My experience with distanced education has been mixed, to put it lightly. I graduated high school before COVID, so I dodged most distance learning for my high school--however, I watched my sister experience it, and it was a mess. My school district is small and pretty poor, so it couldn't be expected that all students would have access to technology from home. Instead of switching to an online model, the school sent out educational packets. These packets were identical for all students, regardless of what classes they were taking, and I don't think that they were graded. It was a bleak time. For myself, my distanced learning in K-12 was limited to a handful of online classes--nutrition, driver's ed, and a few college-level math courses. None of these relied heavily on recorded material. For the most part, these classes involved me reading brief passages and completing homework online. I've never clicked with online classes. To me, they don't feel "real" enough, and I'm much more distracted working through those types of lessons than I would be in a classroom setting.

Open education resources are teaching materials designed to be available for free to the public, including for use by teachers in a classroom. These materials, including textbooks and lesson plans, can be used as-is or adapted to fit the needs of the classroom. This system removes many traditional barriers for education--mainly, cost--and creates a body of educational material that is accessible to anyone with Internet access. I have personally used the American Yawp, an open education US history textbook.

I enjoyed working on this last project. PowerPoint is fun to play with, and I generally enjoy topics that allow me to use technology as an excuse to make a presentation about a topic I have an interest in. Making the presentation was a breeze. My hang-up was in recording myself. I get easily flustered when reading out something that I've written. A lot of the information that I discussed in the presentation is stuff that I've talked about before, but I was more nervous having to record and edit myself than I was talking about it in person.


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