About two years ago when I started this blog, I meant for it to be a journal of some sort about the things I was learning to do in my graduate diploma course, ITDA, at SFU. I was determined to figure out how to integrate tech in meaningful ways and wanted to document my journey. Hence the title, “Integrating Technology: My Journey”. Well once I started the program and started analyzing my practise to see where tech needed to/could be integrated, I actually began an amazing journey which didn’t only involve integrating tech, but rather I started truly reflecting on my practise and looking at WHY I was teaching the way that I was. And I was examining everything!! It wasn’t just about integrating tech anymore…it became much, much more.
I started thinking about student centred and project based learning. I completely changed my math, science and social studies program in order to make them more hands on.
I fell in love with Genius Hour and Passion Based Learning and now offer my students an hour each week in which they can learn about anything they want.
I partnered up with Hugh McDonald and we took down a wall in our school (one of those sliding ones, no hammers needed) so that we could team teach all the time!
We got rid of individual desks and were lucky enough to have our school get round tables for us so that our students could collaborate on everything.
With the support of our principal, we brought in alternate learning spaces and set up a couch area and bean bag area, giving students choice about where they wanted to learn.
We cut our boring spelling program and now teach it as needed.
I gave complete control of my the bulliten boards to my students. They own their learning and their learning space now.
And we haven’t even got to the technology integration yet!!! Which has been fabulous (students are able to create amazing projects using iPads, we blog, we have ePortfolios, twitter, and so much more…the tech has been fantastic! But certainly not everything.
I started this journey thinking that all I needed was to learn about some great apps…but it turns out my journey has been much, much more than that. And I am so thankful and I look forward to where the journey will take me next…so it is about my journey…but more than just tech.
So, should I change the name of my blog? Hmm…