About the Author
Pictured: Top- “Rod casting” for Atlantic Salmon on the Lomond River, Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland.
Middle- The author sips latté at Sandringham Beach, Port Phillip Bay, Victoria, Australia.
Below- The family at Uluru, Northern Territory, Australia, September 2007
The author of this Blog is a veteran school teacher who now lives in a small town on the banks of the Grand River, north-west of Toronto, Canada. He retired from the classroom in June 2012, most of his career spent in the Peel District School Board at a progressive suburban middle school. He taught Integrated Technology in a well equipped computer lab. He completed a graduate degree at Wilkes University (Master of Science in Instructional Media through Discovery Education) in 2010.
For 7 years, he lead some of the instruction of Ontario teacher upgrade courses, specifically, Integration of Information and Computer Technology, for ETFO AQ. These online courses build on the skills and leadership required of 21st century teachers, and encourages teachers to lead others along the edtech continuum.
More recently, he earned the Apple Teacher designation, having been an Apple Trainer for 5 years and after completing the iPad and Mac teacher online tutorials.
In 2007, he participated in an international teacher exchange to Melbourne, Australia. He misses the Southern Ocean, the beach, roaming around the Outback, visiting the Red Centre and Melbourne’s legendary café culture. He is resigned to the fact that snowshoeing will be more likely, that the Canadian wilderness is a cold place to roam, and that Tim Horton’s isn’t exactly café culture.
He now pursues Brown Trout in Retirement, mostly on the famous Grand River Tailwater.
Rod is married to Colleen, who worked in municipal government, and they have two boys, both finished University and now in the world of work. All 4 communicate with one another on Apple devices, sometimes from within the same house.
You can find his Digital Footprint in various places, including:
Google+ – https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RodMurray/
Flickr- http://www.flickr.com/photos/rodmurr/
Twitter- https://twitter.com/mrmuzzdog
Instagram – http://instagram.com/mrmuzzdog
Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/roderick.murray
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/pub/rod-murray/19/659/50b
The Rodcast 
Hi Rod: Just saw your comment on the DE Canada blog regarding Canadian content — thought I’d post my response on your site as well . . . not sure if you have RSS for the Canada blog set up, so wanted to make sure you see it:)
Thanks for the great feedback — we’ve actually been working diligently in recent months to add a lot of new canadian content to the site and there is a lot of new stuff that you should check out! We’ve recently added a significant number of videos on Canadian topics, and by Canadian producers (Distribution Access, TV Ontario, McNabb Connelly, and other Canadian producers are now available).
In addition, we’ve recently launched Canadian Theme Pages that provide bundled content on topics specific to Canadian studies (to see theme pages, do a search by content type and select Theme Pages)
Also, I’m very excited that we just launched the new Canadian Interactive Atlas – check it out in the Teacher Center.
We would love to hear more from you on specific content that you would like to see added to the site — our Licensing team is always looking for new suggestions, so please feel free to send a list to me and we’ll see what we can do!
Thanks again for the feedback – it’s very helpful, so keep it coming.
Sincerely,
Betsy Whalen
Director, Discovery Education Canada
Rob,
Thank you so much for your comment on the blog. I just wanted to touch base with you and thank you for your feedback.
Are you signed up as a DEN Star yet? Sounds like a perfect match for you. We are going to have a contest soon but you need to be a DEN Star with Canada to be able to apply and want to make sure you don’t miss out.
Shoot me an email sometime and we can chat. Love to connect.
Karen Goldman
DEN Account Manager, Canada