Education blog
THOUGHTS?
THOUGHTS?
I’m excited to be writing my very first blog post. Let me briefly introduce myself first. I am currently a High School Business teacher with the York Region District School Board. I graduated with a Bachelor of Education focused in Secondary Education and Teaching from University of Toronto - Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. I also have a MBA and Post MBA focused on Marketing and International Business from York University - Schulich School of Business and undergraduate degrees in History and Economics from the University of Waterloo.
Like other teachers in Ontario, I have been working from home since schools closed on March 13th. I find one of the major advantages of working from home is the easy access to food. The kitchen is only 10 steps away from my den.
I have been thinking about blogging for many years but I never got around to starting a blog until I started taking Dr. Rob Power’s course, Digital Technology for Adult Education (EDUC 5405G). One of his assignments is to create at least eight original blogs throughout this course related to the course topics and activities that have been explored, my individual and group learning activities, and how they relate to my overall goals for this course.
I first had to choose which blogging platform to use. It was not a difficult decision because I had earlier created my personal website using Google Sites and I decided to integrate the blog into my website. I find Google Sites easy to use and I am very familiar with Google’s Suite of programs, using it often in my classroom. Many of my Problem Based Learning assignments involve students creating a Google Site to demonstrate their learning.
I am taking EDUC 5405G because of my passion for teaching adults. I previously taught Canadian History at Humber College to a class of International students from China, I have presented at educational conferences on the various ways educators can integrate technology to facilitate and enhance student-directed, project-based learning experiences in K-12 classrooms.
Later on in the course, I will be analyzing and critiquing a digital tool. The purpose is to identify a digital tool that could be integrated into a lesson plan targeting an audience of adult learners. My analysis will include a description of the tool, a discussion of how that tool could be used to facilitate teaching and learning with adult learners, and a judgement about the suitability of the tool in the context of my learner audience and identified learning needs.
I am planning to critique the Learning Management System (LMS) D2L Brightspace which I use to teach my eLearning Grade 12 International Business course. I submitted a proposal to give an online interactive workshop to other educators about the use of D2L Brightspace in the online classroom at the Educational Computing Organization of Ontario (ECOO) conference in August. ECOO is a non-profit organization that facilitates the integration of new computing technology into the educational curriculum. The purpose of this workshop is to help educators be better prepared for September, where teachers will be using either an online or blended learning format to teach their students.
Brightspace (n.d.). D2L. [Web page]. https://www.brightspace.com
Google Sites (n.d.). Google. [Web page]. https://www.googlesites.com
G Suite for Education (n.d.). Google. [Web page]. https://edugoogle.com
Simoncelli, T. (2020, March 9). Blogging with Google Sites [Video file]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/DYWGvA-6_EM