E-Learning Initial Task - Introduction

I will re-introduce myself for the e-learning course. My previous introduction is HERE

About me:
My name is Maibritt Kuuskmäe. I am an outgoing person from Pärnu, Estonia, where I raise my five-year-old son and go to work. I teach children aged 8-19 English and French in Pärnu Coeducational Gymnasium. I studied English and French in Tallinn University of Educational Sciences 8 years ago, and it feels nice to study again (I feel a lot smarter than straight after secondary school). Currently, as my schedule is very packed, I am not able to go singing in the choir, which I have done for a little while. I have "enslaved" myself with studying in Tallinn University. I am undergoing Master studies in Interactive Media and Knowledge Environments. I am very interested in e-learning as I implement online solutions in my lessons whenever possible. I have not used specific e-learning environments in my everyday work, but I have got acquainted with them through different courses, for example Digitiiger for school teachers.



Online learning experience emerged before coming to Tallinn University, but I failed the course, because of lack of time, thus I had several doubts of taking online courses. After passing my first online course, I felt safer already, because the critical question was time distribution and self-discipline. I have passed one e-course, and currently enrolled in several of them, because it feels more liberating when you study from distance. The main difficulty for me is actually time distribution, and sometimes lack of time.

About social media tools.
I am currently using online IM solutions, like imo.im or meebo as well as MSN Live Messenger and Skype, due to schoolwork. Also my study blog is in Blogger, but for one course we are using Wordpress blog as well. For social bookmarking tools I prefer Delicious, as this one was introduced to me first.
At work I use blogs and pageflakes in order to put all necessary pages there for the pupils to follow. I also like to create web pages and thus I may use one simple web page like a weebly-based one. I like to insert forums into blogs from Nabble forums.

My preference is e-learning in an open environment, because then it is easier for all the participants to participate.


My hopes for the course are to get something new and interesting in addition to my knowledge. I also hope that our school could adapt an e-learning model in secondary school level.