Lost track after three…

My name is Elizabeth Therrien, and I am a French Immersion teacher at Campbell Collegiate. Currently, I am teaching Math 9, Social Studies 10, and Social Studies 30. This is my first year teaching at Campbell Collegiate – I taught middle years at Wilfrid Walker Elementary School for the past four years, teaching French, Math, Social Studies, and Science. As can be seen in previous posts, technology is not my strength, but I am feeling more comfortable and at ease with it thanks to these classes. So, for those who are feeling overwhelmed right now – fear not! It does get easier, I promise. Also, as an ex-twitter-skeptic, I can say without hesitation that Twitter can be wonderful for developing a professional learning network. It is definitely worth the learning curve!

Personally, my hobbies and interests include playing volleyball, reading, and most importantly, travelling. I absolutely love to travel the world, and coming up in February, my husband and I will be travelling to England and Scotland for the first time – so if you have any suggestions of things to see or visit, please let me know! I am also one of those crazy dog-moms. I have two dogs: Atticus (a labrador-rottweiler cross that we got from the Regina Humane Society) and Tifa (a labrador-husky cross that we got from Ccrezqs). They are both still quite young – Atticus will be two in March, and Tifa will be one – so we are still in the ‘eating-your-house-and-anything-within-it’ phase. That, just like #edtech, is a continual learning process.

Source: Elizabeth Therrien

Source: Elizabeth Therrien

 

Just like Ashley, in my introductory post on our Google+ community for EC&I 834, I too lost track and said that this would be my third class when, in fact, this will be my fourth #edtech class with Alec (and my third with Katia). I have subsequently corrected it, but, really, I blame it on the fact that it becomes easy to lose track of these different courses because they go by so quickly. I do occasionally still feel like a newbie when it comes to educational technology. Yes, I am starting to feel more comfortable with educational technology in the classroom, and yes, I have started to incorporate more technology on a daily basis through the use of Google classroom, Mentimeter, and PollEverywhere. However, there is still a lot of learning that needs to take place. So, my goals for this class will be to still learn and grow within the context of educational technology. More specifically, they are:

1. To try (at least!) one new educational technology app or website in my class during the duration of the course. I always fear trying new things in my classroom without fully understanding how to use them, which consequently limits what I do use because of a time constraint. So for this course, I hope to use some of the new things I will learn and apply them in my classroom – and learn all the ins and outs of this tool with my students, instead of always before them.
2. To continue to develop my professional learning network on Twitter. You can never get enough Twitter – or at least, I haven’t yet. I continually learn new things simply by reading through my feed on a daily basis. I look forward to connecting with all of you through these blogs and through Twitter this term – feel free to follow me @liztherrien22 to start connecting!
3. To include more interactivity in my blogs. I have become more comfortable writing my blog posts and adding hyperlinks and pictures, but I would like to include more pingbacks and, in particular, more videos to enhance the interactivity for my readers. This will also – hopefully – help me develop my professional learning network with the pingbacks towards my colleagues.

I am sure these goals will change and develop over the term, but I hope that the main idea remains the same throughout. In any case, I am looking forward to learning with all of you over this semester!