{"id":4919,"date":"2011-09-06T17:38:37","date_gmt":"2011-09-07T01:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522sept11\/?p=4919"},"modified":"2011-09-06T18:01:16","modified_gmt":"2011-09-07T02:01:16","slug":"hello-from-ontario","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522sept11\/2011\/09\/06\/hello-from-ontario\/","title":{"rendered":"Hello from Ontario"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi All!<\/p>\n

This is my eighth course in the MET program and the first one that has been in blog format, not in Vista… so that is different and cool!\u00a0 I will be finishing the MET program by April 2012 so I am looking forward to my last year and will miss working and learning with other MET students.<\/p>\n

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I use Twitter as part of my PLN.<\/p><\/div>\n

Currently, I am an educational technology resource teacher in my board and am starting the second year of a three year term in that role.\u00a0 I have learned so much about how teachers and students use technology over the past year but, above all, I learned how vast the field of educational technology is and how very much I don’t know.\u00a0 When I get the time, I tweet<\/a> resources and links of interest to educators who are using technology in their practice.\u00a0 I love using Twitter as part of my PLN and it has become an exciting way of creating a professional network of like (and unlike) minded educators.<\/p>\n

With respect to previous ventures, I have earned some money (not a whole lot) in the past using technology… I did some computer programming for some companies in the late 1980s during the MS-DOS era; working with professional photographer and naturalist, Dave Taylor, I produced two educational science\/nature CD-ROMs in 1998<\/a> and 1999<\/a>; and I was a web designer\/webmaster for various people and companies in the Web 1.0 days.\u00a0 These days, I am too busy with family, work and the MET program to do anything extra on the side any more.<\/p>\n

My main purpose in taking ETEC 522 is learn more about what is possible for an educational entrepreneur in the current era of Web 2.0, social media and the semantic web.\u00a0 I have many ideas that form in my head but I never get to act on any of them… perhaps, taking this course will justify me once again putting something into action.\u00a0 For example, what follows is a true story–In the late 90s, I told my wife one night: “Wouldn’t it be cool if someone drove up and down all the streets in every big city and took photographs on either side of the car every second; then, these could be saved, organized by street and address, and people could virtually visit any location in any city in the world just by visiting a web site?”<\/em>\u00a0 I really did say this to her and she is my witness!\u00a0 Unfortunately, I get no royalties from Google<\/a>. And I am sure I am not the only one to think of that idea…<\/p>\n

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I am a Wikipedian.<\/p><\/div>\n

I am also a huge fan of Wikipedia and wikis in general.\u00a0 I’ve made over 15,000 edits on Wikipedia in the last five years or so.\u00a0 I really think that the content of that site (3.7 million English articles!) created since 2001 is nothing short of astonishing.\u00a0 It is a testament to the power of the collaborative nature of Web 2.0 and wikis and also to the powerful vision of a few individuals who understood that they a wiki could be the container for a greatest collection of knowledge ever created for free, by volunteers, and made available to everyone at no charge.<\/p>\n

My wife and I are both teachers and we have two wonder girls, one in grade one and the other in grade five.\u00a0 I love that I get so many perspectives of current education practices:\u00a0 experiences from my children as students, experiences of my wife and myself as teachers, my current experiences as an MET student, and the experiences of teachers I work with in schools and those I meet in the MET program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi All! This is my eighth course in the MET program and the first one that has been in blog format, not in Vista… so that is different and cool!\u00a0 I will be finishing the MET program by April 2012 so I am looking forward to my last year and will miss working and learning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1509,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[328736],"tags":[154,303,14],"class_list":["post-4919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-1-introductions","tag-bio","tag-introduction","tag-welcome"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522sept11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522sept11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522sept11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522sept11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1509"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522sept11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4919"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522sept11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4955,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522sept11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4919\/revisions\/4955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522sept11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522sept11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522sept11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}