I am a middle school teacher who works in Southern BC and have taught at the grade 6 and 7 level for the last 8 years. I really enjoy the energy and challenges that my students bring. I enjoy incorporating a high degree of technology into my teaching practice and find that I can use technology to not only make my job as a teacher easier, but I can also make the learning experiences for my students more meaningful. I am fortunate enough to have access to a wide range of technology tools within my school. We are a Smart school with smartboards in every classroom. We are also fortunate enough to have 3 mobile laptop labs as well as 2 iPad labs for use in our school; our staff as a whole is quite tech savvy and willing to collaborate on projects. I use a Smart Board and the Notebook software to develop interactive lesson plans. I am comfortable doing this and have gotten quite good at creating notebook files and often teach other staff members in our district to use and troubleshoot their Smartboards and Notebook software. I also use the Response system that works within Notebook in order to move towards paperless math assignments and assessments. In the past 2 years I have also started to incorporate commercial games such as Minecraft into my classroom to allow students to collaborate together to complete projects. What my students have taught me is that with the right technology along with creativity and collaboration middle school students can create amazing things. This is what I want and need more of in my classroom; tools that can engage my students and unleash their creativity to enhance their learning, and mine in the process.
As I embark on the on the second half of my MET journey I am finding that my focus is shifting. I have taken several courses now where the focus is on the pedagogy behind incorporating technology into our classrooms. I believe that I have enough of a base here to now start focusing on how to best incorporate technology into my classroom in the most meaningful way possible. In terms of goals for this course, I would like to learn more about and ‘play around’ with a few different learning management systems. While I have been exposed to a variety of different options throughout previous courses, I would like to be able to find and analyze a few options that I could easily incorporate into my teaching practice and are appropriate for my students. Additionally I would like to learn how to use my classroom blog in a more efficient and effective way beyond a communication tool and actually use it as a teaching tool. Furthermore, I would like to incorporate more elements of a flipped classroom into my practice and need inspiration and ideas as to how I can make that happen.