Lia's Tech-y Persepectives

Flipped learning is defined as a style of learning wherein a student gathers information at home via a podcast or video. Therefore, when the student enters the classroom the next day, they are able to work on group assignments that enable them to reinforce and further understand the concepts that they have learned in their homes. In all sincerity, I'm not entirely sure if this is the best approach to teaching however. This is because of the fact that many students (especially those that are younger) are likely to lack the motivation to sit down at home and listen to/watch educational lectures or videos. As a result, these students would fall pretty far behind. A website I can forsee myself using for educational videos is http://www.ted.com/. Ted talks are filled with people that discuss topics that they are experts in, so I have always found it highly useful and reliable.

A website I can foresee myself making use of in the future in order to further develop as an instructor is https://www.teachervision.com/pro-dev/resource/5778.html

This website provides a vast array of resources for teachers. For example, the website provides list of assignments and activities that teachers can provide to students that can be catered towards times of the year or holidays. Additionally, the website also provides several lesson plans that are geared towards student's age groups, subjects, and so on. Different teaching strategies are also provided to teachers, including teaching strategies that specialize in teaching students with disabilities, which I think is highly effective. I'd actually like to take a second to stress how much I appreicate that. I spend a lot of time dwelling on how, in my personal experience, I have found our current educational system to be severely lacking when it comes to acknowledging students that are physically disabled, mentally disabled, or a combination of the both, so I admire how this site has set aside informative pages just to acknowledge this.

Some skills that I have learned from the Power Point assignment are how to set up a slide master. That was definitely a tricky thing for me to catch the hang of, and in all honesty I didn't even begin to get a grip on how the heck it worked until the end. Regardless, it is a helpful tool to know and it can definitely save the user a lot of frustration in the long-run. This is going to sound a little embarrassing, but this assignment helped me hone in on my animation skills as well. I had walked into the assignment thinking that animation was my forte due to a cool Power Point presentation that I'd slapped together in the sixth grade, but time really did wear down my memory. I definitely think that this assignment will assist me in putting together Power Point presentations for my students more smoothly in the future.