Blog Post 10

I would use the data collection surveys to take attendance or get students opinions of my class or assignments. I would not do too much with data collection because I want to teach 1st graders and they may not fully understand the data collection process; however, having students check in for attendance with a fun question could get them excited for the school day. I could use data collection to ask the parents what they think about the homework load, class topics, etc. I would use reporting tools such as Excel to record and analyze class grades, learning styles, test scores, etc. Again these students would be younger so I would use reporting tools largely for my own benefit, while going over the data in very simple terms with the class.

I really enjoyed looking at what my classmates chose to do for their independent learning projects. I found this so interesting because we really got free reign with these projects and it was fun to see the unique projects that people chose to explore. I also really liked learning about these programs, tutorials, etc. through my classmates. It gave me more background knowledge on the various educational technology programs through the use of an example.

I would like to learn how to better use Adobe Photoshop next. This is because I used to be very good at using Photoshop and I am technically Adobe Photoshop Certified. I have not used the program extensively in a few years and I am loosing a lot of the information and skills I once had. I really enjoyed using Photoshop so I want to continue to learn more and perfect my skills. I will achieve this by saving up money to purchase the software. Then, I will practice what I already know how to do and use Lynda.com tutorials to walk me through things that I would like to learn and do not know how to do yet.

Blog Post 9

"The Flipped Classroom" is essentially a classroom where the "homework" is to listen to prerecorded lectures from the teacher and the "classwork" is engaging and actively working with the content learned. This is done to deepen the understanding of the content and allow for students to work along side of the teacher. This way, the teacher can better guide students with their work and understanding of the knowledge rather than just using class time to talk at the class. A good source of educational videos to help teach a flipped classroom is Khan Academy.
https://www.khanacademy.org

Open education is education that is open to majority of people. They are typically offered online for free. You do not have to be enrolled in any university to take advantage of the class. It allows everyone to have access to education and breaks down monetary barriers. Some examples are Khan Academy and Coursera.
https://opensource.com/resources/what-open-education
Open content is downloadable instructional materials that are available to the public for free online. It is important to follow copyright and distribution guidelines when using ones content. It is also important to remember that things online can be changed by nearly anyone; however, if your school district adopts an online/open text, it can maintain a version that can only be edited by certain selected people.
https://funnymonkey.com/2010/using-open-content-to-drive-educational-change
Open source refers to software. The use of open source education software can help to reduce costs and stay within budgets. There are open source versions of programs that are often free to use and download and similar to software that is usually very pricey to use. For an example, Open Office is comparable to Microsoft Office. Some more examples of helpful open source programs are RedNotebook (calendar based journal for organization), ownCloud (private file sharing server), FocusWriter (used for keeping students on task while at a computer), etc.
https://opensource.com/education/15/8/5-back-school-open-source-programs-2015

The first assignment was relatively boring to me. This is just because I have worked with PowerPoint so many times that I really did not learn anything new. If I were to do the project again I would choose different and more colorful pictures in order to capture students attention better. For the second assignment, I learned how to create buttons and make a non-linear PowerPoint. I had never done anything like that before so that assignment was almost all completely new to me. I think I completed the project pretty smoothly; however, if I had more time, I would have made something more exciting than a quiz. For example, I could have made a Jeopardy game.

First Assignment

Second Assignment