Personally, in the time we have spent distance learning I have experienced academically my highest highs and lowest lows. At times, distance learning has been supremely demoralizing as there is so little to no meaningful peer engagement, leaving students feeling very isolated. On the other hand, distance learning has allowed a degree of freedom from the normal, hard-and-fast schedules in which we often find ourselves. During no other time have we been able to roll over five minutes before class to login to a Zoom lecture, saving use the time, hassle, and stress of commuting and going in-person to class. As a teacher, I would take notes from a prior professor of mine, and offer evening, online hang-out sessions for students. My professor hosted several movie nights--sometimes relating to class content, sometimes not--and other times just left the Zoom meeting open for conversation about anything and everything. Much less formal than office hours, this promoted peer engagement amongst students as well allowing the professor to chime in and build rapport with students.
Open educational resources (OER) are learning/teaching resources available for anyone to utilize for a myriad of reasons. OER can be restricted the author by use of a creative commons license (CCL), which we learned of earlier this semester. Those who utilize OER have the rights to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute the resource of their choosing so long as it is allowed by the author's CCL. When I decided to search for my own OER to use, I found one pertaining to middle school algebra, a lesson plan on algebraic expressions, equations, and inequalities.
I love the creative elements of the teaching profession--newsletters, bulletin boards, PowerPoints--and these assignments were no different. While I enjoy them, that does not mean they are not without there own difficulties. During this assignment, we were tasked with creating our own slide layout in the SlideMaster feature; something I had done in high school to obtain Microsoft Office certification, but never since. It was nice to be able to change the colors and fonts as I wished, then apply them en mass, but I had to reel myself in to balance legibility with aesthetic.
*We were instructed to include screenshots from both PowerPoint assignments, however we have only been assigned one at this time.
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