My name is Kara Crowley and I am an intermediate teacher in Surrey, British Columbia. I have been teaching for four years, and have taught grades 5-7, including working as a teacher-librarian. I also work as a program leader for youth ages 13-18 at the New West Youth Centre in New Westminster.
My goals for taking the MET program is to learn new ways to mindfully incorporate technology into my teaching practices in order to motivate, engage and connect with my students.
When I first started teaching, I taught at inner city schools, where access to technology was extremely limited, and the technology that was available was out-dated and rarely worked. For the past two years I have been teaching at a very affluent school, which has Wi-Fi, a newer computer lab, an iPad cart, a Macbook cart, Smart board, and a projector and document camera in every classroom. Although it is amazing to have access to so many technological options, I have found that it can be easy for me to get caught up in the excitement of new devices and digital tools, and not put enough time into critically analyzing what it is that I want my students to learn, and how I want them to learn it. I also feel like I am not using the technology that is available, to its full potential, and so my goals for this course specifically are to actively incorporate the different tools that I learn from ETEC 565 into my class this year.
While I do not plan on teaching my own class through a Learning Management System, I would like to experiment with different LMS, as my only experience thus far has been through this program. I am interested to learn how I can adapt and modify different pieces of Learning Management Systems to work in my grade 6/7 classroom. I would also like to learn different assessment strategies, and how they can be incorporated for students with diverse learning styles and needs. In my own classroom, and through my work at the Youth Centre, I have seen first hand how social networking websites have become so prevalent in today’s student’s lives. My students are constantly connecting with one another through Apps like Snapchat, and websites such as Instagram and Facebook, and I am excited to learn about ways I can safely incorporate these websites or Apps into my teaching.
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has created “National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for teachers (2008) and students (2007), and I will use these standards to help guide me through this course. Other resources I will need to master these technologies would be support from my peers and instructor. I will also need to be open about trying new tools and keep in mind what my end goal is when incorporating these tools into my teaching.
References
International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). National educational technology standards for teachers. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/20-14_ISTE_Standards-T_PDF.pdf
International Society for Technology in Education. (2007). National educational technology standards for students. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/20-14_ISTE_Standards-S_PDF.pdf