Blog Journal #9

     I am in an asynchronous section of EME2040. Looking back, I definitely wish I had taken this course in-person. I have found it pretty difficult to keep up with the assignments. I think I would have benefited from being in person because I feel like this class is so technical. I have enjoyed a handful of the assignments. I love having the ability to be creative with my own assignments, it has been fun! When I become a teacher, I hope that I will always try to give my students the ability to express themselves within their work. I think doing that helps motivate students and it gives them some more freedom in what they produce in my class. 

    Open educational resources (ORE) are very beneficial to educators like my future-self. OREs gives teachers access to an abundant source of information that they can use free-of-charge for any educational purpose in their classroom as long has they give credit to the original work! I found an example of an ORE. This ORE is targeted towards first graders who were participating in distance-learning during the pandemic. The resource is a science lesson on inherited traits. The ORE provides opening questions and then has the students go outside and explore/observe different plants. The students write down what they see and then predict what the offspring of each plant might look like. The resource also includes information on how the parents can help their child with the lesson. 

ORE example: https://www.oercommons.org/courseware/lesson/83961/overview?section=0

    I really loved Assignment 4! I found it fun and enjoyed being able to create my own Powerpoint lesson plan and to record myself giving it. I had never used the recordable presentation feature in Powerpoint before so I was a bit apprehensive with that part of the assignment. However, once I watched a tutorial I found it very easy to use. That feature would be great for pre-recorded Zoom lessons. If I were to do this assignment again, I think I would just take more time in developing my lesson plan. I would also want to practice my slides presentation a bit more before I record the real thing.