Introduction

http://www.teachingsuperpower.com/

I have always wanted to be a teacher. Ever since a young age while others played house I played school, making my younger sister and brother sit in desks to write lines, stories or do math problems- things that at a young age I associated with teacher-student dynamic.  Like many young girls I enjoyed playing Barbies. While playing Barbies my Barbie was employed as a teacher. On my eighth birthday my favorite gift was a school set that included a small chalk board and two little desks, making a perfect classroom setting for my teacher Barbie and her little pupils.

As a child I knew that teachers could do so much good for their students, but as I went through my elementary years I learned that they could also do damage, not only to a person's learning but to their life's journey as well. When I was in grade 6, my teacher told me that I would never be accepted into post secondary schooling and that I should take “workbook math” because I would never be able to pass mainstream math courses. He said “she’s just not good enough” (grade 6 teacher, June, 1999). To me, at such a young age, this translated to “she’s just not smart enough”. Not ever being one to be told what I couldn't do, I took this as a challenge to achieve more than his expectation.

By the end of high school, my grades were in the high sixty to low seventies. After many meetings with my school adviser I knew that university was not going to be a direct option for me. With this in mind, I went to college to pursue a diploma in Early Childhood Care and Education with the plan of becoming a preschool teacher. Experiencing a practicum in this course showed me how amazing it was to teach and that I was definitely on the right path. Being in a position where I was confident in my abilities furthered my love for teaching and my grades reflected this with high 80's and 90's. After completing my second practicum, my thoughts changed to be more positive and I felt that I was going to be able to accomplish my original dream of teaching kindergarten. The comment from my grade six teacher weighed heavily on my mind up until I realized that it I who was in charge of my own destiny and not someone from my past. The ladder I was climbing did not stop at the college level and I applied to the University of Alberta for my Bachelors of Education focusing on elementary grades (1.11).

To this day I am amazed how impact-ful a teacher's words were on me as a young 12 year old student. The quote by Andrew Carnegie really speaks to how my self motivation helped me to overcome his harsh words to successfully complete a diploma, a bachelors in education and with the completion of this course, my masters. I have used education to not only help prove to myself that I am "good enough", but also to provide opportunities for my future advancement in career aspirations and personal goals. Teaching everyday gives me the opportunity to inspire others to follow their dreams as they climb the ladders of opportunity while proving naysayers wrong. 

 http://www.660news.com/2017/11/17/cbe-discusses-racism-concerned-parents/

I started my career in September 2010 as a substitute teacher with the Calgary Board of Education (CBE). Within three months I had steady work completing several temporary contracts. Extended contracts excited me as I was able to plan and execute engaging lessons. In September 2011, I was fortunate that my sewing skills landed me in a position where I was teaching Fashion and Food studies to grades seven, eight and nine. With the diversity in my school, programming and timetable restrictions saw many students repeating my fashion program.  I found myself trying to recreate my programs every semester to keep my students excited about the projects and therefore fully engaged in the course. I taught for three years learning and developing a program that could use online and face-to-face instruction to enhance their sewing skills. My program became very successful and the students were learning skills in grade 8 and 9 that most high school students would struggle with.

During this experience, I started to bring technology into my courses, and especially my Fashion Studies program.  This started me on a journey where I began to create videos for instruction. Having these videos allowed my students to work independently and if they needed extra support they could watch the steps multiple times (4.4). After three years of teaching Fashion Studies, I started to have students ask me where they could find the patterns I used, and how they could recreate projects at home with their younger and older siblings. I started to post my videos on YouTube; these videos included pattern names and numbers, how to make a pattern from start to finish, and how to make the project from start to finish. My vision for these videos was that they would benefit students who were learning online and could possibly create, one day, an opening for online Fashion Studies programs (2.5).

The students and I became interested in the creation of instructional videos, and videos in general. I created a Film club where I could teach, as well as, learn more about video cameras and editing software. There was enough interest that the school administration launched a Film Studies course, with me at the helm. This opened the door to many more technologies such as, green screen and lighting techniques. We filmed the school play and had the students edit the clips to create a full-length film, using the many angles in which they obtained by being the camera operators. I became proficient in iMovie and Windows Moviemaker and this pushed me to want to learn more. Trying to create activities that the students could access from a distance became my vision and my next step. The idea that my students would be able to access their missed lessons from a distance had me searching for resources.

The artifacts that I have chosen all represent different learning experiences I had through the M.Ed program.

1. Artifact 1:  Assignment 1 from MDDE 601. A pivotal learning moment for me in terms of how I needed to structure my time and how my writing was not as good as I had originally thought when starting my program. I was certain that I had successfully learnt how to write papers in my past post secondary experience and so this first paper should have been easy. I will show you how I was quickly awoken to the pressures that a Masters course holds and the level of writing that was expected went above and beyond what I originally thought. This artifact pushed my writing skills from minimal/unacceptable to a point where at the end of the program I have been transformed into a much better researcher, writer and referencer in terms of course projects and papers. 

2. Artifact 2:  Assignment 2 from MDDE 651-Gender issues in distance Education, course. This assignment required a lot of group work and keeping an open mind about the Gender issues we were going to experience through the course while trying to relate them to everyday lives of others. The entire project required communication, organization and professionalism between all people involved. This project shaped how I related to my students in the school I currently teach at, as well as, why they were unable to access lessons while they were over in India or Pakistan for extended leaves. 
3. Artifact 3:  Assignment 2 from  MDDE 623-Introduction to Mobile Learning. In this assignment, we were asked to work in groups of 2-3 people and analyse a course from the Masters in Education Program. In our collaborative proposal we were tasked with presenting the selected course and explaining why we believed mobile learning would be an appropriate approach for that course. Next we had to substantiate the proposal and explain how we could augment the course by adopting m-learning. In our paper,there was an emphasis to focus on the pedagogical aspects of the proposed modifications to the course. Our group was not well matched; there were a lot of hurt feelings and our group almost split up due to the problems with communication.
4. Artifact 4: Assignment 2 for MDDE 622- Openness in Distance Education required me to analyse and compare an open education resources (OER) to one that was similar but required the user to pay for the usage agreement and then present it using an OER platform. I chose to compare Google Documents and Microsoft Word and present them using a OER of our choosing, I decided to use the student Moodle site.
5. Artifact 5: Assignment 3 in MDDE 610- Survey of current educational technology applications asked me to identify something that I have always wanted to learn to do. This could be a computer program, playing a musical instrument, learning to make buttercream icing, as a couple examples. We had to use either a Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) program (Web-based instruction is a type of Computer Assisted Instruction) or a mobile app to teach the skill. I was required to demonstrate my competence by preparing a blog post, website, or Mahara ePortfolio collection that demonstrates both what was learned and the way I used the CAI program. Show why I chose the CAI program or mobile app in the first place, what I hoped to learn, what skills were achieved, and how I achieved them. We were required to include a critical reflection on the use of CAI or mobile apps for learning in general, and a final recommendation to others about the application.