Open Educational Resources (OER)

Open Educational Resources are free (or relatively) inexpensive resources for classroom use. OERs comprise many different useful classroom materials, such as textbooks, activities, quizzes and tests. According to this Educase article, some of the benefits of using OERs include the ability to collaborate in an open online community with other teachers worldwide in developing classroom content and the comparatively light cost burden OERs incur as opposed to expensive textbooks and other physical materials. A downside of OERs is that because of their open-source nature, there is not a unifying standard of quality; therefore, the onus is on each individual teacher to determine what OERs will and will not prove effective.

As a future Social Studies teacher, I found several OERs relevant to my content area on the site OER Commons. One such resource is 1492 - An Ongoing Voyage. This online exhibition, as provided by the Library of Congress, involves a multifaceted and detailed look at the worldwide historical implications of Columbus' 1492 expeditions to the New World. It features a wide variety of images and documents pertaining to these voyages and the events that followed, such as early maps of the Americas, written historical manuscripts, detailed examinations of European culture at the time of its global expansion, and insights into the perspectives of conquered peoples. I think this OER could be of great use in explaining the far-reaching consequences of Columbus' journey without having to stretch the instruction over several textbook chapters.

Here's a map from Columbus' days - a "round world," but with no Americas. Neato!

Sometimes, entire courses worth of material are presented as online OERs. For instance, this AP US History course, provided by UC College Prep, contains detailed, structured information and notes, discussion prompts, and in-depth activities covering the entire breadth of US history. This resource could potentially replace a textbook if carefully implemented into coursework, although the information provided seems more focused on the "big picture" than the more intimately detailed textbooks that I am familiar with as AP materials.

Another useful OER I found is an interactive game provided by the Online Constitution Center called Abraham Lincoln's Crossroads. In the game, students match wits with a talking, animated Lincoln as he walks them through the major decisions of his presidency. At each "crossroads," the player is asked to determine what he or she thinks would be the best course of action for Lincoln to take, requiring careful critical thought and consideration. After students choose their solution, the game explains what Lincoln actually did in the given situation, allowing students to assess his leadership and compare it with their own point of view. Abe Lincoln's Crossroads exemplifies how technology can help make learning fun without diminishing its impact and puts students in a unique analytical position.

cartoon Lincoln is actually kind of creepy but that's beyond the point, I suppose

OER Commons provides a great starting point for exploring Open Educational Resources, but there are many more to be found on the internet. Archive.org provides a large library of lessons and lectures in all subject areas for streaming or download. Their AP US Government material is particularly in-depth and engaging; the flash presentations on course material could definitely add to an AP class. OER Consortium is an online community of educators devoted to the research, development and use of Open Educational Resources, and if I become  particularly invested in these tools I may one day find it prudent to join such a community. OERs, when carefully examined and used constructively, could surely bolster classroom instruction and help ease the financial burden on schools that weighs so heavily. It's the future!

Teaching Channel

Today in SEDU 183, we learned about Teaching Channel, a website that provides a treasure trove of videos for use by educators. Teaching Channel's diverse array of resources features instructional videos designed to inform teachers about methods, strategies, and styles of classroom management, ideas for new lesson plans and suggestions to supplement existing ones, and many more great things.


The "Reading Like A Historian" series of videos caught my eye. Seemingly tailored for teachers in higher-level history courses, this series features and overview, step-by-step examples, and a full lesson video regarding how to teach students the art of, well, reading like a historian through critical analysis of documents. The series comprises many videos, starting with the one to which I've linked, and covers all bases with regards to the mechanics, classroom implications, and importance of teaching kids the skill of historical analysis. It even features a full-legnth, recorded class period in which a teacher exemplifies this approach, which is a great reference. I found these videos fascinating, even though I've yet to watch all of them, as there is a great deal of content.

he's investigating history. it's the best i could do.

Another video I enjoyed was Inquiry-Based Teaching: Powerful Ideas. This is another video that stresses the importance of primary-source documents, in addition to featuring teacher explanations and examples of discussion-based teaching as opposed to standard textbook learning. In the video, Mr. Barlowe explains his use of "inquiry-based teaching," a strategy that involves students giving their opinions about documents in a Socratic Seminar-style setting in an attempt to dig out the "big idea" out of the lesson. I had experience with these discussions in high school, but mostly in English class regarding literature.. It was enlightening to see the strategy at work in a historical context, and inspiring to say high school students tackling such controversial and high-concept issues as the definition of freedom.

