Introductions

Please introduce yourself, let us know a little bit about you, and where you are from.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Brett Hinton on April 24, 2007 at 11:47am

My name is Brett Hinton and I hail from Gilbert, Arizona, USA. I'm an instructional technologist for the public school district here, which means I'm a teacher who gets to explore the uses of technology in the classroom and help share that with other teachers throughout our district. I love the challenge of helping share the vision with teachers (and have them remind of the realities as well) and to see the extraordinary benefits to enhancing our teaching and learning with the pedagogy and tools driving Classroom 2.0. I'm here to share in the conversation, here some good ideas, and benefit from everybody's expertise.

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Permalink Reply by Alfonso Gonzalez on April 24, 2007 at 12:31pm

Hi, I'm Alfonso Gonzalez, but I go by Al. I'm from Miami, FL and parents are Cuban. I moved to California where I started teaching in South Central L.A. and now I live and teach in Chimacum, WA (a small, rural school). Quite a change!

Al G

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Permalink Reply by Ben Bleckley on April 25, 2007 at 7:38am

Hi, my name's Ben Bleckley and I'm a recent graduate of the English education program at Colorado State University. Currently I'm substitute teaching for Poudre School District, which I'm really enjoying a lot, except for not getting to plan lessons or develop relationships with the students. I would be looking for a permanent job, if my wife hadn't come home 15 months ago with the crazy idea that we should go to Africa. So this July, she and I are leaving with the Peace Corps and I'll be a "Primary Teacher Training Resource Volunteer" in South Africa (it's really just sad how excited I get about a five word title). My wife will be doing some work with an HIV/AIDS non-governmental organization. So that's exciting for us.

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Permalink Reply by Jeremiah Patterson on April 25, 2007 at 8:00am

Hello,
Jeremiah here, from Portland, OR -- USA.

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Permalink Reply by Lee Anne Morris on April 25, 2007 at 9:06am

Hello everyone. I'm Lee Anne Morris in Tulsa, OK, USA. I'm an assistant professor of technology integration and instructional design at Tulsa Community College. I teach teachers. I also teach English/writing to normal people. :-D

I love my job and I love Web 2.0 tools. I'm ever so happy that they can go together - kind of like the perfect coupling of chocolate and peanut butter.

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Permalink Reply by Cyndi Danner-Kuhn on April 25, 2007 at 9:10am

Hello, I was invited to this blog by an educator friend, Kevin Honeycutt, he always finds cool stuff and shares with me. Anyway, I am an Assistant Professor at Fort Hays State University in Kansas. I teach technology to future teachers and this summer am taking on a new position as the Director of the Learning Commons. I wish I would have found this a few weeks earlier, I would have used with my technology class, guess i"ll show to my summer students. I am teaching a graduate workshop for classroom teachers on Blogs and Podcasts in June, so this will fit right in. Thanks!!! Although, I have to admit I am a Mac person and that Dell ad to the right really annoys me!!! http://cyndidannerkuhn.info

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Permalink Reply by Michael Chalmers on April 26, 2007 at 5:53am

I'm Mike Chalmers, originally from the Newcastle upon Tyne area of England, now working in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Next school year I'll be teaching a class that will incorporate Web 2.0 concepts and hope to pick up some ideas from this site.

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Permalink Reply by TeacherVillage on April 26, 2007 at 6:08am

Greetings to all of you! My name is Danielle and I am now a Floridian in the United States. I recently moved here from South Carolina. My first job in Florida was working with teachers in a corporate relationship. Now I'm just freelancing my time as I decide what to do.

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Simpson on April 26, 2007 at 7:26am

Hi everyone,
I'm from Christchurch, New Zealand. This looks to be just the sort of place I'm looking for. I'm a computer and gadget addict from way back and very interested in how technology can enhance learning outcomes in the classroom.

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Permalink Reply by Mr Sim on April 26, 2007 at 10:28am

Hi

I am Jonathan Sim, I teach ICT in Peterborough, UK

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Permalink Reply by Jacinta Gascoigne on April 26, 2007 at 10:32am

Hi to all in this incredible network. My name is Jacinta Gascoigne and I am in Australia. To be exact I live in Melbourne, Australia, but was born in country Victoria, in a town called Bairnsdale.

My folks still live in the town and to this day even though they are in their 70's continue to go to work everyday in the business they began well before I was even a thought. My father is the last fully qualified saddler still working in this country and my mother runs the bag and travel goods section and is helped with the saddlery by a couple of great ladies that have been with them for years.

You got it I am incredibly proud of my parents. I am a single mum with two wonderful teenage boys. They certainly keep me on my toes and keep me young.

