Open Education Resources

Open Education Resources are teaching and learning materials that aspire to be accessible to anyone, whether it be the teacher, student, or even those just interested in the subject.  This concept of OER has a number of Pros and Cons; however, the immediate benefit to OER is its accessibility and lack of cost (usually).  College students pressured into buying hundreds of dollars of books for their classes will be most directly affected as classrooms hopefully incorporate these free resources into the curriculum.  Yet, it has been noted that these resources cannot be as fully trustworthy as published textbooks and definitive resources.  So, my stance is: every OER must be evaluated separately.

1. Summary:

OERs give an opportunity to drastically reduce cost of the college level or high school level books, most of which are even free.  OERs can be used in an online setting, or if an outdated book already exists, in tandem with that existing curricula.  Perhaps a shift in teacher recommended books would see a larger use of OERs.  If college professors begin to explore OERs as potential learning materials for their classrooms, the typical $150 book could be avoided.

Due to the vast amount of OERs available, it also increases the usefulness of those free resources in the classroom.  With a simple search on the website, I was able to find dozens of different physics textbooks and practice problems.  OERs can are easily malleable to the classroom and present a wide angle on the subject at hand.

As mentioned above, dozens of physics results came with a basic search.  Thus, the sheer quantity of OERs continues as a surprise.  If they are all as malleable as the initial ones I found, I can use a variety of sources for different teaching styles: if one resource includes laboratory work, or one has practice problems and the other has more in-text visuals and tables, then those resources become much more valuable and integrated into the classroom.

Yet, there is a problem with OERs.  Many OERs are user-created and are not as reliable as published books.  There is no definitive scale for evaluation; I compare this to the issue of Wikipedia.  Although Wikipedia is bountiful with raucous information, since it has the capability to be user edited, it loosens the credibility and becomes rather useless.  I personally love Wikipedia (and by extension, OERs) but I cannot use them as sole resources, but rather a jumping off point in my lessons.

2. Exploration and Concerns:

I explored the possibilities of Physics with the OER website and found a supplement to introductory Physics courses at the Undergraduate level.  The resource is most commonly used in conjunction with Carnegie Mellon University Physics courses.  The resource is a workbook that provides numerous tutorials on physical concepts and gives over 500 practice exercise problems.  It is a tremendous resource that is completely free and undoubtedly helpful.


However, I do have a number of concerns with OER resources; as a Physics teacher at the high school level, I can only imagine students will not have a working knowledge of Physics at the time of teaching.  Thus, tackling such an enormous and complicated subject without direct guidance will be difficult.  It's difficult to learn Physics from multiple resources because there is so much more complexity than what is taught in high school.  Thus, working out of a book is narrowly focused to that curriculum.  Yet, if I can guide the OERs to my classroom, not only would the curriculum be accessible to everyone, but relevant as well.

3. Moving Beyond:


 









This resource is an online copy of a textbook on Newtonian Physics: the first half of a typical Physics course.  I would use this is conjunction with my curriculum and use the provided images or points in order to well round the lesson plan.

This resource has immediate free access to AP Physics resources, including numerous links to videos and lecture notes.  I would use this to provide students with informative videos and possibly upload them to a classroom website for viewing.

This resource is a collection of articles and experiments that give insight into teaching Physics in the 21st century.  I would use this resource as a guideline for teaching each chapter; it gives specific hands-on examples that will undoubtedly keep the class interesting.

I can only speculate that I would use OERs as jumping off points in my classroom; unless I find THE perfect OER, I doubt that it would be as reliable as the typical high school set of physics books.  However, they are no doubt useful and interesting.  Perhaps if the high school I wind up working at does not have physics text books, then I will integrate the OERs.  But that also raises the question of is it fair to only provide an online resource?  Maybe some kids don't have Internet, or some work full-time jobs immediately after school.  It raises a number of concerns but I can only speculate.

Visual Essay

I believe that the key to education is making sure our nation and our students feel that learning is important.

Reflections on the "This I Believe" Visual Essay

Through this project, I discovered the pains of expressing my opinion because I really don't like to trample on toes.

My beliefs took an unexpected liberal turn and came off as anti-American, which is somewhat true.  I don't believe that America has any real grasp on education and it needs federal reform.  Yet, I hate discussing politics and I feel that the video project urged me into making that statement.

Why I didn't choose a typical essay was the sheer lack of excitement, though.  I could preach my beliefs on how a classroom should be run but I have had little to no experience outside of being a student (which will change as the curriculum progresses), but who am I to make those judgments?  However, I do feel that I am qualified a political opinion because regardless of how my classroom will be run, America will still face turmoil.

