Hello all, My name is Kimberlee Noel, and I am from Paradise Newfoundland. Please accept my apologies for weighing in a little late this week, but I was on a family vaction to Florida, and have just returned. I currently work as the Learning Resource/Technology teacher at a K-6 school. However, I have also taught as […]
Continue reading Hello from Newfoundland! Posted in: Uncategorized
Salutations from Kelowna (BC) to all my fellow ETEC 522 comrades. Currently I am taking 522 and 511, my 6th and 7th courses in the MET program. It seems like just yesterday I was a newbie and terms like scaffolding, digital natives and connectivism were mystifying. If you’re a newbie, please don’t let those words […]
Continue reading Salutations from Steve Posted in: Uncategorized
Hi Steve,
I have the (almost) perfect example of a teacher community for you. Art Ed 2.0 (arted20.ning.com) is an active community of over 11,000 art teachers. Many excellent resource and lots of small groups and sharing.
We love the drive-in too. My husband and I drove by at 7:30 p.m. opening night on our way back from Kelowna and were very tempted. Next time:)
Hi Claire,
Thanks for the site! It looks very vibrant and I can’t wait to explore once my membership is accepted…still pending. Its great to see a community of teachers sharing ideas and working together. Are you actively involved in the site?
My wife and I are going tomorrow night…The Three Stooges and This Means War are playing. Looks to be a fun night. Maybe we will see you there. We will have the big white dog, its hard to miss us!
Hi Steve,
I haven’t posted to discussions or contributed resources since last May when I started taking two MET courses at a time.
Very tempting to take the night off and head for the drive-in. We always go early so we can claim our favourite spot just a few rows back and right in the centre. Maybe we’ll see you there.
Hi Claire,
That’s our favorite spot! I wonder if we have shared many a movie, side by side. I look forward to running into you at the drive-in this summer.
Hi Steve,
Your venture to crate a system of collaboration for teachers sounds like a great project to work on during this course. With fellow MET colleagues we created a course designed to help ESL teachers reflect on their teaching through journaling. I have begun a blog which I hope can become a place where teachers can share their teaching and learning experiences, but I too am not sure how to make it fly . . . honestly there is so much out there that it is difficult for teachers to find a venue that they can relate to and also find the time to be part of a community.
I wish you luck and hope your project works out! I look forward to seeing how your venture progresses during this course.
Marie-France
Hi Marie-France.
Journaling is a great idea for personal reflection on teaching and I, myself, have achieved considerable learning through this process. Congrats on your blog! I agree that making these sites fly can be a challenge. I have reviewed a lot of literature on different teacher community sites, and the studies seem to agree that they need to have a strong draw for teachers. They seem to emphasize the need to create a fun, vibrant, supportive and interesting place that teachers want to visit. This is why I was wondering if a social pin board that would link teachers to all sorts of resources posted by peers like humor cartoons, posters, stories, or shared tips and tricks of the trade, to classroom gadgets/technology to more professional sites like blogs and small formal interest groups would create such an environment. It could be a jumping off point to different ideas and resources that would be organized within a highly visual and interactive environment (containing comments, ratings, etc.) allowing teachers to peruse alot of possibilities without going into great depth on any of them….until the teacher was ready to focus their attention on the relevant and personally important sites. If your wondering what I am talking about, try visiting Pinterest.com if you haven’t already. I would love to hear what you think!
Hey Mac!
Good to see you again! It does seem like yesterday that you were a newbie :)! You are just motoring through the program … good for you. Looking forward to working and learning with you again.
gillian
Hi Steve,
I’m also taking ETEC 511 this term so perhaps I will see you there as well 🙂
Interestingly, as part of ETEC 510 last term, my group and I worked on creating an online resource community for teachers like the one you have described. We were also concerned with the fact that most of these ventures tend to end up like ghost towns. It is interesting however, to note that within our ETEC courses, there is such an active group of online collaboraters – people who participate actively in the METs Ning community as well as on certain course project communities such as the ETEC510 Wiki. And looks like this course will be yet another active place where we can all share our expertise and experiences 🙂
Looking forward to working with you,
Sheza
Hi Sheza,
I haven’t “seen” you in my section ‘A’. You must be in the next section. I agree that we are lucky to be a part of such a vibrant and active community of learners. Unfortunately, I think many of these resource sites have great intentions but fail to motivate teachers to visit or participate. Maybe these ghost town sites are just too serious, is it possible we need to make them more fun and interactive and therefore more appealling? I am hoping to create a social pin board site that would draw teachers into causal sharing of interesting sites on humor, videos and personal blogs while mixed in with more meaningful links to specific resources or study groups. I certainly haven’t perfected my pitch, but I am working on it.
How are you liking the new Connect format. Personally, my head is hurting with the new stream format of posts, although I am sure I will be used to it.
