Educator's United

Learning analytics can be described as the process of collecting, analyzing, and reporting data about learners or students actions/accomplishments within a leaning platform. Learning analytics can be useful to teachers when structing classroom instruction as well as identifying students of special needs who might need extra attention. One disadvantage is that learning analytics does not give the reasons to student extended work rather it just brands an outlier. In this term, it forces a classroom average rather than allowing for student individuality. Spreadsheets help educators analyze and organize data effectively. I can benefit from learning analytics in my future as an educator by using it to focus on harder concepts in my classroom based on data gathered through leaner analytics.

Distance learning is a method of teaching where there is no in-person interaction and today this usually conducted over the internet which brings up online learning. Online learning is simply the use of educational tools to supplement learning. Nearly all distance learning comes in the form of online learning but not all online learning environments are also considered distance learning. This is because many educators blend online learning resources (Khan Academy) into their actual classrooms which involve in-person interactions. Tools being used in distance learning vary as long they accommodate a form of correspondence. Today the most common form is the internet through emails or even conferences. In online learning, internet resources are required because it seeks to supplement education with technology that relies on the internet. Teachers in both online and distance learning require skills in navigating the online world.

I used my internet searching skills in various ways. In order to find tips i had put teacher and presentation in quotation marks so all resources that popped up would include those words. I also used the file type operator to find all PowerPoint that were teacher presentations.  I learned a lot from the resources presented on Diigo and the ones I found on my own. I learned that too many words can over saturate a slide. It is best to use big images with big words so that they are more appealing and easier to follow. I also learned that one must use the PowerPoint as guide not a script because it dulls the presentation. In the PPT that I found, there were way too many slides with too many words. They could have simplified the text or plainly just split the text into multiple slides. The slides were to uniform and it was difficult to notice any major change. Many slides were left without images which made it seem too boring and made me lose much of my attention.