Pinterest in the Classroom

I am familiar with the idea of Pinterest and have many friends who use it, but I have never considered using it to collect ideas for my future classroom. I have never created different boards either, but I enjoyed learning how to categorize different pins in this activity. I think I will definitely use my account as a teacher to collect ideas for lesson plans, student activities, and even just cute design ideas for my classroom decorations. One huge strength of Pinterest is the variety of materials available. Since users from all over the world can post, Pinterest is a great location to share ideas and collect resources. Another strength of Pinterest is the search bar - you can search any topic and find numerous pins, and the results are surprisingly accurate. I also like how it shows other similar posts once you choose to pin something. One challenge of using Pinterest is that the links do not always work. A pin will have an awesome looking picture of an activity, but the link does not lead anywhere. This is frustrating when I was really curious about the idea. Another challenge is that Pinterest sends a ton of email spam. I am going to update my settings to receive less of these, but no social media site should ever need to send that many emails, regardless of how much users like them! In general, I really enjoyed setting up Pinterest boards! I am glad to have the resources collected and plan to continue searching for my future classroom activities. I think Pinterest is a great asset for any serious educator!

Khan/Koller Review

     Sal Khan created Khan Academy, an educational organization which offers online lectures for anyone. I have actually used Khan Academy myself to supplement my learning in higher education math and science courses. It's incredibly useful, easy to use, and best of all, free. The videos are short but clear, and they include examples in each one. I would love to use Khan Academy in my future classroom as well. I may just suggest the website to my students for personal use, or I may include it in my curriculum. It would be extremely beneficial for a high school math class if students could watch videos of the material at home on their own time, reviewing it as much as necessary, as this would free up class time to work on example problems together. Being available to help students during the problem solving process is critical if teachers are to correct misconceptions and answer questions along the way. 

     Sal Khan also believes that future generations will rely more on "credentialing" from online courses rather than traditional university degrees. This would be beneficial in that it allows for very specialized instruction, and it would be more accessible for students who do not have the financial means for higher education or those students who don't want to relocate. It also allows incredible flexibility with scheduling since online coursework can be done anytime when a student has access to a computer and the internet. 

     Daphne Koller created Coursera, another online program that offers lectures and courses to students anywhere. Koller's website uses videos recorded by professors from top universities, and offers a large variety of subject areas. I used Coursera in the past to review Calculus from an Ohio State professor, and it was very easy to navigate and helpful for covering content I haven't studied for several years. I think I would also enjoy taking a course on social media marketing, as this is sure to be a necessary skill for future generations. For now, courses are not eligible for transfer credit at Columbus State or Ohio State, but they still offer a great opportunity to supplement university coursework. As far as level of difficulty, Coursera courses seem to offer the same challenge that a normal course would. They do carry the name of top universities in the country, but I still believe the curriculum is the same. These so called MOOCs, massive open online courses, may be the wave of the future since they can reach large numbers of students from anywhere in the world in a very efficient manner. This is incredibly cost effective for the student, and can also allow for greater flexibility for students who have to work a job along with college courses. I hope to see this greater scheduling flexibility and increased access to a variety of courses and universities be accepted as commonplace in the years to come. 

Exploring Standards-Based Lesson Plans

     For this week's assignment, I explored several mathematics lesson plans based on Ohio state standards. In the future, I hope to be licensed to teach students in grades 7-12. One class I may teach in this age range is Algebra, and I found an interesting lesson plan for Algebra students. This particular lesson plan will probably work best for students in grades 7 or 8.