Check-In:
Before setting a flight path for ETEC565A I believe it is important to Check-In and recognize where you are coming from.
If I could, I would be a forever-student. I love learning, part of the main reason I love to teach. That and the school supplies, I love the variety of pens, pencils, and erasers. I began my post secondary education at Simon Fraser University; I did not last long there, so I will by-pass this time. Once I went back to school I attended Douglas College to complete the first two years of my first degree. After a year, I had a Diploma of Sport Science. I then moved on to UBC where I continue returning for more schooling. While first at UBC I completed my Bachelor of Human Kinetics with a focus in Physical Education and a concentration in English. During this time I also took a handful of mathematics courses, but stopped before earning enough credit to claim another minor. Afterwards, I was off to the Faculty of Education to complete my Bachelor of Education, with a secondary option focused in Physical Education and English. During the completion of my BEd I was fortunate to be in a cohort of 30 peers for the duration of the 12 months.
It has been a small group of colleagues from this cohort that have been my support and that first helped me develop my Personal Learning Network (PLN). With such a diverse teaching experience if there was anything I was struggling with content wise, or otherwise, I now I can count on them to jump in an help. With them I continue my learning experience.
A couple of years ago I discovered Twitter. I became immersed in the possibilities of Twitter as an expansion of my PLN. It has helped me reflect on my teaching practices and my educational philosophies. As a result, I feel that my teaching practices are student-centered and more diverse addressing the learning needs of the students I am helping prepare for their future in the “real-world.”
Take-Off:
In the short term my goals are predominantly focused on the classroom. I would like to integrate more technology into the class. Within the alternate program I teach at I have begin to recognize that through the integration of technology students become more engaged. With their diverse ability and confidence levels it can be a struggle to make individual lessons meaningful to them. To accomplish this I would like to learn about various sites and applications that are supported on netbooks, something I have available to use in my classroom. To further accomplish this, I would like to be able to share my knowledge with my colleagues, to help inspire them with the integration of technology into their classes. Yet, to inspire my students to learn and to inspire my colleagues to adopt technology I need to start with accomplishing my own goals; to challenge myself to become a better teacher using passion-based learning and incorporating more technology to build an online identity, including social media and some form of LMS models.
In-Flight:
In the long term my goals are more fluid in nature. I see myself as a educational technology specialist, being able to provide support and to act as a consultant to other instructors within my school district. Then again, I do see myself as a forever-student, so does my fiancé, and we both see me completing a PhD. With the ultimate goal to them take my knowledge and experience overseas to Europe to live and teach. Yet, I do not want to forget, one of my initial thoughts when completing my BHKin was to become a post-secondary instructor at a university. This I can see as a potential stepping-stone to teaching overseas.
The ultimate intention of completing a Masters of Educational Technology is to improve my accreditation; and to provide me with the opportunity to gain the skills and the knowledge necessary to further my career.
Landing:
To conduct smooth landings, to arrive safely at ones destination, the pilot is required to be familiar with a variety of instruments and tools. To achieve my short term and long term goals there will be a variety of tools needed that cannot be predicted. However, throughout this course I would like to spend my time focusing on blogging platforms, on platforms, which provide asynchronous and synchronous capabilities for students to work together, and on creating multiple delivery methods for my class content. At this moment, I am uncertain how to incorporate other complex LMSs models to attain my goals.
I am certain that throughout this course my thoughts will evolve, my knowledge will continue to expand, and my bar will be set high. With each take-off and flight there will be new adventures to be had.
“No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris.” Orville Wright (http://wrightbrothers.info/quotes.php)