Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources are resources found in different electronic forms across the internet at different locations across the United States. All these resources are kept on the Open Educational Resources website. This program let's students access different textbooks, course readings, and other learning materials. In the article, 7 Things You Should Know About..., they discuss everything there is about Open Educational Resources including the positive and negative effects of the program. 

Positive:

             OER has many positive effects on education. The program spreads across the cost to bring great amount of materials to a bigger range of students. These materials can help modify lessons to become more technology based. OER also has the ability to show instructors and students a widespread of educational materials that do not ever actually make it to a normal classroom. 

Negative:

              OER may have positive effects but it has a long way to go till it becomes a efficient program. There is flexibility in the open resources but many of the resources need to be changed to meet requirements of different educational institutions. Another negative to this program is not all of the resources can be adapted to students with disabilities. 

In another article, Open Educational Resources, it was explained the main focus of OER. OER strives to create a functioning open educational system and great deeper learning through online student access.

There may be an extreme number of followers of this program but in the article, Some Examples of Resistance to Open Education, they explain groups that do not support OER. The four largest textbook companies refuse to become a follower of OER. They have sued through a copyright infringement suit against an open textbook publisher. These companies believe OER creates almost identical textbooks to their own.

Regardless of negative effects and non supporters I believe this is a program worth having around and improving on for students to use across the United States for years to come.

Teaching Channel

A website we discovered as a class today is a wonderful site called Teaching Channel. It lets teachers post videos about teaching, lesson plans, core standards, student behavior and much more. This way teachers’ can share their experiences with each other so everyone can grow as a teacher. I watched a common core video on a kindergarten class learning to skip count by 5s and 10s. It was interesting to see how the teacher gave them directions but also let them have freedom with the activity. 

Flipped Learning

Flipped Learning

What is Flipped Learning?

Creators Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams became part of the chemistry department at Woodland Park High School in Woodland Park, Colorado and they saw their students falling behind with no way to catch up. They found software that let you record a PowerPoint including video and voice. They then converted the file and distributed it online for their students to view anywhere. This way they can catch up on school work on their own time and work at their own pace. Below is a video, featuring Aaron Sams, explaining flipped learning. 

Positives and Negatives?

Outcomes:

 Students won't have a reason to fall behind because through flipped learning they can work at their own pace. They can pause and repeat a lesson as many times as they need to until they fully understand. This way advanced students are not held back as well. They can move forward working on lessons without being stuck at a slower pace. Also they can connect to these lessons at any time. If a student is extremely involved and can't learn until late at night they have that option.

Drawbacks:

All students don't have access to the technology at all times to connect to the lessons. Also, not every student learns best stuck behind a screen.  

My Future in Teaching

This type of teaching and learning will affect my future classroom. Technology already has, on many levels, expanded the 21st century classroom. Flipped Learning is the start of teaching anywhere at any time. It has given students freedom with their own learning. I believe this could ultimately in the future lead to students having more control over their learning then the teachers do. Almost like Pre College to actual college. Also, the technology this has given us I could even have students anywhere in the world learn with my class. With technology improving every day the possibilities are endless.

Resources for Exploration:

Flipped Learning

Flipped Learning Channel

7 Things You Should Know PDF

Resouces for Research:

Flipped Classroom

How the Flipped Classroom was made!

The Flipped Classroom: Pros and Cons

Not Flipped for Flipped Learning

Experiencing Group

During the last couple weeks we were assigned to create a presentation on anything on education of the 21st century. My group decided we wanted to find out what have the last two recent first ladies, Laura Bush and Michelle Obama, done for education. During the research we split our group of four into two mini groups of two. Each group researched a first lady then we collaborated together to create our presentation. My group decided to use the powerpoint program prezi. Prezi is an advanced form of powerpoint letting you explore different paths for your viewers to enjoy with possible pictures, charts, graphs, and videos. The program at first is hard to handle because there is so much you can do. It can become quite intimidating. Luckily, I used prezi last year for an English class presentation. My group soon became pros as I showed them how to use it. I believe prezi is an excellent program for teachers to use. It lets you revamp an old traditional way of teaching to make it new and exciting again for students. I will be sure to use prezi in my future classroom.

Below I attached a link to our prezi presentation. 

Ladies in the House