Cheers, Mac
Greetings all: I am looking forward to learning with you all through this course. It is one of my 5th and 6th MET courses I am taking this semester (also taking 530). Nice to see a few familiar names but I look forward to getting to know each of you. I am a senior secondary […]
Continue reading Hello from Tim Roos Posted in: Uncategorized
Hey Tim;
I will have to bounce some ideas off of you as I am the new technology coordinator for our school this coming year. No-one has been doing it before me. We will see how it goes. Enjoy the term.
Dennis
Hi Dennis:
I’d be glad to help where I can. So far my experiences have been a combination of installing/integrating hardware such as projectors, interactive whiteboards, document cameras and doing Pro-D sessions on Moodle use and interactive whiteboard use.
Tim
Hi Tim. We took ETEC 500 together last semester. Nice to see you again. Looking forward to working with you again this semester.
Hi Colin
It will take some adjustment to do a course in blog format but I look forward to the challenge and contribution of all of us.
Tim
Hi Tim,
You’re in a K-12 school? I’d like to hear about how that works!
Which science courses are you taking? I bet that using tech tools makes those subjects easier to teach! There are some abstract concepts in higher-level chemistry and physics that are much easier to explain with the help of graphics and animations.
Hi Danielle:
The K-12 school concept works great for us. We have a total of about 400 students separated into three main buildings. We share computer labs, music and art facilities and gym. Under one main administrative umbrella we have vice principals for each of the three sections.
I am currently teaching Science 10, Chemistry 11 and 12 and Biology 11 and 12 as science courses. I also teach Math Principles 12. Technology access has definitely made teaching more interesting for both the teacher and the student. I’ve also used animations in Biology with good success. I also have an extensive set of Pasco Probeware that I try to integrate in labs. Next year I am looking forward to using a class set of dedicated netbooks in my instruction. Really looking forward to see how that goes.
Tim
Good seeing you again Tim.
Hi Chris
Our project in 511 seemed to work out well. I look forward to working with you again in this course.
Tim
Hi Tim,
Good to see another science/math teacher.
Looking forward to working with you.
Bridget
Hi Tim,
Great to see you again! You are going to love 530. Take some time to get to know Von Glaserfeld as he has some interesting points of view on teaching science. I am looking forward to working with you again.
Cheers, Mac
Hi Everyone! I made up a quick app for the course this morning. You can get it if you point your phone’s browser to http://ibuildapp.com/projects.php?action=info&projectid=235609 or you could try to scan the QR code If you have any suggestions about what you would like to have included in the app, please just let me know! FYI, […]
Continue reading ETEC 522 App Posted in: Blog Café
Nicely Done Kenton!!
Heh, slick!
dat’s l337! 🙂
That is awesome Kenton. I want to do that!!!
Dennis
Hi Dennis, it is nice to see you again!
If you are interested, the program I used is found at ibuildapp.com. It is fairly easy to create as long as everthing is already on the web, no need to program. Another option that works is a site called appmakr.com again easy to use but you will need to know some programming to get the phone to do more than just show rss feeds, its kind of a pain but with practice it gets better.
I have to say I prefer ibuildapp for its easy of use over appmakr but I think that there is more you can do with appmakr if you are good at programming.
K
That’s pretty sweet, particularly the ease of the QR. Any chance of tweaking it for the iPAd?
I’ll have a look and see what I can do. I currently don’t own an iPad or any tablet for that matter so I’m not sure how it looks as is on them, but I’ll try and tweak it a little bit. As always, with things like this, it is a work in progress and can only get better!
Neat stuff, Kenton! I’m porting some Android apps (apk) to Playbook (bar) over the summer. I might be able to port your native app to Playbook if there is a demand. 🙂
Not too confident that this one will hit a million downloads, but feel free to do with it what you want! I guess we will have to wait and see if it is useful for people first.
Excellent! Great share.
Awesome! I put xCode on my Mac and tried once to get building but gave up before I got anywhere. Any suggestions for skill development?
Sorry Chelsea, I am not much of a programmer, I tend to find sites and web 2.0 applications that I can use and modify for my personal benefit! I have tried to do some coding but have no experience with xCode or Macs in general. I do know that Apple does offer some online tutorials and support for people wanting to learn how to use xCode and make their own apps. I think too, a lot of getting better at programming and creating apps is practice and refining, its not going to be perfect the first time, you just need to keep trying.
Hey thanks – added this to the iPhone. One of the benefits of taking a course entirely on WordPress rather than the LMS is that is instantly becomes mobile friendly. Great work Knewton.
I agree! I really like how WP renders on the smaller screen without a hassle.
Side note: Has anyone had any problems accessing any of the pages?
Hey Dennis. I viewed the app on my phone and it looks great. I have an Android phone though … how do I put it on my phone? (Sorry … a little technically challenged here …)
gillian
Hi Kenton,
Wow! I’m impressed! Thanks for creating this app.
Cheers,
Adriana
Thanks, Kenton! Much appreciated.
Deborah
Good stuff Kenton!
Hello Kenton
Thanks for the application. I am using both systems iOS and Android. I tried the application on iOS ( iphone) and it is working properly. I haven’t tried it with my Android tablets. It is an interesting application.
