Blog Journal #9

I adore flipped classrooms! I first experienced one in my eighth grade Algebra 1 class. My teacher, Mr.Baugus, originally created screen videos of himself teaching the lecture by reading the material off the screen and demonstrating examples. However, during class time, he assigned homework for us to do either alone or in groups. This way, if we didn't understand the material he could provide hands on teaching in class to multiple students at once. This method proved highly effective and he received many awards for teaching and was eventually awarded a grant to develop personalized videos. The summer before my ninth grade I helped him record introductions, video examples, and skits for these videos. They are still in use today. Check out this Link online educational video from Khan Academy!

Open educational resources are freely accessible, downloadable resources for the general public. Open educational resources come in a variety of medias that are useful for teaching and learning. As exemplified in the podcast, MIT provides open courseware for anyone to access. Although these courses are free to the public, the do not provide credited coursework or hands on teacher learning. Additionally, educators around the world use the 40,000 open educational resources in the OER commons to exchange, distribute, revise, and remix open materials for their students. This eliminates the need to create original work for every assignment. As depicted in my link above, Khan Academy has a number of open projects, providing a plethora of downloadable information. Curriki is an online search engine that provides searchable open education resources.

I accumulated an abundance of skills during my last two powerpoint assignments. I love customizing and designing material, so I highly enjoyed implementing the use of slide master in my assignments. This function allows me to modify my slides and add originality and diversity to my presentations. Additionally, Rachel and I had a blast working with the recording function on powerpoint. It was easy to use, and very amusing to hear played back! Finally, using sections has allowed me to further organize my work and minimize time trying to find specific slides. In terms of improvement, I need to work on my skills in design (spacing, proximity, color coordinating). Often, my work does not come out as aesthetically pleasing as I'd like. Overall, I have really enjoyed these past two powerpoint assignments. (Rachel Vatter's blogpost will contain two screenshots of our work. My computer does not recognize powerpoint format)