Flight Path – Ryan McKeown – ETEC 565A – Section 66A
A Little About Myself
My name is Ryan McKeown, vintage 1975. I live in Thunder Bay, Ontario, which is a long way from Toronto. This is my 9th year of teaching. I am currently teaching a grade six class.
Experience
I assume this means experience relating to technology. As such, technology has long been a part of my life. From the first generation Atari to current day software/hardware. My brother and I use to take Atari joysticks apart to enhance their abilities (if that gives you a gauge). As well, we also hosted and corresponded on BBS’s back in the 1980’s. Before attaining my teaching degree, I took a 3 year program at my local college in Multimedia Productions. This was a broad program that developed web, digital/video editing & production and programming skills. I continue to build my experience with software and hardware both within and outside of the school environment.
Goals for the course / MET degree
For me, I would really like to get up to speed on LMS and making use of all the tools available in this approach to learning. In some ways, the tasks will be a good refresher on current software for media production(s). At the end of this course, I hope that I will have a better understanding of the rationale behind using particular web 2.0 technologies. For the MET program in general, I hope that this course provides some useful resources to be used within the other courses.
Learning Management System
Ironically, I have always been on the other side of this system (as the user). Other than using Google Docs and the forms within, I have not particularly developed or made use of an online learning environment built around a LMS. I look forward to learning about this and implementing it where I can in the classroom.
Assessment
I would like generally like to see how I could make better use of digital (online) resources to assess student learning.
Social Software
Just within the last year, I have really come to appreciate how social media software can be used as a great distribution tool, rather than an interacting tool. Twitter seems to be at the forefront of the crowd, whereas Facebook seems to being too much (just my general observations). The one problem I have with the social software tools, is that our school board has the web so locked down, that it makes it impossible to access these resources.
Multimedia
This is the one area I feel I may not need much exposure. Yet, as with technology, I am sure I will find new tricks or software that would allow me to accomplish the same tasks.
Resources
I am a little at a loss as to the resources I would use to help accomplish my goals. A relevant Amazon search brought me these books I think would be beneficial:
1) Kats, Y. (Ed.) Learning management systems technologies and software solutions for online teaching:. Tools and Applications. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Management-Technologies-Software-Solutions/dp/1615208534/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305997723&sr=1-1
2) Cole, J., and Foster, H. Using Moodle: Teaching with the Popular Open Source Course Management System. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
http://www.amazon.com/Using-Moodle-Teaching-Popular-Management/dp/059652918X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305999069&sr=1-2
3) McGee, P., Carmean, C., and Jafari, A. Course Management Systems for Learning : Beyond Accidental Pedagogy. Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing
http://www.amazon.com/Course-Management-Systems-Learning-Accidental/dp/1591405122/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305999069&sr=1-3