Technology as a Tool

Technology: Does the use of technology aid students with their learning and teachers with their teaching? Is the use of technology occurring naturally in the classroom? Can technology direct instruction? My grad class colleagues have been discussing the possible uses of Webtrain, which is a tool for web conferencing. I first learned about Webtrain last year, when one of my colleague's son was taking Math 10 by correspondence. He could log onto Webtrain in the evening (I believe once a week.) for math assistance. To the best of my knowledge this software tool worked very well.

EC & I 832

Welcome classmates!

I began this blog last fall, but I was not too sure what direction I wanted to go with it. I had several thoughts. Some of my ideas included creating a blog as a place to discuss my school classes for my students: what we have done, what we will do and what homework was being assigned. My dilema began with the conflict with my use in Blackboard. Should I try to maintain both? Should I use Blackboard just for grades? Other ideas for my blog included sharing my work as an Aministrator, but now some of my tech time is spent updated our new school webpage using Joomla. I also thought that perhaps I would create a personal blog to share with my friends and family.... But my main reason for creating a blog was to just try it out, and determine my direction later.

Grade Nine Breadwinner

Writing Assignments From the Grade Nine Class: How is your life different from Parvana's?

Mrs. C. Hiltz

Current Work

Grade 7 Students - Computer Literacy - We are finishing up Power Point presentations and we will begin using spreadsheets next week.

Grade 9 - We are working in Indigenous and Norse Narratives.

Grade 10 - Career and Work Students are finishing their work experiences. Students must complete their work logs and follow-up reports. We are completed our section on WHMIS.

Master of Education

Currently, I am finishing up my Master's Degree in Curriculum and Instruction, and at one of my more recent classes, my professor was discussing the current "Course Route" grad degrees. She stated that our University is discussing the possibility of changing the name of these types of programs to "Master of Teaching" to indicate that these degrees may be "terminal". In other words, many Universitites will not accept this type of degree as a prerequisite for further studies. This is interesting because there are many educators out there who simply want to further his/her learning for various reasons: love of learning, advancement, and increase in pay. This may deter students from further education if they know that there is a limit to their ability to further their education simply because they aren't interested in the research process. I realize that many academics feel that you have to be "published"... but I'm not completely convinced of this.

Learning Excellence

This is my first attempt at blogging, and I am hoping to use this site for my teaching and learning. Perhaps I may write editorials and share other types of information; we'll see where this leads me. I welcome suggestions, comments and questions to guide us on this quest.