Hello, my name is Katherine Burden and I am a math teacher in Whistler BC. I am currently in the second half of the MET program. The MET program was a perfect fit for me as I have been involved with technology in education since the early days of my undergraduate degree. While pursuing my BSc. at Acadia University, I was employed as a student consultant at the AITT (Acadia Institute of Teaching & Technology). My first task was to be a subject manner expert working with a development team to create Flash animations to supplement topics in the first year Astronomy class. From there, I continued to work with professors to include relevant technology into their class and teach them how to use basic computer programs like Power Point. At that point (2001), Acadia was a head of its time because it gave every student a laptop with tuition, and this hardware was fully supported. Every classroom and lab was wired with Internet (this was before wireless) and teachers were encouraged to use technology in their classroom. This is commonplace now, but back then, this was revolutionary.

As a traditional classroom teacher, I have been admittedly slow to try new things. For new teachers, the first few years are really about survival with new courses and schools every year. It takes a while to understand who you are as a teacher and figure out what you would like to work on. I’m finally feeling settled into my teaching self, and have started bringing technology into my classroom. I created a class website this year, and got my feet wet in the flipped classroom.

One of my goals for the MET program is to learn of new resources to make learning interactive and fun for students. I would really like to learn how to enrich my course website with multimedia, without it becoming a distraction. I would also like to learn of some software, or app, that provides formative feedback from students throughout the lesson. This would be helpful for me (and students) in the moment, allowing me to repeat sections of the lesson if some of the class seems lost, but provide important data to encourage reflection on my practice.

But… my teaching career isn’t the only reason I’m in this program. My partner is currently in the early stages of building his own business. He is a software developer by trade, and has always been interested in e-learning. I’m not allowed to get into the details of his business (it’s early, and it’s a good idea!) but I can say that once things get rolling, I can see him designing his own LMS. One of the appeals of this program is that I am learning skills that could also help his e-learning business. I could see myself being part of the Instructional Design team, or maybe even work as a consultant. He asked me several months ago if I would do some research on LMS’s, as sort of a reconnaissance mission. I declined, citing that I was too busy with my own work. However, given the nature of this course, I just might be able to serve both our purposes.

Specifically, I would like to:

• Identify and explore the big name commercial LMS providers, such as BlackBoard, Desire2Learn and Moodle. I would like to play with each product to get a look and feel.
• Explore what the interfaces looks like. What are the considerations in the design? How flexible is the interface? What are the limitations?
• Determine costs and pricing models for each level of service
• Determine the format of content which can be uploaded into each LMS
• Examine the ease of use for each provider – how easily can I author content? What do I need to change in my existing resources to make them work with the LMS?
• Learn if there are any issues with cross-platform compatibility
• Does it support multi-lingual courseware?
• Learn the extent to which each LMS can incorporate multimedia?
• Understand if content/features within the LMS can be simultaneously used in other areas of the LMS (can topics in one course be offered unchanged in another course with little effort?)
• Determine what type of assessment is available to current LMS systems. How much of the assessment can be automated? Do the tools offer a grade book, or a personalized tracking system?
• Understand which content is better delivered face to face rather than online

As far as resources to help me achieve these goals, I’m hoping that these topics will be part of the course curriculum. I’m anticipating that I’ll get to play with the back end of Moodle as part of our next assignment, and with that access, I should be able to answer many of the questions I’ve posed above.