The project itself, to me, was not fun.  I don't like giving my opinion unless prompted in face-to-face contact.  That, and recording my opinion and condensing it to 3-5 minutes was difficult.  The video interface was unfamiliar and unforgiving.  I did not find this project to have any redeeming value.

I love videos though; I spent three years in my high school video department and won numerous awards at the High School Film Festival.  But my hobby is only for recreation.  This kind of unimaginative project made it difficult to bear through.

I don't plan on using self-created video in my future classroom.  It takes far too much time to even create a five minute slideshow video, let alone an informative lesson plan.  But this is just my opinion, and I dislike sharing it.

This I Believe

       I may or may not have gone over by 75 words, but this is what happens when I get all riled up.

             It is no secret that America is having a rough time with Education and the role of government in it.  And in no way am I informed on every issue and every stance that exists; however, through my own observation, I have noticed that there seems to be a lack of confidence in our educational system and an overall distrust of schools.  But it is my belief that teaching is among the most noble and rewarding jobs to pursue.  And it’s hard as a college freshman to choose a career that appears to be going through quite the ringer.

            I believe that education, next to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is a constitutional right to Americans.  No child should be denied an education based on their social status, gender, ethnicity, race etc.  I consider myself a humanist, in that I wish to progress the complexity and intellectual superiority of humans, regardless of what they believe.  And with that concept, uneducated societies, or societies where education comes at a high cost or is restricted to certain groups, they are only holding their human potential back. 

            Yet, I believe that America is a ridiculous middle ground to my beliefs.  The “American Dream” is a fanciful idea of living your life how you want it, and I feel that numerous success stories of poor kids turned basketball stars and rappers are only instigating the children of today to lose interest in education and pursue wild, unreachable goals.  If only their efforts to become famous could be turned into efforts in academics, then we would see more mathematicians, more physicists, and more writers.  But instead, we see an educational system directly intertwined with money and taxes, and somehow America lost sight of how important education is.

            If only we could neutralize our educational system, then we would not have such terrible scores.  But parents and politicians are quick to blame teachers for our failing system; that teachers are too easily given their jobs and are about as effective as babysitters.  But this distrust of teachers is avoiding the reality; that our culture doesn’t promote learning!  There are so many factors that go into the efficiency of a classroom.  And basing the future of our nation on standardized tests and dropout rates do not measure the teacher!  They measure how much students care.  And the fact is: they don’t.  I believe that these indicators are being twisted to justify collapsing the federal educational system and leaving local and state governments to fend for themselves.  Of all the things to set free, our nation chooses education. 

            But every child has the capability to learn; I know this.  I took PSYC101.  But it does not matter how any one teacher teaches, or how any one school gets an x amount of money from the government.  The true solution to the problem of education in our country is keeping our children optimistic about learning.  Showing them that education has intrinsic value, showing them that it’s okay to learn more than just to pass the next proficiency test is the ultimate goal.  My goal as a future physics teacher is to inspire the next generation to be interested in the science that invented their cell phones, their computers, their cars.  To show them that science is okay, that science is our future.  America is holding us back, and I won’t stand for it.  This I believe.

Top 10 Cool Tools for School

While we all found some wonderful teaching tools, only ten can make my cut.  I picked these tools by the relevance they will have to the classroom I can see for myself in the future.

10. Wordle from Excerpts from an Educator:
This is tool is really neat!  However, it is only a visual aide that serves almost no purpose in a Physics classroom.  Sorry, Becki.

9. Pinterest from Dunlap's Blog:
I've only heard rumors about the addiction to Pinterest but after seeing the site for myself, their is some educational value.  I can't see an importance to Physics but it is indeed a cool way to entertain yourself academically.

8. Evernote from Katie's Blog :) :
I tend to forget things, so having an accessible tool to keep my thoughts and record important notes is a definite plus.

7. Prezi from Uniquely Nina:
Effective slideshows are necessary to using them in the classroom.  I can see myself using this to add more pizzazz to Physics.  I love pizzazz.

6. Pegby from Michael Carbonara:
This tool is useful for keeping group members on task and aware of the goals of the group.  I can see myself assigning groupwork in Physics so perhaps I could utilize this site.  

5. SmartBoard Technology from R Wetmore's Classroom:
I have a lot of experience learning from SmartBoards, but I haven't had much opportunity to use them.  Yet, they are very useful in displaying information and writing alongside important visuals: something Physics requires. 

4. TeacherTube from Education for you:
TeacherTube just struck me as important because if I would go to the internet for help in my classroom, I wouldn't like waiting for responses on a forum or twitter.  TeacherTube provides the instant gratification I enjoy.

3. Super Teacher Tools from JLee's Blog For SEDU 183:
I feel that these assorted tools, like random name pickers and jeopardy, would add a lot of pizzazz to my classroom.  And you know how much I love pizzazz...

