Background

It’s kind of hard to say that I’m really from one place anymore. I was born in Canada and completed the majority of my schooling there, however, I spent a large portion of my childhood in the Middle East and over the past 13 years I’ve lived in Mexico, Central America, South America, South Korea, Japan and Thailand.

My original undergraduate education was in Business with a major in Finance, but for the past decade I have been working as a teacher; at the beginning, I was mostly teaching ESL but now I am mostly teaching content at a university in Thailand.  Along the way, I’ve taught in a variety of settings, including but not limited to: kindergarten, private academies, public and private elementary schools, corporate training, and adult education. At the moment, I am mostly teaching communication and introductory classes to the faculties of Business, Engineering, and Communication Arts; however I occasionally teach Academic Writing and 1st year English.

This is my 2nd year in the MET program and I am taking two courses this semester; I am also taking ETEC 510 and completed both 511 and 512 last semester. My reasons for entering the program were twofold: first of all, I want to improve my ability to use technology to enhance the quality of education in my classes; secondly, I would eventually like to work in the development of serious games and the use of augmented reality for learning.

Goals for ETEC 565A

The title for this course is ETEC 565A – Learning Technologies: Selection, Design and Application; the reason that I am taking this course is to develop my skills in these three areas.

Selection

As the rate of technology increases in a Kurzweil-like fashion, the growth of educational technology products has also increased. Once-new technologies such as facebook and WebCT are constantly being replaced by newer technologies, and as such, there is a need for educators to be able to correctly evaluate and incorporate these technologies into the learning environment. So far this semester I have already learned about the NETS and ISTE standards, as well as SECTIONS, and I look forward to developing my ability to use these standards through applying them to learning management systems (LMSs) and other learning technologies to evaluate the usage of technology in education.

Design

At the moment, my technical skills are pretty limited, so this is the area that I am mostly interested in; I am hoping to improve my design skills through the LMS module and digital media projects, in the hope that I will be able to transfer the design skills I gain through these projects towards the development of other educational technologies. Furthermore, I am looking forward to learning about different ways to incorporate the use of formative assessment through learning technologies.

Application 

As stated earlier, my technological skills in the classroom are quite basic aside from my usage of wikis to set up hybrid learning environments; up until now I’ve worked under the assumption that my university students are more advanced in their ability to use new technologies than I am -and I’ve been proven correct! Because of this, I am looking forward to being able to not only incorporate technologies such as Moodle and online collaboration tools into the learning environment, but also to learn how to re-design lessons so that the technologies improve the quality of the lesson or module.

Resources:

Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. (pp. 77-105). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.

Kurzweil, R. (2005). The Singularity is Near. New York: Viking Books.