Well, our first semes­ter is com­ing to an end so it is time to look back and reflect on my jour­ney thus far, as well as dis­cuss my hopes and inspi­ra­tions for the rest of the Mas­ters of Edu­ca­tion­al Tech­nol­o­gy pro­gram.

A Look Back: A First Semes­ter Reflec­tion

Emo­tion­al roller­coast­er: per­haps this is the best way to describe my first semes­ter. When class­es start­ed I was very stressed out and over­whelmed as it has been 23 years since I was last enrolled in post sec­ondary school. At that time I thor­ough­ly enjoyed being a stu­dent in var­i­ous envi­ron­ments: achiev­ing a trades cer­tifi­cate from BCIT (Structural/Architectural Draft­ing), uni­ver­si­ty trans­fer cred­its from Dou­glas Col­lege, a Bach­e­lor of Arts degree from SFU (Geog­ra­phy, Psy­chol­o­gy, Edu­ca­tion­al Psy­chol­o­gy, Envi­ron­men­tal Edu­ca­tion), and then a Bach­e­lor of Edu­ca­tion degree from UBC (West Koote­nay Teacher Edu­ca­tion Pro­gram). So, to say the least, I loved being a stu­dent and learn­ing with­in such a vari­ety of dis­ci­plines. Nonethe­less, this was a long time ago so the thought of being a stu­dent again was very daunt­ing.

For­tu­nate­ly, my expe­ri­ences this semes­ter proved to be a lit­tle more for­giv­ing for my stress lev­els and I have calmed down into my new rou­tines as a stu­dent again. For each of our cours­es we have reg­u­lar Zoom meet­ings to dis­cuss our read­ings and top­ics of that week with each pro­fes­sor, as well as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to talk with our fel­low class­mates in break­out rooms after­wards. I have found these expe­ri­ences extreme­ly use­ful for fur­ther deci­pher­ing our read­ings and mak­ing sense of our work­loads. The read­ings for both cours­es have been cen­tered on research, which I do admit has nev­er been a top­ic I have ever need­ed to ful­ly embrace. We have been taught many key aspects of var­i­ous types of research, as well as been shown many exam­ples of pre­vi­ous projects which has made this new task more wel­com­ing to me.

Our assign­ments have real­ly been oppor­tu­ni­ties for explor­ing our research skills, reflect­ing on them through blog entries like this one, and pre­sent­ing our find­ings. I have nev­er been a blog­ger before, nor real­ly a reflect­ing type of per­son (at least not on paper; of course as a teacher you are con­stant­ly assess­ing and reflect­ing on your day-to-day activ­i­ties to pro­vide the best edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence you can for your stu­dents), but I am find­ing this blog method of reflect­ing actu­al­ly quite reward­ing. I am now look­ing deep­er into my expe­ri­ences through these writ­ten sub­mis­sions which are pro­vid­ing myself with a more com­plete under­stand­ing of my learn­ings.

A Look For­ward: Pro­gram Hopes and Inspi­ra­tions

Look­ing for­ward I do have some hopes and inspi­ra­tions for the pro­gram. I am very glad that the pro­gram offers a project for the final rather than a the­sis paper as I do pre­fer some­thing more tan­gi­ble than just writ­ten expres­sions. So far, my idea revolves around an edu­ca­tion­al web­site for local Tech­nol­o­gy Edu­ca­tion teach­ers in my dis­trict to share resources and col­lab­o­rate through. This may include sec­tions for:

• each of the main Tech Ed dis­ci­plines offered in my dis­trict: Wood­work, Met­al­work, Robot­ics, Mechan­ics, Draft­ing, Com­put­ers, and 3D Print­ing
• resources for project mate­ri­als both local spe­cial­ty stores and inter­net-based stores
• project plans shared among all teach­ers and thus avail­able to stu­dents
• safe­ty work­sheets
• pdf text­books for each dis­ci­pline
• pho­to gal­leries of stu­dent work
• poten­tial area for ePort­fo­lio shar­ing
• Oth­er

To achieve this, I hope we learn more about var­i­ous soft­ware and plat­forms that we can all use in our class­rooms. Essen­tial­ly, this is what many of us thought would be the focus of our course­work as this is a Mas­ters of Edu­ca­tion­al Tech­nol­o­gy. Of course there are many strands with­in and inter­pre­ta­tions of what edu­ca­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy means but I do hope that it involves learn­ing about more resources that we can bring into our class­rooms and share with our stu­dents. 

I will try to learn and incor­po­rate new tech­nolo­gies with­in my course­work when­ev­er pos­si­ble. In fact, in my first big assign­ment (our group pre­sen­ta­tion for this course) I learned about a new web­site (canva.com) and their online soft­ware for Slideshow Pre­sen­ta­tions. Like any soft­ware, there are pros and cons with it but I believe I cre­at­ed an excel­lent pre­sen­ta­tion. In fact, sev­er­al of my col­leagues sent me pri­vate mes­sages con­grat­u­lat­ing me on such a pro­fes­sion­al look­ing pre­sen­ta­tion, ask­ing me how long I have been using Can­va and for some tips I could share with them. I was hon­oured to hear from them espe­cial­ly for the fact that I lit­er­al­ly only learned about the web­site the pre­vi­ous cou­ple of weeks and only that pre­vi­ous week explored their pre­sen­ta­tion soft­ware. 

I sup­pose I have always been tech savvy: from my ear­ly days of Draft­ing when the “new Auto­Cad pro­gram” was released using DOS com­mands (oh that real­ly was painful to use!), to col­lege and uni­ver­si­ty days when I would build my own com­put­ers, to my WKTEP days when the pro­gram direc­tor gave me the nick­name “Dr. Bar­ran­ti” as I was always help­ing the oth­er class­mates with the tech­nolo­gies need­ed for their assign­ments, to more cur­rent­ly being the staff mem­ber every­one comes to for tech sup­port. I would nev­er shy away from being pre­sent­ed with new soft­ware or chal­lenges of help­ing some­one else with their tech­nol­o­gy con­cerns which is why I am inspired to learn about new tech­nolo­gies here. I hope I get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do so.