2. Ask Dr. Math from Demi's Blog:
From what I see, this site is very helpful in deciphering mathematical concepts.  With live help available, who would NOT use this site for math help?

1. Wikispaces from Here and now, the start of it all:
This is really a great tool!  I thought that Wikispaces reminded me almost of a blog, only much more in-depth and personal with students.  It allows teachers to utilize their classroom on-the-go and serves as a place to upload assignments, goals, etc.  All-around a very useful site!

A Cool Tool for School: HyperPhysics

As an aspiring Physics teacher, I know the difficulty of grasping and retaining the ideas of Physics, basically applying high level mathematics to these already vague concepts of our Universe.  Not every mind is easily attuned to the Universe, myself included, but many resources exist to help clarify the ambiguity of the world.  HyperPhysics is among the most powerful tools I have found thus far.

HyperPhysics (HP) is a resource that I can envision for both myself and future students.  The site has three main functions that I find especially useful: unit conversion, interactive visual aides, and detailed articles (in increasing importance). 

HPcontains a page for unit conversion that not only provides the factors for conversion, but allows for input and immediate output of a conversion factor.  An example would be, "How many feet are in 60.54 meters?" in which one would normally write out that 1 meter is equal to 3.28 feet, and then perform the multiplication of 60.54 meters times 3.28 feet to get 198.57 feet.  However, HP can do this calculation in an instant.

Second, HP features incredible visual aides that establish the relationship of how one concept relates to another.  They do this by creating an interactive web of ideas that display how one concept trickles down into an incredibly detailed aspect of the big idea.  An example is the following web of light and vision concepts, some of which even I have no idea what they are.  Each bubble leads to a specific article on the content of the bubble. Light and Vision refers to the Propagation of Light, then reflection, which is seen in mirrors, then mirror instruments, which leads to fiber optics, and finally absorption.  It is through this web that the relevance of each topic is greatly understood.

Lastly, HP has the most extensive and organized articles on these topics that I have seen.  Articles are interactive and informative, while they keep conciseness and relevance to the overall web they're in.  The articles also contain links to other important ideas that may or may not be crucial.  I can't really write much more about how great this resource is; two sentences is all I need to show that this resource is bomb-diggity.

I would use this in the classroom as a tool for myself to keep the conciseness of each lesson and refer to these sources for students with questions.  This resource is ubiquitous to the user and unlimited in use.  As one of the few science education majors and the only undergraduate Physics education major, this resource, though not relevant to many others, is something I highly recommend.

A Big Ticket Issue: Homeschooling

I chose to address homeschooling in today's blog post.

Just to clear things up, homeschooling (by definition) is the education of children at home, typically by parents but sometimes by tutors, rather than in other formal settings of public or private school.  There is much debate as to whether or not homeschooling is indeed beneficial in more respects than public or private school, with homeschooling parents driving the support for homeschooling and the National Education Association etc. driving the criticism.  So let's chat about homeschooling...

1. I will look at what prompts parents to homeschool their children.  In this report, we can see that the highest reasons for homeschooling is the parent's belief in instructing their child better or for religious and moral reasons.  This accommodates 87.3% of households, and frankly, I find this reason to be absolutely ridiculous.

I can understand that parenting is a tough world that I have no experience in, but I'm sure that holding your child back from the social and ethnic diversity of public and private school is detrimental to their character, not their education.  In my mind, peer-to-peer social skills is as important as academic skills.  Interacting in a classroom is what makes public school and private school so crucial to our general public.  Homeschooling tends to present information in a one-sided, filtered way through parents, and trying to maintain a child's religion by shunning them from public school is among the most overprotective things I can think of.

2. I will look at a comparison of standardized test scores between homeschooled children and public school children.  However, we can almost immediately strike this off the record because hoomeschooled children are not subject to the same testing requirements as per the No Child Left Behind Act.  In addition, scores are compared between volunteer homeschoolers and mandatory public schoolers.  It also should be noted that overall, homeschooled students scored better on the national ACT, yet their math scores were slightly under the national average. 


Just with these few points can I see that homeschooling is not worth risking a child's much needed interaction with peers.  We may see videos of homeschooled child prodigies, yet this does not automatically determine which schooling system is better.  Should this issue be ignored and politicians such as Ron Paul continue to support the issue, we may see a huge flux of students switching to homeschooling and avoiding the social interaction that characterizes public schooling.  Ultimately, parents are the stakeholders here, and making the wrong decision will heavily influence the outcome of this nation.  With megacountries like China and North Korea beating us in education, we cannot afford to lag behind because of some moral agenda against public schooling.