Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought.
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
ETEC 500 is in the foothill section because I feel it is a very important course that teaches climbers how to approach later courses and assignments correctly. It is by no means an easy course and challenges the climber to push their boundaries and realize that without proper technique they will not easily be able to conquer the climbs to come. ETEC 500 was a course where I felt very constricted and controlled but I feel that this course was very important to learning how to do things the right way to make my journey easier. I wish I had taken this course earlier in my MET program. I had had it scheduled for the second term of my first year but dropped it because I felt overloaded at the time. I ended taking the course as my 9th course because it kept being a challenge as to where to fit it in. I firmly believe that taking this course earlier would of helped me in my other courses but taking it late in my MET journey made me realize how important this style of thinking was.
ETEC 500 was very different than all of the other course I had taken up to that point because it was very rooted in theory and procedure. It taught me the importance of thinking critically and to evaluate articles I read with a more skeptical eye. This course taught me the difference between qualitative and quantitative research and the skills to learn how to apply each to best support the point my research was tasked with answering. Along with my fellow classmates we learned how to critique and discuss the validity and veracity of example research questions and results. The final project was a group project the create a research proposal on a topic of our choosing. Our group decided to focus on iPads and their use in a grade 5 classroom. I was lucky to have an amazing group that was full of MET veterans and I had a great learning experience, even though the topic of hardcore educational research was somewhat alien to me.
This course taught me how to be a more conscientious masters student and that doing things to proper way not only makes my life easier but also that of the professor marking my work. I feel that that course challenged me as a 21st century learner in that it pushed me to use all the resources I could to solve a challenge that pushed me outside of my comfort zone. It taught me to be a critical thinker and to not just accept the information that I read in an article but instead to look at how the article had been researched and written to decide for myself the validity of the information contained within. I will take away from this course a sense of academic criticism that will not only improve my ability to build my own understanding of the the issues and topics that are important to education but also a skill that I can pass on to my students in terms of their ability to find, evaluate and rank the information that they are exposed to.
ETEC 500 was very different than all of the other course I had taken up to that point because it was very rooted in theory and procedure. It taught me the importance of thinking critically and to evaluate articles I read with a more skeptical eye. This course taught me the difference between qualitative and quantitative research and the skills to learn how to apply each to best support the point my research was tasked with answering. Along with my fellow classmates we learned how to critique and discuss the validity and veracity of example research questions and results. The final project was a group project the create a research proposal on a topic of our choosing. Our group decided to focus on iPads and their use in a grade 5 classroom. I was lucky to have an amazing group that was full of MET veterans and I had a great learning experience, even though the topic of hardcore educational research was somewhat alien to me.
This course taught me how to be a more conscientious masters student and that doing things to proper way not only makes my life easier but also that of the professor marking my work. I feel that that course challenged me as a 21st century learner in that it pushed me to use all the resources I could to solve a challenge that pushed me outside of my comfort zone. It taught me to be a critical thinker and to not just accept the information that I read in an article but instead to look at how the article had been researched and written to decide for myself the validity of the information contained within. I will take away from this course a sense of academic criticism that will not only improve my ability to build my own understanding of the the issues and topics that are important to education but also a skill that I can pass on to my students in terms of their ability to find, evaluate and rank the information that they are exposed to.