Blog #9

"The Flipped Classroom" is a instructional technique that makes students watch instructional videos at home or outside of the classroom so that the teacher can review concepts in class and have time to do more interactive assignments in class through discovery learning. To refer back to chapter 10 and the instructional design it discussed, the teacher can tell the students to listen to podcasts or watch vodcasts away from the classroom and then students can write blog posts or use wikis to discuss the information they learned on their own before coming to class and having a group discussion on the subject matter. This type of instructional technique is efficient because it makes the students learn the material before coming to class so that class time can be used to answer any questions the students have and allows them to discuss the topic more in depth in class. A source of educational videos is http://www.watchknowlearn.org/.

An interesting web-based resource I might use for professional development is http://www.discoveryeducation.com/. They have so much valuable resources and updates on new technologies and happenings for teachers. The website is friendly and offer community support for teachers on textbooks, professional development and programs that can benefit their students. Discovery is an amazing publication that has their own educational videos and news updates for teachers to use if they are relevant to their classroom as well.

One new skill I acquired from completing the PowerPoint Interaction assignment is using the hyperlink and action button feature to connect my slides together seamlessly. I also learned that PowerPoint is not only useful for presentations of information on bulleted lists but you can make games and stories out of it as well. I liked that I got to experiment and use PowerPoint for something else besides a bulleted presentation but this was my first time using it for interaction purposes so I can improve how I present my PowerPoint interaction better. I can use this assignment in my future career by creating a game that corresponds to the lesson rather than just coming up with a story where the reader can take different paths in.