Blog Journal 9

EME2040 has been quite a unique and fulfilling course I have taken at FSU. The actual structure of the classroom has helped with carrying out regular tasks during instruction time. I like that the class takes place in a computer lab because the chairs can move and aesthetically it's more dynamic than the standard classroom model of desks in an array facing the board. I do find that sometimes with this classroom model, I can feel distracted during lectures, but honestly, that's more of a personal problem. It's just like how students in a classroom will all have different needs and different reactions to the structure of a classroom. As a teacher, I can adjust the classroom experience by checking in with students often and asking them if they can process the lecture well and how things can be made clearer for them (without changing the classroom of course).

Open educational resources (also known as OERs) are resources that are available to all people on the Internet that don't need credit. Open educational resources can be used to supplement high-quality lesson plans for all types of grades. OERs are very flexible because they can be modified by instructors and can be accessed easily by students. There is still more to be known about OERs, so instructors make blogs and websites describing the pros and cons of OERs and ways to use OERs. One example is the website oerandbeyond.org, which is a blog describing uses for OERs in higher education settings.

For Assignment 4, I created a PowerPoint that is meant to teach students about the different landforms that exist (mountains, forests, rivers, etc.). My goal was to create an alluring PowerPoint, and I sought to achieve this by including 3D models and other effects on some of the slides in my presentation. I find PowerPoint to be a great resource for creating presentations because it even offers you suggestions on how to design your slides to harmonize well based on what you have already created. I am overall satisfied with how I designed the assignment and also the amount of information I included on each slide (not too much so the students can read it and I can elaborate further through talking). Something I think I need to work on based on this project is how I plan to talk about each slide, especially since this presentation involved talking about several subtopics divided into two main topics. I think that next time I should definitely include speaker's notes on each slide and review them before narrating the presentation.