Topic 3-
For this weekās blog post I wanted to delve deep into the question that the first reading asked us, āHow do you see the roles of the learner and the teacher?ā (Mays, 2017). In my opinion, there should be equal control between the learner and the teacher. What I mean by this is that the teacher should not be the only one teaching and the learner should not be the only one learning. The teacher should let their students construct oneās own learning by discussing with peers, inquiring by creating projects, and questioning what is being told. The teacher should be open to adapting and listening to what the students say. I believe online and open education can be extremely beneficial for this learner/teacher balance.
The first reading this week suggests that the teacher and students should work together to build their own open educational resources (OERs). Open educational resources are which are free resources that are accessible to anyone who has access to a device that students can use like textbooks or Quizlet to help them be successful in their degrees (Mays, 2017) Students know which information is relevant to them as students of the course so having students create their own OERs can not only allow students to become the teacher by constructing and reflecting on their own learning and make it meaningful beyond the course (Mays, 2017) it also helps other future students have access to OERs.
Open and online learning is also beneficial to the teacher getting to learn and the learner getting to teach because if they have a website, like for example this WordPress blog they are able to manage their own learning and control their own data (Mays, 2017). Blogs are great because they give students the ability to add whatever they want to it as it is their own and communicate as well as collaborate with their peers and their teacher. The teacher can read studentsā blog posts and learn from them as well as the students can learn from each other. Having a website that belongs to the student reduces the idea of the teacher controlling the class.
In the second reading, they talk about why there should be an equal balance between the students and the teacher. With a controlled environment, the instructor has preset learning outcomes and processes that the student has to understand which means there is a higher authority that determines when, how, and what a student has to know (Gilliard & Culik, 2016). This idea of authority is not allowing for equal roles between the teacher and the learner.
The reason I wanted to talk about the roles in the classroom is that in my opinion, I think it does have something to do with equity. Students should be given more control of their own learning and that is why having blogs, and group chats with peers in an open setting can allow for this to happen.
The way online learning can thrive especially with keeping the balance of a learner and a teacher there needs to be equal access to resources like textbooks and devices. They need to be readily available and higher education institutes need to incorporate the concept of open learning to include everyone. As a future teacher, I want my students and parents to have access to any resource they need.
I wanted to leave with some questions, higher education claims it should be equally accessible to all (Mays, 2017) but how come textbooks arenāt free? How come we are still paying for textbooks when we have so many open educational resources nowadays?
References:
Gilliard, C., & Culik, H. (2016, May 24). Digital Redlining, Access, and Privacy. Common Sense Education.
Mays, E. (Ed.). (2017). A guide to making open textbooks with students. Rebus Community.
A continuation…
I have decided to continue with my blog post #3. I found week 3 to be the one I could most relate to as we talked about how much textbooks cost and how OER’s can benefit students in so many ways. I thought about Kayla’s post on topic 3 and her question pertaining to how open-ended resources can benefit elementary-aged children. After Emily’s topic 4 post I also started to think about what other resources besides the 2 she mentioned could be of use. I took a digital literacy class in July and my peers had some great resources that we as future teachers could use in our classroom. I wanted to see if these counted as open-ended resources. Open-ended resources can even be apps, images, audio, or videos. I have a document on my laptop of various teaching resources I have gained throughout my schooling so far so I went back to see which resources count as OERs.
Due to the fact that I do want to teach elementary-aged children specifically kindergarten and grade 1, it is harder to use OERs especially when they do not understand what they are or where to find them, but it is never too early to bring them into your classroom. If the teacher has an understanding of what they are and how to incorporate them properly into the classroom in the students’ best interest then they can gain a better understanding of their learning and everyone can learn from each other.
I came up with a small list that could be helpful to get started:
Scratch – a free coding website for kids
Codemonkeyjr- a free coding website for kids
https://www.codemonkey.com/hour-of-code/codemonkey-jr/
Unsplash- a website to get uncopyrighted photos
Epic!- a website with access to thousands of books
https://www.getepic.com/educators
Comic Life 3- a free download to create comics on a desktop
Youtube channels:
For Teachers-
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCglppXkK1C4GMlBqMtzF1rA
The Lettered Classroom-
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheLetteredClassroom/videos
OER Commons- a website where you can find various resources from lesson plans, books, diagrams, activities and so much more
After looking into OER Commons I am shocked at how many OERs there really are for teachers at any grade. This is so awesome for teachers to share their ideas. In my program, a lot of my professors after we have completed a lesson plan or presentation, ask us to upload our work on Brightspace or on google drive so my peers and I have access to each other’s work. This is such a good idea because when I am teaching if I have saved the files (because Brightspace is distributed not open) I am able to use others’ ideas if I am stuck. Actually, on this blog your on right now in one of my categories I have some of my lesson plans and resource packages I have created in the past. I uploaded them for an exit interview I had for a class but now they are open for anyone to use if they are looking for it.
I recommend my peers to check out the OER Commons site.
So what makes this list OERs? Well, they are all free and anyone has access to them. Note: Some require an account or a school code.
