My wife and I at a movie theatre in Hong Kong to watch Up in 3D.

Hi Everyone. My name is Sean McMinn. This is my 7th MET course, and I’m pretty excited to be (virtually) here.

I teach English at a university here in Hong Kong, and I love it. The job is great, the people are nice, and life is simply interesting and always adventurous. So far, I’ve been enjoying the MET programme — which has helped me advance in my career over the past year or so. In particular, I’ve been able to embed podcasts (http://campusbeat.ust.hk) and wikis into courses successfully thanks to what I’ve learned though the programme.

I’m looking forward to ETEC522 because I lack entrepreneurial skills and would like to explore business opportunities … some day. More immediately, I would like to enhance my intrapreneurial (new word for me) skills. As I learn more through the MET programme I see opportunities for developing or enhancing technologies to be used at our university. To do this, though, I need to apply for funding. If I can improve on my “pitches” or selling, I would be happy.

I’m looking forward to working with everyone. (I can’t believe the summer break went by so fast!)

Hello everyone, my name is Ashley Jones.

I completed a Biology degree and then went on to complete a year-long internship to obtain my teachers certificate. Soon after I took off to teach for a year in a small town in Costa Rica where I developed a passion for surfing and cooking with hot chili peppers!

Upon returning to Canada, I taught at a Secondary Distributive Learning School in Victoria, BC for three years. The courses I taught and developed were all online for the students to access, while I was available at the school for drop-in help, tutorials and to supervise test writing.

This year, my husband took a year-long job in Australia so I am fortunate to be able to complete my Masters while in beautiful Perth! I am very excited for this course, and although I don’t have any formal business education, I have always been an innovative thinker and I would love to start my own e-learning business one day.

I look forward to getting to know you all as we go through this course!

And hello from your other instructor – David Vogt.  You can reach me at david DOT vogt AT ubc DOT ca.  Please use a convention like that if you wish to reveal your email, because the WordPress platform we`ve chosen for the course is a public blog and you`ll need to be more aware of your postings than you might otherwise in an online course.

DavidV on NFLD's East Coast Trail last June.

Yes, you`ve got two Davids as instructors:  DavidP and DavidV.  Rather than create two sections of the course, we prefer to bring everyone together as a means of crowdsourcing the great collective wisdom this group represents.   This makes a big group, which is why making your introductions and building a presence for yourself through good posting is important.  DavidP will be marking the group and participation assignments (Assignments 2 & 4) and I`ll be marking the essay assignments (Assignments 1 & 3), but we`ll both be involved throughout the course.

Your big job this week is to make your introduction, review how the course works, and ask any questions.

Also, please look at the Emerging Market modules (M4-M11) right away – if there any topics that are of special interest for you please let me know by the end of this week before we automatically assign people to their groups.

Please enjoy the course – we`re looking forward to your contributions!

DavidV