Blog Post 9: Distance Learning, Open Educational Resources, and Power Point

     Distance learning has definitely been a roller coaster. Especially when most of us have been doing it now for over a year, without having done it before. It's almost as if I'm used to it at this point, but that's not to say that I enjoy it. This time last year, when this was just going to be an extended Spring Break, it was inconvenient yet exciting because it was new, but now it's as if I forgot what it was like to actually go to school. As things have changed over this one-year period, the challenges have changed too. On top of the fact that there's a Pandemic, I was completely new to being an online student, so accomodating the future of my academic career within a 13-15 inch laptop was challenging. Taking tests turning in assignments turned out to be harder than I thought, especially with the use of Honorlock and the formats of the assignments changing. Everyone was experimenting to see what worked, and the inconsistency made it difficult for students and their different classes. I will say, some things did get a little easier although it did not help much with my work ethic. For instance, attending classes without having to get ready and not looking for parking was nice, and being able to rewatch recorded class lectures made it easier to take good notes. Because of this, I got used to not having to study as much, since all of my notes were right there for me to cram at any time. One important thing is that a lot of what I found to be good as a cause of distance learning was due to my privilege. Fortunately, I have a safe home with a reliable internet connection and although the mall I worked in closed, I was in a good place financially with my family. Since I did not have to worry about those things, I could just focus on the good things that could come from distance learning. Over time, the excitement wore off, and I found it harder to feel motivated to do anything. Especially by the summer semester, because I realized that not having a personal connection with my educators and peers made it harder to do things for classes because they just seemed like faces on a screen as opposed to real people.  I have used some tools and methods to help me out with this though and they have worked quite a bit. First and foremost, I changed my preference from asynchronous classes to live Zoom classes, because being able to sleep-in and do school work at 4am was fun until I realized I had no structure and my grades plummited.  Also, the Canvas app with the calendar has been my go-to. Sometimes checking a whole class canvas page can be overwhelming, especially if you just want a rundown of what you are doing, so the calendar has it all there for you. Trying to safely change where I take my classes and do my work has also been pretty helpful, so anything that uses a cloud has been helpful because sometimes I'll go to the library and use a computer there or shift to my iPad. Another feature I found myself using a lot on my computer was the Sticky Notes, they're short and always there, so if I need a constant reminder of something, I will make a sticky note to put on my Desktop. If i was a teacher, the resources I would try ot use the most for students would be time-management or planning ones, and then place a little less empahsis on the ones tha thave class content. This is because learning programs can be cool and allow for genuine distance learning, but if a student has a hard time keeping up with the class or staying organized, then it can becom ehard to take advantage of the programs. Ideally, I would also try to use programs and resources that other teachers are using so students don't have to learn how to use different things or have a trillion different log-ins. If we were to have live Zoom classes, I would do as many of my professors have done, which is to save and upload the recording. 

    In class, we learned about these cool things called Open Educational Resources, OERs for short. These resources can be reused, revised, or redistributed by educators in order to enhance their classrooms and teaching. Whats cool about these is that any educator or student has the right to use them, which allows any teacher the access to make whatever they want with the resources. Because of this, a lot of creative ideas about how to improve the learning experience can come about with educators collaborating. Better yet, these new plans can then be accessible to eduators and their students, allowing everyone the opportunity to use the OERs  and what can come of them. When sifting through the internet, I found a webpage by the University of Pittsburgh Library System that has a list of a ton of OERs. They are divided by categories such as multimedia, complete courses, repositories, and subject-specific. So many of these could have come in handy, and honestly I hope to use in the future. All of the links allow for students and educators to have access to amazing content freely. https://pitt.libguides.com/openeducation/biglist

    Before the Power Point Projects I had no idea there was so much that one could do with the program! What surprised me the most was that one can make their presentation non linear. When I saw that requirement in the project instructions, my first thought was, "Umm, so there's probably another program also named Power Point, because that's not happening with what I have here...". I was pleasantly proven wrong, and once I watched the tutorial I got so exited to finish the project. The Power Point Interactions project was one of the most fun projects I've ever done. Although certain parts were tedious, seeing that you can create an interacitve activity on  Power point was fun and rewarding. Seeing all of what was possible in the program, I also realized that a lot of the class activities we had in school were pribably made on Power Point too. If I did the project again, I would change a few things. For one, I found it challenging to not have every slide be too crowded or wordy so I tried the best I could with that, but now that I reflect on things I see the things I couold have shortened and ommited. Along these lines, because of all the information and graphics on the slides, I found it hard to keep the principles and elements of design. Therefore, if I redid the project, I would put more thought into that part. During the project, I found myself wondering how many instructions there should be, like should I have assumed that the student knew what a certain word or symbol meant without specifying? Because if you add too many instructions it seems like it'll be overwhelming, but also if you don't specify enough, the activity will be difficult to navigate. If I got the chance to do the project again, I would try to gain a better understanding of these confusions and apply a solution. Here's a screen shot of my Color Wheel activity: