Who I am, my experiences and my goals for ETEC 565 and MET:
My name is Lynnette Earle. I am in my fifth year of teaching and loving it! I did my B.Ed. at the University of Alberta where they have a technology in the classroom required graduation component. I took the course and felt like I’d use almost everything I learned. Then I got a job and discovered that all I had was a whiteboard and an overhead projector. “Great!,” I said, “going back to the stone age! Now what do I do?” So I adapted and survived. Then the school decided that we were all going to get full projectors. This time “Sweet!” was my response, until I realized that everything I had previously spent time on, was now useless, especially since someone else, who wasn’t getting a projector, needed my overhead projector. Again, I adapted and am getting along just fine; however, I feel that I don’t use the tools to their full potential.
In the summer of 2009 I began my 5th year at UVIC to increase my salary and professional development. That summer I took a course that was delivered online where we learned how to make a website using only html code. I thought it was great because I was going to make something I could use in my own classroom. However, that never happened. I did not like my final product a month later when school started. I finished my 5th year in the summer of 2010 and then took a year to decide what master’s program I wanted to get into.
That being said, since I still wanted to improve my technology lacking classroom, I decided to enroll in the MET program. In general, my main goal in the MET program is that I want to learn how to integrate technologies that are going to last, that are not novel, into my classroom. I would like to be able to offer blended courses where I work in order to extend the classroom to my students’ homes. Specifically for ETEC 565, I want to build an online component for my Spanish 12 class.
What I want to learn about LMS, assessment, social software and multimedia…
Honestly, everything! Realistically, the basics. In terms of an LMS, I want to learn how to use and create a course component using Moodle. I would like to learn how to set up listening tasks with assessment questions to follow, both speaking production and interaction tasks, reading and writing tasks that are dependent upon one another, as well as learn to set up modules that not only explain the units and what is expected of the students, but include text and oral/aural lessons.
As for assessment, I mainly want to learn how to create assessment tools for my students that provide them with instant feedback. These assessments would be primarily formative. In addition, I would like to learn how to imbed audio and/or audio visual components to assess my students speaking ability for larger projects that can be shared/viewed by others in the class. I would also like to have my students start e-portfolios as most of my Spanish 12 students are planning on continuing their language learning into university.
I would like to learn as much as possible about social software. Specifically, I’d like to learn (more) about wikis, real time editors such as Google Docs, social bookmarking such as del.icio.us, and podcasting. For this course (ETEC565), I would like to focus on podcasting as a new social software tool to learn.
I believe that multimedia is embedded in the assignments laid out for this course, but I would like to make sure that I learn how to incorporate it into what I am creating.
What resources will I need…?
- Spanish 12 level textbook: Descubre 1 and Descubre 2, Realidades 2, Dime 2
- Spanish 12 level short novel (undecided)
- Webcam: check
- Microphone: check
- Secure website
- Course plan
References:
Learning Management System. (n.d.) Retrieved January 8, 2012 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_management_system
Warr, W. (2008). Social software: fun and games, or business tools? Journal of Information Science, 34 (4), pp. 591–604. doi: 10.1177/0165551508092259