Hi! I’m Eileen Monks. Born and raised in Kelowna, BC, I completed my undergrad degree at UVic, and currently live in Courtenay, BC. I am an intermediate teacher (4/5 this year), but have taught grades K through 9, both in brick and mortar schools as well as distributed and blended learning situations. I am the mother of two teenaged girls, who are by far the best part of my life.

While I sit here and think about the journey that has brought me to the MET program and to ETEC 565a specifically, I realize how fortunate I have been where computers and technology are concerned. Computers and electronics have pretty much always played a large role in my personal life, and an on-again, off-again importance of my professional side. When I was just a kid, my aunt and uncle opened one of the first computer stores in BC. I was fortunate to work there as a teen, learning and building my love for ‘the newest thing’, technology. It was also there that I did my first form of teaching, tutoring adults and troubleshooting their program problems. Over the years I have done a number of jobs, all using computers in one way or another. When I turned my sights to teaching, I made a conscious decision to try to incorporate what I knew about computers and technology into my classroom. Utilizing tools to strengthen my abilities as a teacher and building on the diversity and strengths of my students to promote their learning successes.

I had often considered a Master’s program, but did not want to go into just any program. I began searching for a program that was a right-fit for me. Now that I had been practicing teaching for so long, I had experiences and a personal pedagogy to build on. I felt that the formal structures, theories and concepts of the MET program was just that fit and would provide practical skills and understandings to help me create a stronger, more robust classroom.

I have completed 3 of the 4 core courses in the MET program and was excited to take ETEC 565a. Most of what I know about technology and computer-based tools comes from hands-on informal, self-taught methods. I am interested in not only exploring more technologies which may be relevant to teaching, but having the formal training and education to back up my decisions. While in this course, my specific goals are to become more familiar with Learning Management Systems (LMS) in the hopes of finding one which suits my needs and those of my students. Although I have used two systems before (D2L and Moodle), I feel that I have only scratched the surface of a LMS’ capabilities. I am also interested in the aspect of exploring tools and technologies which improve assessment and feedback for my students. Both of these areas have become focal points in our school district and being armed with more experience and understanding of a variety of tools for these areas is always valuable for promotion of student success.

As an additional hope, I am also interested in exploring speech technologies and interfaces. Last term I created a research proposal on speech recognition tools which showed me how little research has been done in this area. A portion of the reason has been limited capabilities and user-friendliness of the current programs. I am confident that over time stronger, more powerful software will emerge and as with other tools and technologies I would like to learn how to assess their capabilities, strengths and weaknesses quicker and easier. With a solid framework under my belt to support my decisions would allow me to progress with confidence and sound reasoning.

I am very excited to investigate all that this course has to offer. I relish the idea of working with my peers, exchanging ideas and findings, exploring on our journey together while we are all involved in learning.