Educational Resources Online

Good online instructional materials has lots of credibility and is easy to access. It it made with well cited references and recent information and statistics. I found an materials on Merlot such as mindgatemedia.com, webengishteacher.com, and teachingenglish.org.uk. These websites had very up-to-date information and it was all very relevant to the topic I was writing on. I can use some of these sources as articles with good information and others are good for a whole website of writing techniques. I can take information and use it in a classroom setting or even use these techniques to better my teaching skills.

Shown above is a graphic organizer of what makes a good or bad online source. Unknown sources are bad because you have no credibility. Without credibility a bit of information could be true or false. The audience you are presenting to may not believe you and you may be fooled yourself. Recent sources are also necessary because outdated information is almost the same as providing false information. If nothing else, using outdated sources is providing useless information. This week was very informative and I feel like I got a better understanding of internet sources. I also gained a knowledge of where to look and how to use good online sources!

Educators Say Australian Government Must Do More to Slow Drop in International Students

http://chronicle.com/article/Educators-Say-Australian/124994/

This article was about the need for more international funding and support from Australian Governments and international students. The article made it clear that specifically the English-teaching department is short on students and if the problem persists it will be crippling to the country. This article is relevant to my career because it concerns the english education department. I have a great interest here because I am taking up english and I plan to travel to Australia next spring. This program is discussing ways to make it easier for students in the english department to study abroad there. This could very much affect the way that my visit goes. I may receive more funding, a better education, and even a better cultural experience than students before me. 

Use of instructional tools for collaborative learning

I feel like these instructional videos were very helpful for my own personal use. Using these types of videos will not only be an easy way to present assignments, but also a way of making learning a little more entertaining. I plan to use this technology in my future educational journey as a creative change in the classroom and maybe even as a group project for a better understanding of working together. I feel like my group and I worked very hard together and we got a little more experience with sharing and understanding each other's viewpoints. These things are important values that I hope I can bring into my classroom!

Instructional Video Project

If I could start over I probably wouldn't change much. My group was very prompt with our filming and we got plenty of footage for the project. The filming itself went very smoothly and I had a lot of fun. I was pretty disappointed with the way that the editing went. If we hadn't thought we lost the footage we wouldn't have wasted so much time re-filming and waiting for our original to get to us. I would've put more time into the editing had we been more prepared in that area.


For future videos I might work more with outside people. Filming people other than group members seems to be a great way to get a bit of culture in the videos. I think for the next film I'll want to use a different resource for editing. Ours was pretty inconvenient because it was only available to us on one computer at specified hours.


Aside from all that it was a fun project!

Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons

Learning about copyright this week was very helpful for me. I understand that there are laws on protecting original material, but I'll admit that I wasn't exactly sure how those laws applied. Becoming a teacher, these laws are very important not only because I should set an example for the kids I teach, but also because it will be important for me to pass this knowledge on to them.


This topic has already applied to my life in many situations, and I'm sure that it will affect my teaching techniques to come. Following a copyright is now important to me with the understanding that someone ultimately owns the material they have posted or published. They must be credited for their work. With fair use I'll be able to present material that is relevant to class topics without concern of being a bad example or breaking any copyright laws. In other cases I may use my own creative commons or encourage my kids to do so. Regardless of the outcome I am happy to say that I understand the rules regarding this issue and I am confident that I can pass this information on to many generations to come.