Anne Mirtschin's Comments

Hi Anne,

Thanks for the welcome. I'm looking forward to making lots of connections on here!

Sam

I am a graduate student, studying for my Master’s of Education in Instructional Technology, through the University of Maryland. I am currently taking a course that focuses on Global Perspectives in Technology Integration. My research partner, Regina, and I have been working over the course of this class to find ways that Australia is improving education through the integration of technology in an effort to write a proposal as to what schools in the United States can learn from your programs. We located you as a 2008 Microsoft Australia Innovative Teacher Award recipient and felt there was much you would have to offer us in terms of improving our research. With a little help from Google, we were able to locate your blog in hopes of receiving your feedback.

I have included 13 questions below that we would greatly appreciate you answering to help us improve and further our research. We are required to write an overview of your responses and would appreciate your feedback (if possible) by 16 April to allow us sufficient time to complete this assignment.

We thank you for your feedback in advance and look forward to your responses.

Sincerely,

Tiffany Carrizales and Regina Cockerill

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Questions:
1. What initially inspired you to begin integrating technology into your curriculums?
2. What was specifically helpful in encouraging your professional growth in terms of becoming technology literate?
3. To what extent do you feel technology should be required to be included in the curriculum?
4. To what extent do you feel that technology should be utilized at the pace and comfort level of the professional?
5. How have you encouraged fellow educators to embrace technology integration into their classrooms?
6. What do you feel is the largest obstacle in getting educators motivated to integrate technology into their curriculums?
7. What methods have you witnessed and/or experienced for enforcing technology integration upon educators that was not well received? What factors contributed, in your opinion, most to the negative response?
8. What are you especially proud of, in terms of your professional development experience, that you would recommend to another nation hoping to follow your example? For instance, have you lead or attended a professional development course to meet to policy standards that was especially motivating?
9. Which learning management systems (i.e., Blackboard, WebCT, WebCT Vista) have you had the most experience with and which one would you most recommend to a trainer hoping to introduce this technology to novice educators? Why?
10. Aside from learning management systems, which additional technologies do you find most useful for actively engaging your students in synchronous and/or asynchronous activities? Why?
11. What other people would you recommend I talk to?
12. What other recent books or articles do you think would be useful?
13. Are there some websites you would recommend?

Thanks Anne - Please hit the red feedback button and let me know what you think -- we're listening! If you like it, please spread the word.

A little strange, but not bad. After three years in a city that is 19 million upstate NY is a little slow. And nothing is spicy enough. But, it is nice to understand everything and really learn some new stuff in a great job.

Hi Anne,

It`s not really the availability of technology that is the problem - it`s the different culture of usage. We have plenty of computer rooms around campus, and audio visual equipment in classrooms is improving to allow we teachers to use a variety of authentic materials.

But the Japanese teenager / young adult doesn`t use a computer anywhere near as much as they use a mobile phone. Technology is geared much more towards the mobile here than it is (I think) in other countries.

When I was casting around for blogging platforms I wanted to find something simple enough to look at on a mobile browser, and flexible enough to post to from a mobile phone email address...this way, I hope the students will actually interact with it a bit more.

Thanks for the reply Anne, would love to work with you in the future.

Jody

Hi Anne, glad to talk to you. I saw yout comment about the classes you give using a vitual classromm right. I´d like to know how this class works, is it paid, is this tool heavy?
Thak you for your help!
Nilson

Hi Anne. I'm very excited to have joined Classroom 2.0. I spent quite some time last night exploring and I feel that it will be very useful. Hope to talk to you again soon!

Hi Anne
I've been really interested in the innovative ways you've been using Web 2.0 technologies - I'm really just beginning, but I'm hoping to inspire some of my younger staff to really get onboard for the future!

Thank you!! :)

Thanks, Anne. I'm already finding much of value.

Thank you for the "hello." I will look around and contribute as much as possible

Hi Anne,
Thanks for the introduction there's so much to explore here. I'll have to take it step-by-step though

Hi, Anne!

All that means is that I teach online courses for different colleges and universities. :-) I have taught on several different platforms and enjoy incorporating new Web 2.0 features into existing courses or creating new courses.

I recently helped launch a Public Speaking course using webcams and Skype. It has been amazing to teach!

Peace to you,

Darla

Thanks for the welcome message Anne! It's great to hear you're on the CERT team. The world is a better place thanks to volunteers like you.
cheers
Rob

Thanks for your insights, Anne, they are helpful.

Anne, Thanks for your nice note. I feel like we should know each other by now! I'm glad you like Reinventing, we're working on a revised edition now, especially updating the appendix, which we knew would have a short shelf life with all the amazing tools coming down the pipe.
I know it's a ways to travel, but might I see you at NECC?

Thanks Anne, so its a matter of making social and collaborative technology relevant for boys. That makes sense, at least some boys would like writing. Tthe boys in my family have no desire to write, which biases my opinion somewhat.

sue

Thanks Anne, the first visit has been very inspiring.