This feels like such a great and exciting new way of writing to myself, even though I’ve never been much of a journal writer. This might just be what I need and it’s great that I’m learning how to do this in an Education class. My name is Veronique Poulin. I am from a small town called Zenon Park and I am fluently bilingual in French and English. I am the 7th of eight children and feel very fortunate to have been raised in such a wonderful family with two great parents. I enjoy music and that is my passion. I am currently enrolled in the Education program through the Faculty of Fine Arts, majoring in Music and minoring in Theatre. I love to play sports; volleyball, snowboard, skating, and of course…playing hacky sack.

I have some background experience with technology but mostly from high school classes. I also worked on website translation for my hometown and upgrading one of the websites which was, unfortunately not very successful. I was still new to it all and did not have the skills to try to restart it all. Although, it did teach me many things about creating my own website, I do not feel comfortable attempting it again yet. I am very excited that chilrdren as young as 5 years old can begin learning about technology at such a young age. It is a completely different world and students can take advantage of their ability to search, to understand, and to contribute to recent technology. Students can not only surf for powerful tools such as blogs, information processors, and communication enablers, but they can take correspondence courses with other people from around the world with the same teacher-all through the screen of a computer. The limitation to this is that the learners may have more trouble succeeding in a class that is given on the computer because of a lack of one-on-one help from the teacher. There may also be some cyber usage that is negatively used in the school walls. The new technologies that englobe almost every youth are great ways of keeping in touch but take time away from other important aspects of the internet. It is also important to be able to draw the line between fun entertainment and educative entertainment. Only when these two can be intertwined can these new systems can be successfully used in the school environment.

I have yet to learn many things about technology and the internet. Even such a simple thing as a blog was unknown to me before this assignment. I am excited to begin this course and am open to anything that will be of use to me in the future. I hope that the instructor will be able to clearly explain and indicate which softwares are the best for which age groups and to explain some of the educational tools that could be used inside a classroom. I also would like to know more about websites and how I could start my own for my students one day.