blog post #9

During most of my school years, I did not experience any form of distance learning. When the pandemic arrived, even though it was a struggle for teachers and students to adapt to the changes, we started distance learning through Zoom. Zoom and Microsoft Teams were the most used platforms by my teachers, and they were very effective and user-friendly. Some resources I have used in college but that would have been useful during high school are pre-recorded lectures. Sometimes, it was hard for us to keep up with the teachers in class, and it would have been great if we had videos to rewatch when we had doubts.

 

Open educational resources are resources that are publicly available and can be accessed for teaching and learning. I was curious to see what kind of OERs there are for teaching psychology and I found a lecture outline that briefly covers various areas of contemporary psychology. It explains the biology behind the nervous system in the area of biopsychology, it describes Piaget’s work in the area of development psychology and it explains the Big Five model in the area of personality psychology. In addition, for some of the topics it provides graphics and videos to aid with learning. 

https://oercommons.org/courseware/lesson/15296/overview

Assignment 4 was great for learning more advanced skills with PowerPoint. Learning how to use presentation notes is something that will definitely be useful in the future. I liked having the freedom to choose the topic we desired as it allowed me to choose a simple topic and focus on completing all the required elements. In addition, learning how to use transitions to help the audience stay engaged and focused is another great skill we learned. To improve in future assignments I would plan in advance the slide layouts I will use to make sure the slides look cohesive but not repetitive.