Blog Journal 9

 For most of 2020 and currently, in 2021, I have been distance learning. As a distance learner, I have been able to attend Zoom calls from the comfort of my home. It also allows me to work at my job while being a student so I am able to make money while getting my Florida State education. What I like most about my distance learning experience is that I have more flexibility than I did back up in Tallahassee at school. I really enjoy being around my family during the pandemic and taking some "time off" from the school environment. What I dislike about distance learning, however, is the amount of work stacked on top of each other. I feel like I had less work when I was actually attending classes in person and now that I am balancing a job while going to school, I feel like some teachers aren't mindful of students having outside lives, still, during the pandemic. When I am a teacher, I hope to improve the experience of distance learners by understanding they are also living a life outside of the online classes. I also hope to make my lesson plans interesting, online. 

Open Educational Resources (OER) are educational resources that anyone can access for a variety of needs. The reason these learning resources are labeled as "open" is these resources have open intellectual property rights, meaning that they grant other people permission to use, copy, edit, and share them. A resource I found about OERs is here. This website allows teachers, students, or anyone to choose what subject they need resources for and access a plethora of open educational resources to use for whatever their needs are. 

During this week and last, I worked on two PowerPoint assignments. These assignments were actually super fun for me and I really enjoyed the PowerPoint game assignment. I learned a lot of new skills for the PowerPoint game, such as how to add sound to a transition, how to hyperlink something within the PowerPoint, and how to disable linear navigation. The PowerPoint for Information Dissemination wasn't as fun for me but I was still able to learn skills such as how to voice over the PowerPoint, how to add my name to the print out version of the PowerPoint, and how to make my own slide layout. Some things I didn't like about these PowerPoint assignments were how tedious and time consuming they were, especially the game, it took a lot of planning that was a little bit hard. Next time I can improve on my PowerPoint Information Dissemination by understanding the assignment more before starting as well as having more awareness of PowerPoint functions. Here are a few screenshots of my assignment(s):