Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources or OERs are free or extemely low cost online educational materials,  and according to 7 Things You Should Know about... Open Educational Resources these include textbooks, games, quizzes, and basically any other education related material. OERs are provided by universities, professionals, and publishers. Open Educational Resources are available to everyone. They can be used by educators to help teach a class or by an individual as a refresher or just for personal interest.

I searched for some OERs that would be beneficial to me both as a student and as a future elementary educator. OER Commons was helpful and provided OERs both for the primary grades and the post secondary level. The homepage included a list of all the different subjects, grade levels and also the type (ie: lesson plans, sllyabi, games, textbooks, etc.) of open educational resources that one could search for on the site. This source, Internet Archive, was more geared to to secondary advanced or post secondary courses. It inlcuded course ware for physics, calculus and higher level history and government courses. This would be helpful to those who sometime struggle with math or science and need extra practice or explanations, which would include myself. YouTube also has many videos for the primary grades that explain many different concepts that would be helpful to teachers of the elementary students.

I have discovered some other helpful sources explaining Open Educational Resources, here they are:

The OERS- Open Educational Resources This is a YouTube video explaining open educational resources and what they are.
40 Open Educational Resources You Should Know About This site includes many resources for children or elementary school educators.
Classroom Aid An extensive list, mostly of different sites that offer free online textbooks for all levels of education.

Teaching Channel

Teaching Channel is an online video archive of ideas and lessons from many different educators from the elementary and secondary levels.

Check out this video I found on Teaching Channel. (I couldn't figure out how to embed the video so I just used a hyperlink) This elementary school teacher uses technology to teach a math lesson. I think she does a really nice job keeping the children engaged.

Flipped Learning

According to Concordia University "It’s called the “flipped classroom” because what was formerly class work or lectures has become online video presentations which students view outside of class; and what was formerly “homework” is now classroom interaction with the teacher and students". Students are to watch the lectures at home and then come to school ready to utilize what they have learned to complete activities and work. The video below gives a good overview of the basics of flipped learning and explains in detail flipped learning, which helped me to understand it a little better.

This approach to learning, like everything else comes with both pros and cons. According to Amanda King, the pros of flipped learning include: allowing students to learn at a pace that is suitable for them, the videos can be made especially for their specific needs, students are less reliant on the teacher and therefore are able to help their peers, and because students can work at their own pace they no longer feel "dumb" when it takes them multiple times to understand a concept. The cons of flipped learning include: student negligence (students failing to watch the videos altogether), and there is a decreased amount of interaction between the students and teacher. Edutopia also states that there are many students who do not have internet access at home and cannot watch the videos.

 

I believe that if students are responsible and take the initiative to watch the video at that flipped learning can or could be very helpful and useful to education. In this age of education standards, more and more is added to the list of concepts students must learn in each grade. I believe that flipped learning would make teaching each of the many concepts more doable in one school year because there would be more time inside the classroom for the students to explore and really know each concept. In the video above, it shows different teacher's lectures or lessons using flipped learning. I thought it was interesting because each teacher had a different approach and many differnt elements were incorporated into all of their lessons. Many of them catered to the many learning styles and interests of students. There were some things in the videos that could be put in the videos but could be done in an actual classroom, which I find would be helpful to the students.

There are many websites out there that explain flipped learning and there are even websites that have videos of lessons or lectures. Some of these include Khan Academy, Wired @ Heart, and Flipped Learning.

Experiencing Group

I worked with three other students for our Sedu 183 research project. We researched the changes in education from the 18th century to the 21st century. We split the the topic up so that each member researched one century. To record our research and ideas we used Google Docs. Google Docs is similar to microsoft word but it is online and more than one person can see the document. When one member of the document changes something or adds to the document every other member can see this change being made. Google Docs was a very helpful tool for this kind of project because it was so easy to see what our group members were working on and what kind of information they were finding. We then could use this information to assist in finding additional information for our research paper.

After we had researched our topic we had to present our findings. We chose to use Prezi, an online presentation creator. Prezi is sort of like powerpoint but is more like a timeline. The template we chose was a path with footsteps going through it. It also had big text bubbles throughout the path to put pictures or text in. We used these bubbles to place pictures in our presentation of education in

Powerpoint (Almost Terrific)

For our powerpoint project we had to choose a grade, subject, and topic. I choose first grade reading comprehension. From this category I then chose the topic "making inferences and drawing conclusions citing evidence from the text to support answers".

I used to powerpoint to conclude my "pretend" lesson. I created a game which asked a specific inference question about the provided text. I included narration since I was working with first graders and some of the wording was lengthy at times. I also included a hyperlink to another similar game at the very end of my powerpoint that my students could also play.

To begin with I felt confused about this project and really did not think that I understood the  guidelines but after more explanation and actually working on creating my powerpoint, it was more clear as to what was expected. Overall, I thought my powerpoint turned out well but there were some issues when I went to present it. My narration did not work on the computer I used in class and some of the hyperlinks were dead. I had trouble with the hyperlinks when I was creating the powerpoint and thought I had fixed them but they did not work when I went to present.

I really liked that we presented to our peers in small groups. I personally thought that it was less intimidating than presenting to the entire class and it gave us the chance to work more closly with our peers and share ideas more easily. I thought that the others in my group really did an awesome job creating their powerpoints and had great ideas to use in future powerpoints.

From this project I learned more about powerpoint and how to use different features of the program that I did not know how to use before, like the hyperlinking between slides. I also learned that powerpoint is not just for lecturing and direct instruction but that it can be used in other ways too. Finally, making a powerpoint takes a lot of time and this was very clear to me when working on this project.

Two More for the Roll

I searched for blogs that interested me and that might also be relevant to others in our class. I found two blogs that I really liked: Living Montessori Now and Teacher SOL.

Living Montessori Now is a blog that explains the Montessori Curriculum. It discusses different resources and how to use them in the Montessori Curriculum. I chose to share this blog because I am interested in the Montessori Curriculum and enjoy learning all I can about it. I also thought others might be interested in this blog.

Teacher SOL is a great resource blog for special education teachers and teachers that have children who need special accomodations in their classroom. This blog has great advice and tips for special education teachers. It also has interesting articles that have to do with special education, modified lesson plans for special education, and much more. Check it out!

My Beliefs about Technology and Learning

I believe that technology should be used in the classroom. A teacher should not soley rely on technology in order to teach. But instead, technology should be used as another teaching method in order to reach more students in a teacher's classroom. I think that if technology is used in the right way it can be a great help to both the teacher and the students but it can also be a hinderance to learning if the teacher is not properly explaining how to effectively use it or overuses it. In today's world, students need to know how to use technology in order to be a part of society. We use it constantly and I believe that it is almost impossible not to have to use it.

Check out this video I found about a teacher who was teaching an Algebra class to students who had never had success in math until she used technology to teach this class.