ICTGuy-TL

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattcornock/16858344857 I have well over 300 books in my house, mostly in boxes or tucked in closets. Only some of our collection of books have made it onto shelves. I have so many books because I love reading. I also have an e-Reader. I actually don't know where it is, but I do know that using it I can carry around a LOT of books, way more than I could with physical books. To give you an idea, an 8GB Kindle can hold roughly 3100 regular plain text e-Books (Plant).  Given that my iPhone has 64GB it could hold over 24000 books if I didn't do anything else with it. Same would go for a basic tablet with similar capacity. So if I don't have Internet access, but I load books to my device, I can conceivable carry a small library with me anywhere I go. Libraries in Developing Nations As someone living a comfortable life in an urban center in a developed country I don't often give much thought to the material items I possess. I don't lo...

Public domain image What is the best way  to support fellow teachers in their ICT learning journey? This is a question I  struggled with for 13 years. While I don't have a definitive answer, I have worked with enough teachers to have some ideas on what works and what doesn't (or is less effective for the people I worked with). The thing is, helping teachers grow as technology users is super rewarding. Some Lessons Learned in Supporting Teachers #1 - Most teachers feel they have very little time to spare, so they want the time they do apply to learning ICT to be "meaningful". #2 - What works for one teacher may or may not work for another. We are all unique, and like our own students, our learning styles differ. #3 - Teachers would prefer small groups or individual instruction over large group instruction. Many teachers still feel the need to be the "expert", so a general "here is how tool X works" is not necessarily satisfying. Options for Teaching...

A Lego stop-motion animation I helped my son create for school. ISTE Standards for Education Leaders - Connected Learner:  Use technology to regularly engage in reflective practices that support personal and professional growth.  Miller & Bass p. 104 I was fortunate enough to spend 13 years as a Technology Teacher / Mentor at two different independent schools in Manitoba. In that role, I gave the ICT Professional Development as often as I attended it. Over that time period I was able to develop a number of different ways of supporting my own professional growth with ICT, which I highlight below. EXPERIMENTATION The best way to become comfortable with ICT is to use it! For myself, I need to have some comfort with an ICT tool in order to feel confident helping others become comfortable using it - be they students or teachers. To become comfortable with an ICT tool, and get an idea of how it might benefit teachers and students, I would "play" with the tool at home and during...

A reading culture is an environment where reading is championed, valued, respected, and encouraged. Reading lies at the heart of the curriculum, and it’s of the upmost importance to a child’s personal, social, and academic success, as well as their general wellbeing .  -- H. Hawthorne  Getting personal I would like to start with a personal reflection related to fostering a reading culture prior to looking at a school environment as I believe there are lessons to consider in my personal experiences. Thanks in large part to my mother I am a reader. Some of my earliest memories are of my mom reading to me. In fact, in elementary school I remember taking out books - like a big Alfred Hitchcock book - so I could take them home and snuggle with my mom while she read me the stories! So my home is where I learned to love reading. As a parent I wanted to give my children the same love of reading. Both my wife and I are readers, and our house is full of books. We spent hours readin...

  My research focused primarily on websites and web resources. Some of these sites are ones I was familiar with from my past, the UBC article was shared with me by Darcy, and the Microsoft resources are ones I came across during work related research into available MS Teams tools. In many cases these resources contain additional resources, like links to research papers, additional articles, topic specific games, and teacher training. Finding resources on the Internet is something I have considerable experience with and do almost daily. To find the materials I want, I will experiment with various word combinations until I find what I deem to be the best results. Each of the resources I listed give specific information on the three areas of interest I decided to research. As noted, one of the primary benefits of the resources I selected is that they act as both an information site and a portal to additional information. Each of the sites noted are either government or non-profit, r...