As a culminating activity for etec 511, we asked the class to write a reflection about Spirituality and ET or just about their experiences with this course.\u00a0 It seems fitting that I should be writing this as I am at the end of my MET journey.<\/p>\n
Many students know that I am leaving for Australia to teach for a year starting in the new year.\u00a0 That is the main reason I have chosen not to continue beyond my Grad certificate at this time.\u00a0 My husband is encouraging me to continue when we return.\u00a0 I am undecided.\u00a0 Being an online student is very distracting, if nothing else.\u00a0 Since Sept 2009, I’ve spent most of my free time at the computer, reading countless discussion posts and learning a lot about my approach to teaching using technology.\u00a0 In the process, I discovered I am a social learner, preferring to read others’ understanding of our assigned readings and enjoying the opportunity to discuss, even if asynchronously, my ideas, reflections and experiences.<\/p>\n
Educational technology has changed tremendously since I started teaching in the late 80s.\u00a0 Back then, the prof at the faculty of Ed was thrilled to show us the Olivetti wordprocessor she had purchased for us to use and learn to teach.\u00a0 Computers in the classroom consisted of networked Icons or Mac Classics, nothing that resembled the corporate world I had just come out of.\u00a0 Later on, when I took my first online university course (a Godsend for a single mother), the course consisted mostly of questions to answer and research to post.\u00a0 Very little discussion was possible as we spent more time researching than reading each other’s posts.\u00a0 Not really discussion, even though they called it that.<\/p>\n
Eventually, I was part of some interesting projects such as creating a webquest for the school board and writing their first online courses.\u00a0 I also got to review online courses from around the province – a very enlightening experience.\u00a0 The Ministry of Education wanted to create a resource repository and a series of online courses to allow students from even the most remote areas to access quality (and diverse) education.\u00a0 I thought I was very well equipped to participate in this initiative and felt it would be a perfect evolution of my career.\u00a0 Which is the path that lead me to MET.<\/p>\n
In these months I have come to realize I had a lot of rich experience to offer but I had little theoretical background to ensure my course design was pedagogically sound.\u00a0 What I had done by intuition has been validated by much of the learning theory I have acquired in this program, and hopefully, my skills have grown and deepened as a result of this experience.<\/p>\n
As I end this journey, I continue to believe that we have so much to offer each other, either as a community of practice or just to validate each other’s ideas.\u00a0 And again, I am reminded that it’s the process that teaches us, not the product of our work.\u00a0 It’s a lesson that I have to internalize and ensure it colours my own teaching activities.<\/p>\n
I wish you all a wonderful and fruitful journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a culminating activity for etec 511, we asked the class to write a reflection about Spirituality and ET or just about their experiences with this course.\u00a0 It seems fitting that I should be writing this as I am at the end of my MET journey. Many students know that I am leaving for Australia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":896,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2928],"tags":[2197,1838,1311,217,558],"class_list":["post-258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etec-511","tag-discussion","tag-met","tag-social-networking","tag-spirituality","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cteachr565b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cteachr565b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cteachr565b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cteachr565b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/896"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cteachr565b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cteachr565b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":261,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cteachr565b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions\/261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cteachr565b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cteachr565b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cteachr565b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}