Blog Post #9

A flipped classroom is a teaching model in which the lecture and homework elements of a lesson are reversed. The structure usually provides prerecorded lectures, like short video lectures or the podcasts we listen to, followed by some hands-on activities in the classroom. The short video lectures that are watched before class may even sometimes be followed with a quick comprehensive quiz that can provide students with immediate feedback in order to help clarify any misunderstood information from the lecture. This approach to teaching is supposed to enhance active learning and student engagement within the classroom, rather than just listening to long lectures the entire class period. The flipped classroom creates more of a workshop environment in the classroom with students being able to inquire about lecture content, test their skills in applying knowledge, and interact with one another in hands-on activities. Teachers are acting more like a coach or advisor during class time, as they are there to encourage students with collaborative discussions. In Chapter 10, they talk about online publications that act as great educational resources on the web. They allow teachers to provide students with educational journals, articles, links to other sources of useful information. By providing your students with this online educational material, prior to discussing it in the classroom, this can help to put the flipped classroom idea into action.  This link is a great source that can provide teachers with educational videos for many subjects K-12: http://www.watchknowlearn.org

Professional development is the process of improving and increasing capabilities of staff through access to education and training opportunities in the workplace. The website http://www.edutopia.org/teacher-development, enhances the idea of the importance of professional development for teachers in the workforce in order to have high-quality teachers who can help their students reach their greatest success. It provides teachers throughout all grade levels, whether elementary or high school, with tons of instructional videos on different teaching techniques, philosophies, and lessons. It also provides links to the blogs of teachers who may have tried a teaching strategy you want to practice, or who just want to share how they used different strategies to help the students in their own school.
Edutopia is a great way to get new ideas for interactive lessons that students would enjoy. They even have a link to "join the conversation," where teachers can see what is currently trending and can add comments to discuss with other teachers about their ideas. In addition, everything on the website isn't only about teaching academics. It also provides ideas for some social programs, like anti-bullying activities, and other events that teachers can host in their classroom and around their school. I definitely think that this website is very helpful when dealing with professional development of teachers. The endless amounts of resources provided from schools all over the country will give teachers new and improved ideas on how to be the best teacher they can be.

The PowerPoint for Information Dissemination assignment this week was very helpful for learning some new techniques that PowerPoint has to offer, and was a nice refresher for some tools I may have forgotten how to use over the past couple of years. I pretty much knew how to navigate around PowerPoint already from all of the presentations I've had to make in the past, but one thing I found very helpful was that now you can insert pictures from the web with ease. I used to only use simple clip art pictures in my presentations because it took too much time to go to a different tab in order to to save each individual picture from the Internet into another folder, but now I realize you can just search the web straight from Powerpoint itself. I also liked learning about Jing because I've never heard of it before this assignment. It's very cool how you can capture your voice and your screen at the same time. That can be very helpful when preparing for a big presentation in the future so that you can hear how you sound, and prepare what you will be saying with each slide. I will definitely be using PowerPoint as a future teacher, as it is one of the best ways to visually present information to students. I will also probably be requiring my students to use it for their own assignments as well, which is why it is so important for us as teachers to know how to navigate all of the different tools, so that we know how to answer any technology-related questions we may get asked by our students. Here is a screenshot of my PowerPoint for Information Dissemination assignment: