Hi everyone! This is my first course in the MET program, so I have a lot that I would like to accomplish in the course and throughout the program. I am currently an elementary school teacher just starting out in my career. I have been teaching for three years in the Greater Victoria School district, l am currently teaching grade three. I love teaching primary (K-gr.3) aged children!

What lead me to enrol in the MET program was seeing first hand how technology affected my teaching style and improved the students interest in what they were learning. Last year, I was lucky enough to have a smart board in my classroom. I found it a great tool to teach children skills that they desperately needed that without the smart board they would have found boring or too juvenile (ex. skip counting). Not only that, but I found it such a great tool  and I found that I through using the smart board I was able to create much more engaging lessons for my students. My hopes for the future of our public school system, is that it becomes much more technology based and that technology could be infused into each subject.

Since this is my first MET course, my goals for this specific course are to really start to looking to ways that I can integrate technology into my primary classroom setting. As I a also new to the teaching profession, I am always busy trying new things with my class and tweaking lessons to make them better. I find myself very busy with this task, I can relate fully with many of the points made in the Bates and Poole (2003) The SECTIONS framework. The two that stand out the most for me are the E for ease of use, a technology needs to be easy for me to set up for my students and also easy enough for children aged 5-9 to be able to navigate somewhat independently. With working in the public school sector, the C for cost becomes a very relevant concern due to limited funding. I do feel that despite these concerns, I do really believe that adding technology to my teaching repertoire is work the extra time that it takes to set up. I feel really passionate about providing opportunities for my students where they can learn skills that will benefit them throughout their lives, and I believe that knowing how to use technology is an incredible asset for their futures.

I have come into this program knowing very little to nothing about LMS. As of yet, I am not sure how I can use LMS systems in my current teaching. I guess my goals for this class in regards to LMS are to learn more about LMS and to see how it could be used or adapted for a primary audience. However, from the little I know now about programs such as Moodle, I am excited to see what these systems have to offer in terms of assessments.

In this course, I have already learned an wealth of information that I can use in classroom just from reading the discussion boards. I am so excited to continue on this journey and get to know the other students in the program. I really hope to foster a similar environment in my classroom as this course does on the discussion boards through media (I am hesitant to say social media, as I teach to a young population who I am not sure I want to encourage to join Facebook etc). I find this course to be a great source of information and I am also currently scouring the web to find sources to supplement my learning. So far, I have found a great website that has articles targeted to the K-12 learning environment The Journal. Since I don’t know much about Moodle I suspect that I will be relying heavily on Youtube videos to quickly learn how Moodle can be applied when it comes time to do my assignments.

As I have already been in this class for just two short weeks, I have already begun to form and change my flightpath for this MET program. I would be interested to read this reflection in a year to see how my thoughts or direction have changed or not changed over time.