I was born in Toronto but lived in Calgary all my life. I spent the last two years in Denver, CO as my husband was offered an assignment with his company. In my time here I decided to pursue my MET. Colorado is such a beautiful place to live and although I am sad to leave here, I am looking forward to moving back home with my family. I have taught for 15 years, primarily in K-2 and I am also looking forward to returning to the classroom in the fall.
We are living in a society driven by information access. It is important to me that I posses the skills and behaviors of a digital age professional and that my teaching practices reflect this world we are living in today. Moving forward, I need to become more comfortable being a co-learner with my students and colleagues and to foster a personalized learning approach to best prepare my students to be citizens in our technological world. I also feel a responsibility to parents, staff and school system, to inform, collaborate, guide, inspire, and reflect on the current and future practices of teaching and learning in the 21st century.
The only LMS I have had experience with is D2L. I have created a couple of shells and I remember using Dreamweaver to build my shells. It’s been a few years since I worked in D2L and I am not familiar with other LMS. I am feeling a bit nervous about “starting from scratch” but I am a quick learner and I hope to come out of this experience with way more than I’m coming in with. I am on Twitter and use this for my own personal connections and learning. I also have a Facebook account but I feel it’s like a love-hate relationship. I deleted the app off my phone and ipad so I don’t have an instant connection to it but just can’t delete my account entirely. I would love to bring Twitter in my classroom and if used appropriately, I feel this is a powerful tool where a strong connection between my classroom and parents can be formed. I will be able to share what is going on in the classroom as well as important articles/sites that would be eye-opening or informative to parents.
In my last course 532, a couple of groups did their collaborative inquiry project on Digital Storytelling. I am definitely more interested in exploring this further. I have used basic digital storytelling apps with my students but ones that came up in this course are ones I want to explore further: Moovly, GoAnimate, PowToon, Storybox, Empressr and Photo Story 3. There are so many choices out there but selecting the right tool at the right time for students is so important to consider. Some tools are difficult to use and students can easily be turned off from using them once discouraged.
My only hesitation about delving into a LMS is not knowing HTML coding. Do I need to know this? If so, I will learn as I go. I am a quick learner and hopefully this will be a fast hurdle. As in every course I have taken, the community of learners I am working with are my best resource. I look forward to learning and working with this group and sharing what I know in return.