Hi everyone,
I live in northern British Columbia and work as a dual credit coordinator. My job involves transitioning students from secondary school into postsecondary training and education.
ETEC 522 will be my eighth course since starting the MET program and I look forward to learning more about launching educational technology applications. Reaching students both in and out of the brick-and-mortar classroom using technology is something I value. Having worked at a distance education school in the past, which offered both correspondence paper based courses and online courses, I was able to experience both the rewards and challenges that utilizing technology to deliver learning opportunities for students can bring. My work with the distance education school not only involved teaching courses but also developing course content for correspondence courses. Paper-based course materials were packaged up and delivered to students by mail, so it will be interesting to discuss how better to deliver learning applications for students online.
It is also important to recognize that building relationships is still the essential ingredient in fostering an effective learning environment for students whether it is online or classroom based. Students need to feel part of a learning community as it is directly related to their success rate in the completion of courses. Integrating multi-modal technology into the learning environment, such as Skype or Google Hangouts, provides students with video/audio communication tools so they are able to communicate “face-to-face” as well as learn together. Being able to create educational technology that fosters both learning and communication is something that developing paper-based correspondence courses lacked. There is so much potential in creating online learning applications to foster effective learning and I am looking forward to learning more about it.
Look forward to sharing ideas!
Laurie