Sunday 31 January 2016

Integrating Technology in Education.




                                 credit: Yahoo images

Up to this point, I read 9 chapters of the required textbook for PIDP 3240, "Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology Out of your College Classroom Will Improve Student Learning" and I am amazed how much technology has integrated in our education.  The authour offer so many strategies and digital tools that I can utilize in my teaching career and at the same time engaging the students to love school. I am sure many of us can agree with that! The book lists many great analogies, perspectives, strategies, facts, educational websites that I might refer to, and really preparing us that digital learning sources is in demand and we have to embrace whether we like it or not ,or ready or not.

I am fortunate to be teaching at a massage therapy school that is evolving to digital educational sources to achieve the curriculum goals.  The school has been around over 10 years and as of this month they are integrating Moodle which is a formatted online course for the very first time. And new set of first year students of this month will be the fortunate ones to experience Moodle.  I am excited to hear how Moodle is working out for both students and instructors. Furthermore, in fall, the school plan to replace the binders that hold hundred pages of 13 modules over the 2 years of the program with a tablet. I think this is very exciting for a vocational college! 

In terms using technology in class, in my class we do provide power point presentations of our lesson as well as anatomy. We also provide online videos for anatomy.  There is of course 2 textbooks that have additional information on their own websites and students can access at their own convenience.  

One student created a private Facebook group for us and I took some time to join as I was worry about professional boundaries. Eventually I accepted that my group is social-technology friendly people and merely want information on one page instead of CCing to every member on emails. Emails can be cumbersome when addressing to a larger group and I think Facebook is fantastic e-communication tool. 

                                         credit: yahoo images

Integrating technology into the class setting is not as daunting as I thought it would be. I realized I am fairly immersed in social media such as blogs, instagram, twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest. However, I use these platforms for personal use not for education. I'm learning that I can find authentic sources from various social media and share with my students. There are other sources that I am not familiar such has podcasts which I will be experimenting some time soon. Also, I like to explore YouTube videos relating to anatomy and physiology.

I am very happy to be learning and applying the information from PIDP 3240.

Have a great techy day.

Monday 25 January 2016

Starting again as a Blogger



Amateur Teacher Assistant Blog



I have created a few blogs and unsure if I succeeded in sharing them to the public. For many years, I wanted to write for magazines, local newspaper, and blogs regarding anything in health and wellness. I guess the reason for not fulfilling the desire is mainly self-doubt. Thankfully I enrolled a program called Provincial Instructor Diploma Program at Vancouver Community College. There are 7 courses in total and currently I am on the 4th course which focuses on using media and technology in our education: both for teachers and learners. What I found exciting, which is giving me butterflies in the stomach, is that one of the assignment choices is to write a blog on a weekly basis. Obviously I am doing that right now! Yaay! Now the next step is to share it to the public especially to the students in my class. 


My goals with the blogs are mainly share my reflections of the course I am taking, any educational tools, my experiences of my first year of teaching, latest information regarding massage therapy, health and wellness, and my another new area of interest is maternity and infants massages.  Maybe with some occasional movie reviews as I am a movie buff. My other interests are hosting social gatherings, baking, walking in the nature, trying new experiences whether it is at home or outside of home, and travelling. I haven’t travel outside of Canada since 2011. I am due for a good international holiday!


I guess I should introduce myself, a little ahead of myself here! I have been practicing as a Registered Massage Therapist for 16years both in BC and Alberta. As of Jan 2015, I became a massage therapy clinical supervisor and a teaching assistant at a local massage therapy college in Edmonton. I feel enrolling PIDP since 2013 was the best decision I made to change the direction of my career. Being an RMT is a laborous job and I needed to think about the future of my physical being.   Since changing the course of my career, I felt becoming an instructor is the perfect path as well as a writer on the side.