Hello fine folks,
My name is Madison Fouhse and I am a fourth-year elementary education student at the University of Regina. I like a lot of others from Saskatchewan grew up in a very small town (village) of 450 people near the Alberta border. When I am not at school studying away you can find me either exploring the outdoors, at Mission Ridge teaching snowboard lessons or cuddled up with a cup of coffee reading a murder mystery. All of the above are my happy places where I feel the most alive and free.
My experiences with educational technology definitely skyrocketed during my pre-internship during my third year. For my pre-internship, I was placed at one of the P3 schools in the city. In that school, I had the great opportunity of using all the resources that they had available. Some of those resources included; a class set of ipads, SMARTboard projector, and so many wonderful teachers who created their own smartboard resources. My co-op during my pre-internship was in the works of starting her own podcast about education technology which was amazing to witness her find inspiration and play around with all things ed-tech. (I tried to find her podcast but it looks as though she is taking a break, when I find it I will inform you all.)
As for myself, however, it was definitely a learning curve to adapt all the tech in the room. Toward the end of my three-week block, I finally felt as though I was effectively using the SMARTboard and the Ipads to positively help the students in that class. Things took a turn once I went to my Internship school as technology was not as accessible and my co-operating teacher did not feel comfortable enough yet to fully incorporate tech into her classroom. The most we used the SMARTboard functions was for math reviews. My goal with ed tech is to use it effectively and slowly create a better understanding of how to implement it my daily life as an educator as well as in my classroom space.
As for blogging, we have had a love-hate relationship for quite some time now. When I was told my first year of university that I was going to start blogging the only thought that went through my head was “isn’t blogging for 30 year old stay at home moms?” but OH MAN was I wrong.
As I first started blogging my first year I slowly began to resent it as a lot of my posts felt forced and lacked a lot of personality in order to satisfy my professors. Through out my university experience however I felt like I have begun gaining more and more freedom as to how I express myself through writing. I am a big fan of following lifestyle bloggers and knowing all the productivity tips, recipes, best skincare routines, etc, etc. In a dream world I would have a blog that had the perfect balance of lifestyle, education and outdoors. One day…