these issues personally and also in the classroom and sometimes the technology just does not work, hindering the learning process. I do think technology is a good idea but the teacher must be prepared before hand and also have a back up plan if things do not work out accordingly.