Open Education Resources...

What does this mean? Open Educational Resources is pretty self explanatory. Unlimited "free" resources for using while teaching. Because of recent budget cuts made to the education department, this could be the future. As technology grows inside our learning environments, we are seeing paper less and less. OER is just another step in the path of a paperless classroom. 

When I was looking around this OER website .. OER Resources I was amazed at how many activities/lessons/ideas/projects there were for every subject. I was really interested in the arts, but I made my way to the primary category because I am an early education student. Primary Section There were literally THOUSANDS of resources. I think this could be extremely helpful to teachers all over America trying to save. I also was surprised at how detailed the lessons are. This resource on Zoo's and the problems with pulling an animal from its natural habitat has 3 days worth of activities and planned lessons, with all of the necessary tools and aligned standards. The Zoo is coming! I am excited to explore even more this website in the future when I have my own classroom.

Another feature of this awesome website is the games section. Resource Games as a child I loved learning while playing (I still do actually..) This section gives educators thousands of ways to adapt a new fun way to a lesson. The art's section is just as fascinating, giving me so many ideas about what I could do with a general education class to incorporate art into other areas of education.. Cool Art Stuff!

With the countries socio economic status being in the situation it is in, this is exactly what teachers need. What is wrong with sharing our successful ideas and methods for others to try out? In my eyes this is just a good way to spread the word quick, and cheaply about a successful lesson. 

This website could also help me out right now! It has 890 textbooks, I'm sure I could find one that would assist me with my many learning needs! Books that are text

All in all, I am SO glad we got to learn about this website because I know I will be using it often as a future educator. Thanks Dr.Smith! 

Flipped Learning

          What is flipped learning?

Flipped learning is a new technique switching things up in the classroom. Giving students teacher created videos of lessons and lectures to watch at home, and have discussions and questions in the classroom.
The idea is that a student doesn't need a teacher present to be able to listen to a lecture and comprehend it, but they do need an instructor to ask questions. Moving lectures outside of the classroom gives the teacher more one on one time with individual students rather than speaking to the class as a whole about what could have been watched as homework at home.

This method also builds better and stronger relationships between the students and teachers because of the provision of more one on one time, it also offers a way for teachers to share information within the entire education community more effectively..(students, substitutes, parents, faculty, and the general community). I thought this was a cool video for parents to get a better understanding of a specific flipped classroom... <--....





This method would also be very helpful for students who may need to have things repeated, or "rewind" the lecture, it will also aid in avoiding issues that may be embarrassing for students confronting the teacher about not understanding something, when you can post a question silently, without anyone hearing it. While at the same time letting more advanced students move at a productive rate without being stalled by questions they already understand. Letting students learn at their own pace has proven to be very effective (65% higher test scores). This method also creates a more collaborative learning environment in this classroom. On the other hand there are some faults to a flipped learning environment, such as students not paying attention, or not watching the videos. Teachers may argue that some students "refuse" to learn and are simply unmotivated, and that adding a simple fill in the blank worksheet or simple quiz covering the basic material at the end could provide a simple solution to this problem. Parents also may argue that there is no "real" interaction time during the videos between the students and teachers...but if there is a program implemented such as a twitter account or a message/discussion board where the students can ask questions, or even email them to the teacher they could get answered (it may not be immediate, but the teacher could check their email at the same time every night when the students KNOW they will be checking it, say by 9 pm.). Probably the biggest con is for children who don't have internet access at home. This is an issue in many poverty areas. Solutions may be open computer labs throughout the day and before and after school, or letting children check a laptop out to take to a public library or wifi spot, a last resort could be burning dvd's for these students of the lectures to watch on a television at home.

 This method will definitely be something I will be considering as a future educator. Especially because half of my major is special education, and I will have students with learning disabilities that will need to hear parts, or whole lectures more than once. I think that this method has some serious strong points that I am surprised haven't been thought of before. With technology expanding in our homes and classrooms more and more everyday it makes me excited that this could be something for all schools to try in the future. It seems this practice would yield great results and hopefully improve the learning environment for everyone!

Here's another video showing many teachers explaining WHY they flipped their classrooms:
Underneath the teacher views video is a video showing what real students that have used this method think of it :)

Sources :
http://www.techsmith.com/flipped-classroom.html
http://www.voxxi.com/flipped-classroom-pros-cons/
http://flipped-learning.com
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=4oWF_kyWbi8
 http://www.edutopia.org/blog/flipped-classroom-pro-and-con-mary-beth-hertz