Teaching Channel seems like a great resource for educators. All teachers should take advantage of this great database and its plethora of great videos and articles with helpful suggestions and advice!

Flipped Learning

Flipped learning is a new concept that stems from the widespread availability of technology in the home. The idea is to invert, or "flip," the academic activities that are traditionally performed at home with those that generally take place at schools. This generally involves giving students video or audio lectures to watch and listen to at home, and providing them with in-class worksheets and activities.

not everything is this strenuous when it's flipped.

This article on The Daily Riff outlines the history and implications of flipped classrooms. The system was originally devised by high school chemistry teachers Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann. Because many students at their rural school frequently missed class due to sports and other extracurricular activities that required extensive travel, Sams and Bergman sought to provide these students with classroom materials for use at home. They worked together to find solutions, and eventually began using narrated PowerPoint presentations and screen-captured videos to provide instruction outside the physical boundaries of the school. These innovations coincided with the rise of Youtube and online video technology, and advancements in this area since the inception of flipping have made it even easier for teachers to take on similar strategies.

According to TechSmith.com, a flipped classroom provides teachers with several key benefits. The first is more one-on-one time with each student. Students, theoretically, do not need a teacher present to hear a lecture in the digital age. By moving lectures outside the classroom, teachers can focus their in-class time on working with individual students rather than spending most of their time giving general, class-wide instruction. This, in turn, fosters stronger relationships between teachers and students and can lead to improved communication between faculty and those in students' homes. Digitizing instruction also affords students the ability to learn at their own pace in new ways; unlike an in-person lecture, a recorded lecture can be paused and rewound to each student's individual liking. This enhances their ability to digest material.

Aaron Sams, along with Brian Bennett of ESchoolNews, warns teachers not to fall into preconceived notions about the flipped learning environment. They argue that the scope of recorded material for student use at home is not limited to lectures - it can also be used to raise questions with students, provide them with  examples, involve interactive material, and many other functions. In addition, Sams and Bennett offer the notion that a flipped system allows for "homework" to be dealt with in a much more dynamic manner than in a traditional classroom, and that even students without internet access can make use of digital instruction through a teacher's use of the right media. Classrooms, they say, are far from dull even if they are filled with students doing "homework"-style material; they are teeming with constructive chaos, group work, and student participation.

In my opinion, a completely flipped classroom might be too difficult to control - I think the total removal of lecture-style material from the school day might make students prone to distraction and cause their listening ability and attention span to lapse. However, I do think that partial integration of the flipped ideals can help streamline the classroom. Dynamic styles of instruction could surely be of great benefit to all students and help teachers take on a more active role with students without erasing their traditional classroom role.

Here are some more resources I used to learn about flipped classrooms:

MrBaldwinBCRS is a Youtube channel operated by a real social studies teacher that features some of his flipped lessons, including the one above. As a Secondary Ed major with a focus on Social Studies, I feel like these examples could provide me with a lot of direction for effective flipping.

 This article on Edutopia looks at flipped classrooms through instructionist and constructionist perspectives of education, and raises questions about what sort of materials and methods ought to be flipped.

Bill Nye, noted mechanical engineer and education advocate, offers his perspectives on the potential benefits of the flipped classroom.

Education writer and History Ph.D. Jill Rooney provides an in-depth look at the pros and cons of flipped learning on OnlineColleges.net.

Experiencing Group

Over the past few weeks, my Tech For Teaching and Learning class was split up into groups and assigned a research project. We were to use online resources to prepare a presentation about the 21st century education-related topic of our choosing. It was filled with every bit as much edge-of-your-seat excitement as it sounds like it was.

In all seriousness, I think this was a productive project that helped familiarize me with some important technological resources. Google Drive, the mechanism through which our groups collaborated outside the classroom, allows documents to be remotely accessed and edited by all designated group members, even at the same time. This is equivalent to being able to reach into the classroom from home with a super-long arm, working pencil-and-paper with three others who are doing the same, while also being able to see what everyone is doing. It's a radical technology that blurs the boundaries of the classroom - does it really even hae a beginning and end anymore? Fascinating stuff!

not quite, but close.

