Looking back at my e-learning journey so far...

While I was at school in the 1960’s the closest thing I came to that was classed as modern technology was an electric sewing machine – no more treadles or hand wound machines! Very sophisticated! So, as you can gather, I grew up before the age of computers, an age where music was produced on large, flat, vinyl, discs called “LP’s” or “EP’s” which were incredibly easy to ruin, one small scratch and the music was destroyed. And phone calls were made from a box at the end of the road!

My eldest children, who came through their schooling in the 1980’s, also experienced very little ICT in practice. My eldest left school in the early 1990’s having experienced no computer training at all as it was a specialist course that she chose not to take. She carried her music around in small plastic cases with long ribbons flowing through them called audio tapes, several of which my younger children took great pleasure in dismantling on our front lawn! But I could at least make phone calls from home!

My youngest was slightly luckier. We moved to the UK in 1996 and she went to small country school that had one computer that the children were able to use! She was taught how to play games, how to use Word and how to draw pictures in an art program. Music by now had reverted back to discs, but much smaller, silver, much stronger and more difficult to break. I could now make my phone calls from anywhere in the house or garden as phones became cordless and portable for a short distance. Nice!

I was a late bloomer, and went to teachers college and university when my family were young. In the early 1990’s at Auckland College of Education the greatest e-learning platform for me was a game called “Sim City”. I was really impressed with this game and promised myself that I would incorporate this type of game within my classroom – I never have!

In my early years at university all my assignments were hand written and then copied onto a rather old typewriter. It wasn’t until 1992 that we inherited a green screen computer that changed my life! I no longer had to re-type every page I wanted to make changes to; I could do it all on the screen before printing! Great revelations! We didn’t have it for long, as it wasn’t just me that became hooked, my children loved the games and my husband discovered the internet and chat rooms.
It wasn’t until I taught in the UK that computers really became a part of my classroom. By this time I had all my planning on the computer, a fact that the management of my new school found very difficult to come to terms with, they were much more comfortable with hand written plans. In time they came to see that my plans were just as acceptable as my colleagues hand written plans, and soon the other teachers in my team came to favour the computer generated plans too. Ultimately this became the norm throughout the entire school.

I began at that school with one class computer that the children used during class time; I had a roster so that fair distribution of time was allocated. It soon became obvious to the management that my classroom computer was being used more than most and it wasn’t long before I was awarded a second classroom computer. The computers in my room were used to the best of my ability to enhance the learning for the children. They were not internet ready and had limited software loaded, so most of the time the children were either playing games or publishing their work. I was unofficially promoted to school “techie”, and everyone came to me with their computer problems, and I was generally able to help!

It wasn’t until the early 2000’s that we developed a computer suite that was internet ready and our children gained pen pals across the world using e-mail. At this stage the school employed a full-time computer technician and I was suddenly ICT redundant! Things moved very quickly once we had a dedicated technician and I got left behind. It was around this time that music machines became very small and portable and had thousands of music tracks available to the listener in the form of iPods or MP3 players. This too left me behind and I still prefer my music discs! By now everyone had their own personal mobile phone, including me!

Returning to New Zealand in 2005 I was pleasantly surprised to find that every teacher was entitled to a laptop, and this laptop has become a real friend and companion, one that I refer to as soon as I get up in the morning and just before I go to bed at night and many, many times between. It has become an essential part of my life for communication, as a research tool, a bank, a shop and a toy! It stores all my journal notes from holidays, all my photos, music and much more.

In my classroom in New Zealand I have used computers for publishing, drawing, creating power points, searching for information, brainstorming and sorting ideas in Inspiration, presenting information in Photo Story and, of course, playing games. We also made movies, took photos and made audio recordings. I had thought that I had done quite well incorporating all this technology into my classroom practice until I read some comments by others on my course.

However, as I now hold a management position and am making attempts to encourage teachers to use a wide range of ICT’s in their classrooms to enhance learning I find that once again I have been left behind, and there is just so much more to learn! And music is now being played and e-mails checked from mobile phones! Where to next?

My e-learning journey continues...

from small beginnings

I have spent most of the week-end trawling through all the “stuff” on-line for this course and I have to admit that I am feeling a little (hmm... a bit of an under exaggeration) overwhelmed by what I don’t know! Every time I think I’m beginning to get an understanding I come across more things that I have no knowledge or understanding of at all! I can guarantee that this course is going to be a very steep learning curve for me - possibly vertical!