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.