I began my career in secondary education, co-authored texts for legal studies, was an examiner for year 12 both writing exams, marking and moderating. After having my boys I ventured into the publishing and training industries, travelling much of the UK and the USA. From there back into education, this time TAFE or VTE system, lecturing in Advertising, Marketing and International Business. I have spent close to 8 months living with my children and lecturing in Beijing and Xing Tai China, in english in the Advanced Diploma of International business, was an auditor in Beijing for the TAFE I worked for and trained Chinese teachers in the Certificate 1V workplace training and assessment course, in order to afford them a relevant qualification so that they could teach in the co-operative programs established between their organisations and the TAFE in Australia.
I returned to Australia to find I had been awarded a 'Flexible Learning Scholarship' by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework in 2003, as a change manager in the area of e-learning, giving me a year to pursue professional development in leadership and e-learning globally.
Throughout my time as a leader, I developed a portal for the TAFE, was engaged in learning to be an instructional designer at the TAFE, learning by doing in effect as I was asked to be the ID on two in house e-learning projects, one for basic accounting and the other for Art - Colour. Daunting and exciting all at once, a period of time where great learning took place. My reports etc can be found on the AFLF site under my name and the year 2003.
After this exciting year I returned to lecturing, hoping to apply my learning and help to drive change within the teaching population in the Business Services Centre I belonged to. This was fraught with danger as most did not wish to even acknowledge that Global Practice Firms, were any more than 'mickey mouse' environments of no learning as they did not see any 'teaching'. To mention any word that began with e-, was to ask for trouble as many staff had not even come to terms with using emails, missing meetings because they did not get notification in their pigeon holes and did not even open their emails. My greatest success I felt was getting a staff member who had never opened his emails, finally open them to find over 1,000 messages and wondered where they came from. After a few months, he was able to keep on top of it and even send messages (which was rare) but at least he did not miss any more meetings. Yes I am talking about the year 2004.
In 2005 I was approached to be the project manager for an International Project for the AFLF, you can find the details, reports and commissioned works under 2005 projects on the AFLF site or google my name.
I returned to the TAFE for a while and am now taking a break, to complete my masters in International Education, with a focus on e-learning and work collaboratively off my own back with others in Australia at this point, trying to convince educators and administrators that social networking tools and related technologies are not going to vanish, they will instead grow and evolve. We acknowledge that any tool on the www used without taking note of potential dangers and applying safe and informed use, can be dangerous, I myself have recently been a victim of cyber bullying in a professional environment online. If you google Kathy Sierra:Jacinta Gascoigne, you can find the details.
Unfortunately in Australia, we are seeing more and more fear mongering in the media as it seems social networking tools are now the root of all evil in the world. I must admit if I did not have the benefit of knowledge in these areas, I as a parent would be terrified of even turning on a computer.
We are also struggling to get others involved in professional online discourse or others we are working with face to face, to even acknowledge one benefit of such tools, instead the majority appear to believe that all of these tools are damaging the fabric of society.
I am still stunned at what is happening in Australia. The fear campaign seems to be politically motivated, as all educational institutions from primary through to University are now blocking not one tool but all of them from all educational environments, even blocking staff from accessing on campus.
As an educator in the business arena, I do not believe what I am seeing. I have provided examples of my own experience using myspace for a charity I was involved in for some time and now for my own business and also as the Director of Sales for Green and Gold Radio, collectively a number of my colleagues and I have tried to provide examples of the various tools and how they are being used in educational settings, by numerous industries and researchers, even by the Australian Government for collaborative efforts.
Still it is a battle and with the fear being driven into parents, most of whom do not know about the environments and have no opportunity presented to them to learn not only about what their children are doing online but how to use them safely (or as safely as one can), mindful of potential dangers but understanding the benefits and indeed the fact that the world has changed from the world they once new.
We are hoping that others more experienced and more expert than us, will join us in the ourspaces network and hope to share our learning and learn from others through engagement in what appears to be some already very well established networks.
We need help to make sure learners and educators in Australia are not blocked from the very tools being used by so many in the world as in our mind it is killing the creativity of our learners, their ability to learn in the ways that they now require, thus creating a new breed of discontented learners who have worlds that they already have an identity in, worlds that they may need to understand for their chosen career path, blocked, censored, classed as weapons engaged against the very fabric of society, by those in power who themselves appear from their actions to be uneducated and not of the real world that we are a part of.
I will stop the rambling here, but hope to see you here and in ourspaces.

Thanks for letting me venture in and thanks for sharing your individual and collective efforts and passion with those of us in Australia and beyond.

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Permalink Reply by LeeBaber on July 31, 2007 at 5:39am

Hello, Thanks for adding me as a friend. I will look forward to reading over your information. Sounds like you have a very interesting story. I am part of the teachers teaching teachers group over at the http://worldbridges.net edtechtalk community. If you would ever like to join us, please don't hesitate. We meet on wednesdays at 9:00 EST pm and the link is http://edtechtalk.com just click on chat and listen to join in. Thanks again.
Lee