Thanks
Nice work Kenton! I wonder if I’ve missed something since I can’t find the entry to install it (only can view it in safari). Isn’t it supposed to redirect me to somewhere with a “Install” button? Sorry I’m a newbie of iPhone. Tell me the steps pls, can’t wait to use it.
Thanks!
You are going to have to open it in safari for the iPhone and then add it as a bookmark to the home page. Its not like a normal app store app in that it needs to be installed, its just a web-based app at the moment.
Thank you Kenton, I got it. 🙂
Really cool stuff – Thanks Kenton 🙂
Hi Everyone My Name is Dave Horn and I am currently teaching Senior Sciences and Mathematics at a small school in Vancouver. Starting currently and continuing onto next year, I’ll become the director of educational technology and will be responsible for developing the e-Learning program at our school. It is for this new admin role […]
Continue reading Hello Everyone Posted in: Uncategorized
Hi Dave,
Congratulations on your new role! I think we took ETEC 512 or 511 together in Fall 2011.
Let’s have a great semester together!
Cheers,
Karon Wong
Hi Karon
Nice to “see” another familiar face.
Dave
Congrats on your new role Dave.
Looking forward to learning with you this semester.
Leonora
Great costume. You must have been in a full sweat wearing it!
Actually it was my brother who both built it and had to wear it, though I did help him some refinements around the edges of the sheet metal so that he didn’t inadvertently cut off his arms. I was very impressed that he had fabricated it.
Hi Dave. Nice to “see” you again!
Janet B.
HI Dave,
Nice to see you again. Your new role at your school sounds interesting. Congratulations!
Claire
Dave,
Thanks for sharing your photo blog. Some great pics in there!
Your new admin role sounds very exciting and very well suited to this course and the MET program in general. Good luck with it all.
gillian
Hi Dave, nice to meet you! The costume is hilarious! You could definitely market these, and of course offer a discount to METers! 😀 Looking forward to working with you! Danielle
Hi Dave,
Awesome photographs Dave!! You’ve captured some great images. Thanks for sharing them.
Adriana
My name is Leonora Zefi and I live in Toronto. My background is in teaching/training and most of my career I have worked with adult learners. Currently I work at the Continuing Education Department at Ryerson University where I am involved in designing, teaching and evaluating blended and fully online courses that focus mainly on […]
Continue reading Introduction – Leonora Zefi Posted in: Uncategorized
Hello Leonora,
You’re almost done with your MET courses! It’s nice to see that what you have learned in the courses has been valuable towards your daily work. Looking forward to working with you.
Hi Donna,
It’s hard to believe but it’s my ninth course….It took me a while to decide on a Master’s program but I am glad that I found one that is so applicable to what I do.
Leonora
Hi Leonora,
Wow! It’s your ninth course, you must be excited to start your graduate project soon 🙂
It’s nice meeting you, I look forward in having a great semester with you!
Karon
Nice meeting you too Karon.
Leonora
Hi Leonora,
It is nice to meet you, hopefully you will be able to share some of the insights you have gained through this program with us as we work through the assignments! Looking forward to working with you.
I look forward to working with everybody and sharing my experience.
Leonora
Hi Leonora
Nice to see you again. Congrats on being almost finished! I look forward to working with you again this term.
Valerie
Likewise Valerie,
It’s a pleasure to work with you again.
Leonora
Hi again Leonora. We were in 540 together last fall. Nice to learn with you again. Just home from a trip into the big T.O. Love to learn more about your work at Ryerson.
Helen
It’s great to see you again Helen. I have enjoyed your insightful posts in 540.
Best,
Leonora
Hi Leonora,
You have the dream job I hope to have some day . . . I would love to design, teach and evaluate blended and online courses within a higher learning institution! I think there is so much potential for institutional ventures related to learnign technologies. I have certainly learned a lot so far within this MET program and hope that it will serve me well as I embark on my new career path.
I look forward to learning and sharing experiences with you over the course of the term.
Marie-France
Marie-France
Hi Marie-France,
I am lucky to do what I love (minus the headaches of dealing with some technical issues…). You are right about the potential for institutional ventures related to learning technologies – I look forward to learning with you.
Leonora
Before you publish your posting, please make sure that you select a category (eg. Introductions) as well as assign some meaningful tags (keywords).
Donna Forward 7:23 pm on May 12, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Good luck with the 3 courses Kimberlee. I’m also doing 3 and hope that I can pull it off.
Cheers,
Donna
vawells 1:57 am on May 13, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Kimberlee
Welcome. I teach at Bishop Abraham in St. John’s. Good luck with your 3 courses.
Valerie
gillian 9:44 am on May 13, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Kimberlee,
Good luck with your workload and getting it all done. I admit it is tempting to push through as you do, but I also know I would likely lose my sanity. But, as you have done it before, I am sure you will hang on to yours.
Cheers,
gillian
Leonora Zefi 7:33 pm on May 14, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Good to see you again Kimberlee,
Looking forward to working with you on another course.
Leonora