My first post in the ETEC 565 was an introduction:

This is my 3rd course in the MET program. I have previously taken ETEC 500 & ETEC 511. I’m also taking ETEC 510 this summer. It’s going to be a bit trying to get all the work done in both courses while teaching full time, especially as this time of year is quite busy, but I’ll give it my best!

I have been teaching, in one form or another, since 1999. This is the 5th country I’ve taught in – I love to travel and work abroad.

I am looking forward to learning more from everyone here, and the instructor, especially as I am currently managing/instructing in an online-only ICT 8 course, a Vancouver independent school.

I put this video “digital story” together for a different course, so I thought it would serve as a better introduction than my first post (it’s short!)

Transcript: Hi, my name is Chris Quarrie. I’m a teacher here in Vancouver. I started my teaching career as an ESL teacher in Japan, working for a large company called NOVA (the less said about them, the better). I then decided to get a teaching degree at UofT, and taught science in London England (that was a baptism by fire, for a science teacher!). I then decided it was time to try another country and I moved to New Zealand and taught science, math and electronics. I was then offered the opportunity to teach Grade 12 Ontario-curriculum Biology and Chemistry in Malaysia at a school called the Canadian International Matriculation Program. I taught there for seven years. About 4 years ago, I was given the opportunity to work in Vancouver at an independent school. It’s a great school, I’m here now, and I teach science and IT. As a science teacher, when it comes to technology, I’ve been doing things like having students create stop-motion videos for Biology class, and that’s been a lot of fun. They really enjoy doing those. I also use a lot of Google Drawings, Google Docs, Google Graphs: collaborative online programs. We have Google Apps for Education. I’ve also been spending a lot of time building iBooks using iBooks Author, which allows you to put in videos, 3D animations, links to websites… As an IT teacher, I teach an online-only Grade 8 course, which is broken into modules. I run that all year long and meet with the students about 5 times in a year. I also teach IT 9, where we do things like Photoshop, SketchUp and programming with robotics. I’m looking forward to meeting everyone, thank you!