Hello and Namaste!!

Hello everyone,

I am from India and last year I came to Canada to pursue my Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction. This is my 7th course and my 2nd ed. tech course. At present, I am a full-time student, but I have an experience of 5 years of teaching. I started teaching undergraduate students and after 2 years I got an opportunity to teach unprivileged and school dropout kids in my community. Well, other than teaching I enjoy travelling. I enjoy exploring new places and their food… I enjoy cooking, and reading…. and I am obsessed with dogs.

Nowadays, technology plays a vital role in our lives. I am a 90s kid… When I was in school, there were no google maps, no cellphones, and even computers were rare in homes. My dad bought me a computer in 6th or 7th grade and I remember his first cellphone which was also very rare in those days. In my school, we had computer labs but 2-3 kids were allowed to use one computer. And if someone from our group was absent on that day…. then that was the day… we use to feel lucky.. as we had more time to use it. Moreover, the internet connection was not very fast but we enjoyed that phase. Every computer class was exciting and I was eager to learn and explore it more. As I went to high school, I had a computer with an internet connection at my home. I enjoyed using it, even though the internet was slow and limited. I remember the excitement of searching and reading content on websites. Soon I also started playing several games on the computer and solitaire was one of my favourites. While writing this, I feel so nostalgic… this created an image in the mind of my school computer lab, my home with a huge computer… The joy I experienced when my dad bought it… There are so many things related to technology that has changed drastically, for example, we don’t use floppy disks anymore.

With respect to my cellphone, I had an orange-black colour phone with a keypad which I got in high school. My phone had small storage with infrared and SMS/calls were used to connect with friends… Afterwards, during my undergraduate studies, I had my own laptop and smartphone.

Now the scenario has changed completely, kids are taught by using technological tools. They are so quick in learning these gadgets whereas if I talk about myself I was not that quick… I was not able to adapt to the use of computers and other tools. I still prefer to read books over ebooks and I could never forget the essence of sending/receiving handwritten notes/letters/greetings.

During the pandemic, I was teaching in India and that was the time when I started using educational tools in my classroom. For the first time, I taught kids on an online platform. Everything was new and I was teaching school dropout kids so I had constant pressure of keeping kids motivated to study and be a part of my class. I searched for several apps and online games which helped me to make my classes interesting. These educational tools helped them to explore a new world, they were always eager to learn new things. I, as a teacher also learned several new things. Moreover, it made me realize the importance of being a tech-friendly person. Currently, being a full-time learner, I am using these tools for my class assignments and also I am collecting tools for my future students. As the current world demand for use of technology, I aim to learn a lot about it so that in future I am ready to share my knowledge with my students.

Fortunately, I was able to learn many things in my Digital Citizenship and Literacy course and now I am excited to start learning alongside you all.

Thank you