Flight Path
Hello everyone. My name is Keith Greenhalf . This is the end of my second year as an MET student this semester I am taking 3 courses and will complete my 9th course thus far in the program. I worked as a special education teacher for the last 4 years in a small First Nation community called Kitkatla, British Columbia. Before that I worked as a developmental service worker supporting individuals with exceptional needs.
My wife and I had a little girl last spring and have moved back to our hometown Windsor Ontario to be closer to family. I am currently working part time as a Mad Scientist, which is an educational organization that provides an entertaining show, and workshop experience for school aged kids while learning how to be a new dad.
My post secondary education background before the MET program, started with an undergraduate degree in computer science followed by my bachelor of education and then a specialist qualification in Special Education.
- My primary goal for this course is to better learn how to implement and maintain a learning management system (LMS). I am also interesting in exploring new areas of e-learning particularly in the areas of discovering new software tools and multimedia applications.
- I know that I will need to manage my time tightly to meet the demands of this course. I will need to stay on top of the latest evolving Web 2.0 applications. Some educators feel that students can be better served by an LMS alternative, a toolbox of web resources that might include social bookmarking tools, document sharing applications, social networking sites, timeline tools, and media options available in the cloud. Using web 2.0 as an LMS alternative supports the notion that students need to become more familiar with today’s technology tools because these skills will be useful in the workplace.
- I should explore the social applications that allow for the creation of effective “learning grids”: organized communities in specific subject and learning objective groups that encourage creation, sharing, and interdependencies.
- I also need to explore the technologies and philosophies behind different “e-learning intelligence” and how they track learning events and support positive student behavior.
- I wish to explore the technology behind “content clouds”. E-learning technologies today are moving to create open, flexible digital repositories with components that add context through outcomes measurement, social networking, reporting, analytics, and extensive sharing capabilities.
- Finally I want to familiarize myself with the ideology and technology behind open source and open architecture. The concept of open that implies there is a body of open intellectual property, be it a technology platform, source code, or global access to open content, which can be leveraged within an established community of contributors.
There are many areas of learning in this course that I feel will benefit my future career path and also pique my interest in educational innovations and new learning technologies.
References:
(2010). Seven Things You Should Know About LMS Alternatives. EDUCAUSE Review. Retrieved January 17, 2014, from https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7062.pdf
Pugliese, L. (2012). A Post-LMS World. EDUCAUSE Review, 31(3). Retrieved January 17, 2014, from http://www.educause.edu/library/learning-management-systems-lms