Blog #9

My experience with EME2040 has been very positive overall! I have enjoyed the fact that it is fully in person. There actually is a zoom option for this class, but I feel like I learn better when I am in the classroom and can access my professor easily. There is a lot that I enjoy about the classroom. For one, I really like being able to use desktop computers to do assignments during class. The screen is larger and it allows the battery on my laptop to rest. I also enjoy just being able to interact and make friends with my classmates. It is not the same when you can only see people on the screen. There is nothing that I dislike about the classroom. It is very close to my apartment so it is an easy commute and I would rather have an in-person class than on zoom. As a teacher, I want to make my classroom a comfortable place that students can enjoy while still being a learning environment. 

Open Educational Resources are educational materials like text, media, and more digital assets that can be used for teaching and in learing. These resources are in the public domain and are available for anyone to use with no or very limited restrictions. I did some research on the internet and I was able to find a site called OER commons which is like a database where you can search for OERs based on type, subject, grade level, and based on learning standards for specific states. It is very helpful and provides users with lots of information about the sources they are looking into. Check it out: OER Commons 

There were a lot of moving parts that came together for Assignment 4: PowerPoint for Information Dissemination. On top of making a standard presentation on PowerPoint, we were tasked with creating out own layout for a slide, adding speaker notes, creating our own SmartArt graphic, implementing voiceovers, and using transitions and animations. Most of those skills I was already capable of doing and others I had heard of but never implemented them myself. I really enjoyed using the speaker notes because it helped me to add more information to the slides even when I did not have time to speak it. I also thought creating my own layout for a slide was cool because I could dictate what specific elements I wanted on that slide and make it work for my presentation. I liked the project overall because in the past and currently, I have seen my teachers implement these elements into their own presentations and it was fun to be on the other side of that.