MET Blog of Louise Thomson

This week’s collaboration was on a UBC wiki that John created for us. As always, the asynchronous nature of the collaboration was very helpful and works great with the wide-variety of “other” demands that are placed on all of us on a daily basis. It was interesting to hear people’s experiences with social media in the classroom. It was quite varied as was to be expected.

I didn’t find the visual appeal of the discussion board to be present in the wiki however. The threads are easy to follow and always have a name attached so you know who is speaking. In the wiki the work was more anonymous when it came to the summing up and key ideas sections. I have worked in a wiki format in a small group and I think that there is a great deal more accountability than in a group as large as our whole section. It didn’t feel like people were as engaged with the discussion as they might have been were we in small groups.

I am a fairly new teacher but not a fairly new person (!) who is currently teaching at an elementary school of 300 students in a small community.  I had to fight pretty hard to get into this course and am quite happy to be here but I also have some fairly high expectations from this new course.  I am a practical person who often refers to herself as a “bottom line kind of girl”.  Thus far, I have found my experience in the MET to be predominantly theoretical in nature.  While I agree that understanding the theories is key to being a good teacher most of us have probably already encountered these theories in our Education degrees.  I was particularly attracted this course because of the promise of practical applications.

I have some limited experience with synchronous communication but really want to gain more in this area.  My experience with LMS is limited to its use as a student.  I have never had the opportunity to design or manage one of these environments and am hoping to gain some proficiency with this here.  I am not a social networking user.  I have not tweeted or poked anyone.  While I have no real interest in these applications personally I am openminded to their potential use as an educator.   In terms of assessment I am always interested in exploring new ways to assess student learning and have a real commitment to a variety of assessment tools in order to address a wide variety of learning styles. 

My broader goals for my MET experience is to gain knowledge and skills that I can use to join the tech leaders in my school district.  I want to be a 21st century teacher in my 20th century school district.

To attain my goals of becoming proficient in the technologies we will encounter in this class I will need some human resources.  The support of classmates with a variety of expertise has proven very helpful in past MET courses and I fully expect that the depth and variety of experience of my fellow students will prove invaluable on this part of the journey as well.

Often have people tell me that they could not do an online course because they would feel too isolated and disconnected from their fellow learners. I have not found this to be the case in the MET program.  I don’t “know” my classmates in the traditional sense but we all share an interest in using technology and many of us share family situations and challenges as we work through this, often daunting, adventure.

All of our courses begin with an introduction phase during which we post our bios and goals and any personal details we wish to disclose.  I am not sure if these always work out the way the instructor intended but they almost immediately become a support system as we compare where we are in the “program” and which other courses we are, or are not, taking this term.

This term when I disclosed that I am taking 3 courses in some misguided attempt to move this train forward some of my classmates and I had a very funny discussion about how my summer camping experiences would require WiFi-enabled campgrounds.  A fellow student sent my this cartoon as part of this thread.  I love it! 

 

Visions of July!

Today is the first day of summer term courses.  I am really looking forward to ETEC 565A as it promises to be more hands-on and practical than its theoretical cousins.  I can’t wait to explore some different software tools that I have not had experience with yet.

I find that everyone who finds out that I am working on this degree assumes that I must have a great deal of knowledge about different software apps but my experience with the MET has been that the tools are secondary to the theory that underpins them.  I am glad to have this opportunity to make use of the applications!