Umm... Something About Jeopardy

     I thought the assignment went pretty well, PowerPoint is an excellent program and its pretty easy to make different things with it. I did have to redo a couple parts of it, I accidentally used animations instead of screen transitions and needed to set non-linear navigation, but those are simple fixes. I thought it would be a lot more difficult, but as I got used to the controls (especially the copy slide button), it became a lot easier. Overall, I enjoyed the assignment, as it was an excellent way to get familiar with PowerPoint in general. Picture of my PowerPoint below.

    Surveys are a great way to collect and sort mass information. Specifically, I could use surveys to receive feedback on assignments or tests. I could also use them to plan out projects with, asking students which one they prefer. For social studies specifically, if I'm doing a debate I could do a survey to let the students chose which topic to debate. Building on that, I could also use a survey to get feedback on the debate, asking who they thought did best.

    There are quite a number of interesting things on my peer's blogs. A lot of them look really great, which is certainly a testament to their abilities. There are some interesting topics they talk about too, I remember on from a few assignments ago talking about how he didn't want to be a teacher anymore after going to class this semester. Besides that, they add some pretty god personal stories which are interesting to peruse occasionally.

    I can't say I used the badges a lot, even this deep into the class. Even if I did, I'm on a spare computer so I couldn't share any of em'. The badges are interesting, but its not exactly anything I would save, its not like they're official certifications so there's not practical use for them. They're just nice to show off I suppose, so I doubt I will ever use any of them. 

    Tech skill wise, it would be nice to learn how to use Canvas, or something like it. All the additional technology we've learned is nice, but Canvas is something we are absolutely guaranteed  to use, as long as nothing crazy happens. Given that, it would be good to learn some of it, although I don't know how feasible it would be to do something like that. I imagine there is a canvas-like training program, or at least some training version of canvas which we could use to learn at least some of the features.

Umm... Something About Miles Davis

     I was in the online section of EME2040, and I think it was pretty good. In general, the online class stuff has kind of sucked but this class is perfect for something online, considering that technology is at the center of its curriculum. The group projects went surprisingly well, and all of the other individual projects were fairly informative as well. Overall, I would say this is a very positive experience, with the class giving excellent insight into relevant technological skills.

    OER are learning resources which are free to steal from others and, for the most part, change what the content is. In general, most OER resources allow you to Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute educational resources openly though different means. I found a fairly excellent example of an OER resource on the OER Commons, which I will provide a link to below this paragraph. The resource I found features a host of videos following the 100 people project, which seeks to gain perspective on the world by limiting it to only "100 people". The videos are clear and easy to understand, and it could be an excellent resource for teachers wanting to provide their students with a perspective shift on the world.

https://www.oercommons.org/courses/100-people-a-world-portrait/view

    The PowerPoint project was a lot more in-depth than I figured it would be. First, I didn't know you could make videos straight from a PowerPoint, which is sure to come in handy one day. Second, I didn't know you could save your own page template, something which will save me a lot of time one day. Overall, it was a handy experience in expanding my ability on a program which I thought I knew all about. Below is a photo of my assignment.