The content we researched dealt further with the use of technology as a facilitator of education  in the social studies classroom. Our research yielded many intriguing results, and I learned about a number of free online resources that are tailored for classroom use, including Google Earth For Educators, free content provided by the Smithsonian Institution and Library of Congress, and Sandra Day O'Connor's iCivics. This information will surely help me once I'm in the field, although by then I'm sure there will be even more useful and advanced technology to keep up with. It's important that I (and every other teacher) can stay on top of their game and ride the exponential curve of technological advancement in a way that can benefit students without becoming overbearing, useless, or obsolete.

The group experience itself was positive, for the most part. By collaborating, we were able to focus our individual research on narrow areas in such a way that our combined product contained great detail rather than simple overview. I feel that sometimes it was tough to coordinate group activity - to an extent, lack of face-to-face interaction seems to reduce personal accountability, leading to some sub-assignments falling through the cracks - but in general, online collaboration seems like a positive idea and a great new convenience. The "confererence room" is no longer confined in 4 walls - it is global and unlimited!

Powerpoint (Terrific)

In my Tech for Teaching and Learning class (which you are almost assuredly also a part of, if you're reading this; otherwise, you have way too much free time on your hands), students were asked to create a PowerPoint presentation that could be used to help accomplish one or more of Pennsylvania's curriculum standards. We were also encouraged to take risks with the project by including hyperlinks, embedded audio and video, or by hosting the video online. I've made a considerable number of PowerPoints in my time, but I had never been asked to create one with a specific instructional purpose before. This directive challenged me to make sure I had a good grasp of the information I was conveying with the presentation as well as mastery of its technological workings.

I decided to create a Jeopardy!-style review game, as my high school teachers often used such tactics to help reinforce study material or occupy the class with a game for a period so they didn't actually have to exert any effort in teaching. I'd call that a win-win! Since my major is Social Studies education, I chose the topic of Ancient Rome, since I know a lot about it and could use the information to address the standard about identifying how groups and individuals affected the course of history.

Rather than using an online template, I decided not to be a wuss and made one from scratch. I created a bunch of slides for the questions and answers, and held them together to a main game board slide with a series of hyperlinks. To keep things interesting, I decided that two of the slides would be "Daily Double" questions, which I prefaced with the Daily Double images from the actual Jeopardy. I embedded sound effects on these slides and set them to play automatically when the slide was displayed. I also included a Final Jeopardy slide, which featured embedded "think music" from the TV show that played on-cue when the icon was clicked. I ripped the audio files from youtube using Garageband, which I'm pretty sure is illegal to do, but I would hope that Alex Trebek or whoever else holds the rights to Jeopardy would be nice enough to appreciate my use of their license for educational purposes.

What is "not being buried with copyright litigation because of your boundless mercy???"

I was successful in my project; I managed to create a fairly professional-looking powerpoint that worked exactly how I wanted it to and was guided toward the appropriate standards. I was comfortable giving my presentation because I checked and double-checked to make sure every hyperlink was correctly connected and that my presentation was free of annoying spelling/grammar mistakes, and I was able to adequately explain everything I had intended for the project. I enjoyed seeing the types of presentations that my peers created, partly because I didn't have to think too hard about it and I was just plain sick of thinking at this point, and partly because the presentations I saw were very appealing, creative, useful, and different from mine. Hooray for variety! 

During this project, I learned many different ways that Powerpoint could be used to support and improve all parts of the classroom instructional process, beyond just being used to display information passively. It's important not to use technology as a crutch for lazy instruction - rather, we should use technology as a logical extension of excellent instruction.

I tried uploading my presentation to Google Docs so you could see what I did, but for some reason, doing that breaks all my hyperlinks and makes the presentation pretty much useless. So here's my narrative template, in case you'd like to see that for some reason! Hey, I'll take the bonus, for sure!

Narrative Template

Two More For The Roll

I've added two more sites to my blogroll, or my "not a blogroll," as it were. You can check them out over on the right!

