Introduction

My name is Ken and I currently live in North Vancouver, BC. I am taking my 6th and 7th class in MED - Educational Technology. My present position as an IT teacher in the affluent community of West Vancouver has given me a great start using ICT. Rockridge Secondary was built in 1996 and was wired for technology. All teachers have a computer in their classroom for personal use. Consequently, most of the communication in the school is done using email although there are still some dinosaurs that prefer voicemail. We also have a tv broadcast system in all the classrooms. Every morning the tv broadcast class distributes announcements for the day. We also use this system for video conferencing within the district when there is an interesting presenter at a particular school.

I work in networked lab of 25 computers. My role as an IT teacher is to use create a learning environment using computer as a tool for learning and to use sound teaching pedagogy to support this. All grade eights take the exploratory class which involves IT, sewing, cooking, guitar, and woodworking. This situation benefits the elective teachers because this is where we showcase what we do in the upper grades. Moreover, all the students develop a solid foundation of IT skills. Besides working with technology, I also run a photojournalism class which designs the yearbook, maintain the school website with a committee of students and my own course site, coach basketball and golf and also have time to complete my graduate studies. However, there is a balancing act that I do that allows for a little family time with my wife and little boy. In the back of my mind, I still wonder what I will do with all the extra time when my graduate studies are over.