Virtual Essay Reflection

I really enjoyed creating my virtual essay.  It gave me the opportunity to put into pictures and words the story of how I entered the teaching profession.  Learning new tools like Audacity and Window's Movie Maker were a challenge, but seeing the end result was very rewarding.  I think using these tools in a classroom could be very powerful... I'm glad my knowledge in this area was exercised and stretched.  Great assignment.

OER Thoughts

So, OER's are "Open Educational Resources".  In other words, they are educational resources available to anyone - student, teacher, plumber...whoever want to learn anything.  The most amazing thing about these resources is that they are completely FREE.   I can easily see why these types of sites will be very helpful to me in the future when creating lesson plans.  It's one thing to have a great teaching idea and another thing to supplement that idea with someone else's great idea... it brings new meaning to "two heads are better than one".  Or in the case of the web:  billions of heads are better than one.

In my research of OER's I stumbled upon a few very cool things....  how about DISCOVERY EDUCATION, a site that let's you choose the grade level, subject area, and type of teaching tool your looking for.  How about READ, WRITE, THINK which provided a multitude of activities for all grade levels that included exercises in critical thinking, etc.  Very cool.  And how about 32, 501 free teaching resources from OER COMMONS?  This place was like a huge DSW shoe store - if a teacher can't find something useful there, there's something wrong with them.

So.... don't be discouraged when you are fresh outta ideas like this guy:

Tap the web and take advantage of all the OER's that are waiting for you!!

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Virtual Essay - I Believe...