Blog #9

    After attending college virtually for the past three years I personally have benefited the most from being a distant learning student. I have experienced college in person as well and I found that I work best when I teach myself the material and work on my own pace. I am also able to work a full-time job while attending online school and maintain good grades. I feel as if I push myself harder when I am an online student and do my best work then. The only downside to being an online student is when it comes to having questions sometimes it’s a little difficult to find a classmate or a teacher who has the answer quickly. The biggest thing a teacher can do is provide discussion videos that explain the chapter or module in which we are discussing that week and provide feedback on written assignments and hold question and answer forms during the semester. As a teacher I would implement a time each week to talk with my students and discuss any questions that they may have each week where it could be a graded group project or simply a drop by time.

    Open educational resources are a wonderful option for teachers to have available to them. OER ‘s are resources  that are typically found online that are free and open to the public. Teachers benefit greatly from these programs as well as their students. These programs allow for anybody to use or revise the work listed. Teachers can share their examples add to the shared product, or even update if necessary. These are places where sharing is beneficial. A great resource that I have used as a student and a teacher is con Academy. Con Academy is a place that shares instructional videos on multiple topics and grade levels this is a place where both students and teachers can use to either help plan lessons or help them study or on homework. This website is open to the public and you are able to add to or revise a post. 

    I personally love using PowerPoint. I feel as if it is it a creative outlet for teachers to make a learning fun. In the first PowerPoint assignment I learned how to record my voice and time the presentation to use in the future with my class and be able to post my lessons online. In the second assignment I found how to better improve my lessons by making them more engaging for my students by being able to play review games and add in navigation buttons. Now that I have used PowerPoint and have become more familiar with its capabilities, I will be able to create advanced interactive lessons and games for my classes. Also, instead of looking up templates for my slides, I can now create my own after learning how with these assignments.