Hi! My name is Joanie Ford; my nickname is Jojo. When I graduated from BYU-Hawaii in 1992, technology in the classroom meant that you typed your papers in a word processing program or you pounded out a few numbers in an spreadsheet document. Sure, we had a few overhead projectors, maybe a TV and/or a cassette tape player in the classroom but nothing like what I'm seeing at BYUH now. The future of technology in education is bright! For this blog, I will be covering three topics:

1. My experience with technology 2. How I'd use technology in my classroom 3. What I hope to learn from the Master of the Macintosh a.k.a. Peter Chan

First off, after graduating from BYU-Hawaii with a degree in Elementary Education, I taught at Hale Kula elementary school for a while, then I got a job teaching on the internet. This worked out well because I was a young mom, I needed to be at home with my children and I also needed to earn money to support my husband through law school. When we bought our first computer, I called it the "Alien". It was huge and really foreign to me! Overtime, I learned how to hold internet class, organize email files and grade papers with my new friend. I kept this job for over 12 years and learned a lot about online curriculum, eschools and eclass.

Moving on to how I'd use technology in my own super fun and educational classroom. I would want to get my students excited about learning with printing, publishing, using computers, music and photography in their work. That would start with using programs like iPhoto, iMovie, PowerPoint and Pages. I would also want to get them started learning how to create websites but I think a person and particularly a child should be very careful about what he/she publishes on the internet. So, this would be something we would do as a class so I could restrict who could view the projects.  Also, if I had the resources at my finger tips, I'd love to use a program called Compass Learning to enhance student performance. This program has a full curriculum for children K-12 to work on. For testing and for boosting abilities across the curriculum, I think this program is both exciting to learn from and easy to work with.

Lastly, I hope to learn a lot from my friend and mentor, Professor Chan.   I'd like to do video production, and learn more about the Google suite of tools. Technology is always growing, always moving, I'm ready to ride the train. =0)