Wednesday, November 28, 2012

OER

We are researching Open Educational Resources in my SEDU 183 class.  The article 7 Things You Should Know About: Open Educational Resources, mentions that OER is a resource available at little to no cost.  These resources are available online for students or educators to use for teaching, learning, and research. OER allows access to textbooks, readings, quizzes, assessment tools, and other learning content. 

While browsing on OER Commons I noticed the section of Game-Based Learning.  I found this very interesting, because I believe that students need to have fun while they are learning.  Also, the Math Practice section looks very helpful for the students. 

I found another article called Open Educational Resources.  It mentions that OER is guaranteed to improve the education all over the world by making high-quality academic materials available on the web.  Another article I found from the website Communication and Information states that OER provides a strategic opportunity to improve the quality of education. 
Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources also has some very useful information for learning about OER.
It seems that OER has a lot of success, and many people find it very useful and helpful.  I hope that one day when I am a teacher I will be able to use this very educational resource. 

Below is a video about Open Educational Resources.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Teaching Channel

Teaching Channel is a website for teachers to share ideas and strategies in the classroom with other teachers.  They can post videos about any technique that they think is working for them and try to help out eachother.

 I believe that this is a great way for teachers to learn new teaching methods.  I would love to use Teaching Channel one day when I become a teacher.

Below is a video that I was interested in.  It shows ways to keep the noise level down in the classroom by usig "Silent Signals".


Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Flipped Learning

Flipped learning is actually reversing homework with the in class work.  Homework can be very challenging for students.  They may not be able to understand how to do the assignment and will probably have questions.  Instead of giving students a lecture during class time, have that be the homework.  The next day the students are able to ask the teacher questions while they are doing the assignment.  Also, as stated in the video below the teacher can be in the center of the classroom interacting with the students instead of upfront lecturing the whole class period.  Flipped learning will give the students responsibility.  If they did not review the material the night before then they will not be able to understand what the assignment or class lecture is that day in class.
 
Although Flipped Learning may be very successful in Middle and High Schools, it is not so easy in Elementary Schools.  Recommendations have been made for flipping Elementary School classrooms.  It may be more successful if just a lesson is flipped and not the whole class.  Also, make sure the students have access to Internet so they are able to watch the video.  The video should be short enough so that the students are able to pay full attention.  The younger the students are the shorter the video should be.
 
I believe that flipped learning could be very helpful in the classroom.  Instead of having students struggle at home while trying to accomplish their homework, they would be able already have learned about the topic at home and then come to school the next day with questions ready for the teacher while they do their assignment.  This is a very good video explaining flipped learning and how useful and convenient it is.

Personally, I think this is a great idea.  I would love to give flipped learning a try in my future classroom.

Check out this website for more information on flipped learning.





Exploration Resources: 
How the Flipped Classroom Is Radically Transforming Learning
Teaching for Tomorrow: Flipped Learning
 
Research:
flippedlearning
ed.ted
flipped-learning