#EDUC5101G Week of Jan 12, 2016

My M.Ed Journey (so far…)

Hi Everyone! This is my introductory blog for the course, Digital Tools in Knowledge Construction. This is my 10^th and final course for the M.Ed! I’m quite excited about this because of the accomplishment that it represents. Conversely, I don’t think I can go back to doing nothing with my time, so I’ve been thinking of what to do instead? Pursuing a PhD isn’t where I want to go at this point in my life, so that’s not an option. (This is probably a future blog post … “Life after the M.Ed” !) I’ve loved the learning I’ve been able to do since I started it back in 2013. It truly has made a difference in my practice and in how I explore topics in education, so it makes sense to do something with, and to continue, my new knowledge!

Teaching Situation

I’ve been teaching for 23 years.  Currently, I’m a Special Education resource teacher at a high school in South Oshawa. I have a caseload of 137 (or so) students. My students are all working for credit (the diploma) and have any of or a combination of, a learning disability, mental health issues or who are on the autism spectrum (ASD). I’m involved in a  TLLP project where we are using D2L in order to provide the Least Restrictive Environment - LRE (Rozalski, Stewart & Miller, 2010) and differentiation for students with an Individual Education Plan (IEP) The IEP Process.

The BLOG

I’m using ‘Blogger’ for my blogs for a few reasons:

·      I set it up a couple of years ago and am familiar with the platform

·      I use it to blog on other topics and what better way to demonstrate the power of blogging, than to share within and without the course (good advice, Rob!)

·      It’s free!

Expectations for EDUC5101G

I don’t actually have all my learning goals/expectations for this course articulated yet. To be honest, I needed a Cluster 1 course to complete the M.Ed and this fulfills that requirement. I chose this course over another because I thought I might be able to learn how to create a website and learn to code, with help from others in the course – the collaboration piece is huge for me! Although looking at the Course Outline, not sure that's where I'll be going with this course? I thought it would be a good course to consolidate the learning from the other courses I’ve taken and to use it in LATMEd (Life After the M.Ed). I’ve looked at the weekly topics and am interested in the class discussions we’ll have for them. I’m curious to see what comes of the topic on Acceptable Use vs Responsible Use – this will be relevant for me in second semester within the context of my TLLP. I'm also looking forward to the dialogue we'll have on why technology integration IS NOT a good idea!

Finally … I’m looking forward to this course and to learning and sharing with everyone in it!

References:

Rozalski, M., Stewart, A., & Miller, J. (2010). How to determine the least restrictive environment for students with disabilities. Exceptionality, 18(3), 151-163.