The first is a blog from an elementary teacher named Edna Lee, and it's called Regurgitated Alpha Bits. I was browsing online lists of education blogs and came across this one, much to my amusement. It's full of amusing anecdotes about the strange way elementary school children, their parents, and their teachers behave in real-life situations. In particular, the post about the interesting note the author was handed in a kid's attempt to get out of running a mile was pretty entertaining fare. There's a lot beyond humor to be gleaned from this blog, too, as Edna recounts important lessons she's learned through these funny experiences. Check it out HERE!

here's a tiny picture of the logo! it either says "regurgitated alpha bits" or "aosjdnaosjdasd"

The second blog I added is one I've been a fan of for some time; The Needle Drop. Up-and-coming Vlogger extraordinaire Anthony Fantano posts video reviews of new music almost every day, and also facilitates open-ended discussion about music. I'm a musician and music enthusiast, so this blog is quite relevant to my interests. Some of the artists and albums that Fantano reviews are mainstream performers you've probably already heard of, but the majority are niche-market musicians in unique and interesting genres that the general public is not immediately familiar with. I've learned about a lot of musicians and bands that I've come to enjoy through this site, and you might, too! Fantano is a little eccentric and has a strange sense of humor, so if parts of these videos seem a little strange, it's not just you. Here's a review that turned me onto a great album!

My Beliefs About Technology and Learning

Technology has always facilitated the learning process, and it is important that educators keep up with the rapid pace of technological advancement so as to learn how to use new technology to the benefit of their students. Just like people left behind the ancient Greek practice of writing on wax tablets because pen-and-paper were more convenient media, eventually, a majority of educational endeavors will move from pen-and-paper to the digital sphere. It may seem absurd, but in twenty-five years' time, it's conceivable that students won't ever need to use pencils in classes anymore. The old ways go out and new ways come in. Time marches on with no regard for nostalgia.

Goodnight sweet prince :(

A pitfall of technology in education is the difficulty of keeping up with the pace of new and changing technologies. It seems like one week it's the iPad 2, the next it's the new iPad, and the week after that it's Hal 9000. How can we implement new technologies if the technologies we're trying to teach are obsolete as soon as we, and our students, fully understand how they can be integrated into education? This is a question with no clear answers, but the fact that the question can be asked at all reaffirms the importance of technology. We cannot hide from the passage of eras because we're afraid of the speed of things to come. If we were to confine ourselves to learning via the wax tablets of old, we'd never have a hope of understanding the state of the world today. Technology isn't just a thing in the world - to a large degree, it is the world! 

We must work tirelessly to make sure our new gizmos and gadgets are being applied effectively in the learning environment so as not to waste time on things that are not really useful to the learning process. Not every application of a particular medium is beneficial, and not every medium is useful at all. We have to weed through gunk to find gold. Working to determine what technology works in which scenarios can help us to predict what future advancements might further enhance the field of education.

Get it? Gizmos and Gadgets? Was anyone ever good at this game? Did anyone else even play it?

I'm not sure what a "wonderment" of technology is, or even if I copied that down correctly (I probably didn't), but if I had to provide one example of how a "wonderment" of technology could be applied to the classroom, I would say that digital star maps and "scale of the universe" models like this one can be used in earth/space science classes to provide a hitherto unimaginably up-close reference point as to just how big the biggest things in the universe are compared to the smallest. If you don't feel a sense of wonderment when you look at this stuff, you are probably the Grinch and I hate you. Science is just one of the scores of subject areas that are enhanced by the growth and expansion of computer technologies.

The benefits of staying up-to-date on technology in the classroom far outweigh the frustration inherent in the exercise. Kids grow up surrounded by the exponential growth curve of technology, and are immersed in a digital world before they can even understand its scope. To deny them a guided understanding of the technology around them, or to deny oneself the best means for facilitating a 21st century classroom, is just silly. After all, according to Ray Kurzweil, the technological singularity is going to happen sooner or later, and we'd all look really silly at that point when our super-intelligent robot brethren are judging our educational system from atop their cybernetic mechanical thrones!

I wish this picture was my idea

I'd like to wrap up this post by apologizing for my awful attempts at PG-level wit. I will continue to make them and they will not get any more amusing. Hopefully these blog posts will get more informative though!