Introductions

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

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Cesar on January 2, 2010 at 8:21am

Hi there!
My name is César Vergara and am from Guayaquil, Ecuador. I am currently studying in order to get a certification that will enable me to teach online classes. I was seeking websites with info and resources related to this and found this one, which I must say is great! I hope I can make some friends here, as I could use some advise and share experiences. I got the feeling my studies are going to become a lot easier thanks to C 2.0 :-D

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Permalink Reply by Paul James on January 2, 2010 at 3:27pm

Hi everyone,

I'm Paul and I teach ICT and maths to secondary students at a special school in North Yorkshire, UK.

I've been teaching for 15 years and have been reading blogs and following lots of UK teachers on Twitter for several months now. I have been impressed by everyone's willingness to share and their enthusiasm for using web technologies in school.

My developing PLN has pointed me in the direction of lots of new resources, some of which I have been able to use straight away as IWB resources, others which I think need a bit more investigation and trialling.

I really feel that I have learned about more new resources over the past few months than I could have in any number of courses I'd taken in the same time. Also, by following others and reading about their experiences, I have learned how to research and evaluate new resources for myself as time goes on.

I'm hoping to learn more by joining this community and look forward to sharing ideas and experiences with some of you in the future.

Best wishes for 2010.

Paul

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Permalink Reply by Víctor Manuel Martínez Orta Vive on January 2, 2010 at 7:46pm

My name is Víctor Manuel Martínez Orta Vivero,Manuel for my friends. I live in Toluca, near of México city. I´m a lawyer with a master degree in Counseling and Huann Development. I´ve estudied PNL and Philosophy too.
My true passion is teaching. Since 1984 i´m teaching in the "Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey", one of the most important private universities in México.
Nowi´m interested in Tics and their application in education.
I hope to learn and share many things with you.

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Permalink Reply by Darrell Graham on January 3, 2010 at 12:55am

Hi, I'm Darrell Graham, a middle school PE and health teacher in Loris, SC. We are a small town about 30-45 minutes away from Myrtle Beach

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Permalink Reply by AJ Juliani on January 3, 2010 at 6:03am

I currently teach 10th and 11th Grade English in a suburban Philadelphia school district. I've grown up in PA, but have spent many summers abroad. Right now I'm finishing up my Master's in Global and International Education from Drexel University. I also serve as the Director of Educational Development for Swaziland Relief - an NGO serving the orphans of Swaziland (swazilandrelief.org). Recently, I started my own education business/resource blog - check it out at educationismylife.com. I want to expand my PLN as much as possible!

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Permalink Reply by George Bradford on January 4, 2010 at 10:03am

Hello and Happy New Year! George Bradford here, signing in from Orlando Florida.

I work at the University of Central Florida where I have two roles. I am a doctoral candidate conducting research on cognitive load in online courses, and I support university faculty who will learn to teach online courses. Another colleague of mine and I teach faculty how Web2.0 technologies can be integrated to form communities for specific learning projects or to discover existing communities to join and engage in dialog. I look forward to hearing more about what other Ning users are doing!

-George

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Permalink Reply by Jenny Ankenbauer on January 6, 2010 at 8:04am

Cognitive load online...what a great topic to discuss in this forum. As a CC online instructor I have yet to master the skill of judging how challenging a digital task will be to the novice online adult learner who is returning to college after many years of non-computerized career experience. Cognitive load relates to the academic debate of teaching process skills vs content, and using graphic organizers and non-text learning tools to chunk knowledge into digestable bits. I'd love to learn your research findings of any of these topics.

But here are two immediate questions:

1) how can I estimate the time-on-task requirements of a non-text task in a digital context? What criteria do I consider in that estimation?

2) What time differential should be factored in when the assignment is made collaborative? Are teams of two more efficient than teams of 4? Is collaboration worth the extra time needed for the assignment at the expense of more content coverage? How do I make that determination?

Welcome George and I hope I haven't opened Pandora's box.

Thanks,
Jenny

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Permalink Reply by Allyson McDowell on January 7, 2010 at 9:39am

Hello Jenny
Thank you for opening Pandora's Box, the questions that you present are the same ones that I have been asking myself for sometime now. I teach fashion design in high school and when assigning projects especially technologically based ones I am always asking the 'What If' question.

Students today approach learning differently since Web 2.0 so Pandora's Box should be opened so that we can let out the last item left (HOPE). Some of us (Digital Immigrants) need loads of HOPE to fully understand how the learning Digital Natives take place.

Hope fully someone has answers to your questions so that I can also learn.

Allyson

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Permalink Reply by Mike Marzio on January 4, 2010 at 10:48am

Hi all. I'm American, from NJ, but live in France. I created a language school here in 1976, and since it is still running pretty well, I am still here, living in a little fishing village near Marseille. The school is north of home in a town called Istres.
In 1992 I began the Real English® project. This has become my true passion as I approach retirement.

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Permalink Reply by Annette D. Hawkins on January 4, 2010 at 7:08pm

My name is Annette Hawkins, and I chair a Math Department at a community college in North Carolina. I joined this forum:

1. fto ind out what minimum technology competencies should the department obtain
2. to stay abreast of current technology
3. to stay abreast of training, seminars, webinars, and conferences
4. to connect with other instructors

Thanks for letting me join.

Annette

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Permalink Reply by Jennifer Blizman on January 5, 2010 at 4:48am

Hello! I'm Jennifer Blizman from Pittsburgh, PA. I teach math and science to the advanced learners at my virtual charter school. I look forward to learning from everyone here.

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Permalink Reply by Yuval on January 6, 2010 at 12:40pm

Hi,

My name is Yuval Spector. I'm an active parent and coach at Stanford, CA. I'm the founder of UpToUs (www.uptous.com), an online solution that brings parents and educators together to organize their classrooms, sports teams and other extra-curricular activities. Happy to be here.

Thanks,
Yuval