Our Blog Questions for Week 8: Free and Open Educational Resources

1. Why do you feel it is important to teach search? (9.4)

2. What are the six kinds of knowledge and skills needed to have expertise when searching? And what one do you think is most useful and why? (9.4)

3. What are the ways individuals can effectively learn new skills from free and open content? (9.1)

PowerPoint Presentation

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Annotation

Creators/Authors of the Media Project: Randi Vaseleck, Nicole Franklin, KayLeigh Bliss, Angelia Saraceno

Identified Grade Level: 3-6 (For the elementary purposes)

In this Blog project, we set up a classroom blog and posted several questions about our weeks topic. Students had to post answers to our questions, and engage in a intellectual discussion. This type of project gets everyone involved, outside of the classroom, in a educational and interactive format. This will help students better their typing skills, spelling skills, and discussion/debate skills. It would most likely solve the use of problem skills because if a student does not know the answer to one of the questions, he/she will have to find a way to get the answer. I know that for some questions I had to answer, I had forgotten the answer, so I had to come up with a plan to recall the information I had already learned.

The main goal is to have students think critically when they leave the classroom, with the use of technology. Instead of going home and forgetting about that day's lesson, they can go home and enter a blog and keep the knowledge present...with the use of technology.

This integrates technology, with English, and whichever topic is being blogged. For example, if the blog is about today's lesson on the Civil War, it will not only integrate English with technology, but social studies as well. It also helps social skills in the sense that the students are learning to communicate effectively in the digital world.

The learning style that will most likely be affected by this is visual. The only negative to this project is, there is not much room for auditory and kinesthetic learners since the students are only in front of a computer, reading, thinking, and typing. Fortunately for these learners however, the project is not of great length so it is very "do-able" to all learners.

Some instructional strategies that have been utilized are classroom conversations, cooperative learning, debates, and discussion. All of these are utilized however; they are done so in the digital world rather than in the classroom.

This can be a self-paced or teacher-directed media project depending on the students skills thus far. For example, if the students are not at the point where they can post appropriate, well thought out questions about the days lesson, then the teacher can post the questions. If the students are capable however; it is best that they do so, so they are in control of the project. But it is important the teacher overlooks it to make sure the students are appropriately communicating.

It is best that individuals rather than groups use this. Groups could have the option of getting together and posting questions, but when it comes to actually answering the questions, students should do so on an individual basis.

Formal learning assessment will be used in this project. Each post will be for example, 5 points. If the student who posts the questions, posts questions that are well thought out and appropriate, he/she will receive 5 points, and each student who answers the questions in a well manner will receive 5 points as well. Students will lose points where necessary.

Note: Not ALL students have computer access at home. In this case, questions should be formed in class, and posted on-line that night. By forming the blog questions in class, the students who do not have a computer still have a means of answering the questions.