Where One Journey Ends Another Begins

 

I have bled green since the day I was born. It is a family tradition to attend Michigan State University and receive at least one degree from there. So I am proud to say that I am continuing that tradition by finishing my second degree from MSU. The road to accomplishing this has been long and hard but it is one that I will never forget! It all started by receiving my bachelor’s degree in elementary education with a major in science and a minor in mathematics. Then I completed my internship in a 3rd grade classroom at Bennett Woods Elementary. It is during this internship that I started down the master’s degree path. After completing my internship, I set out to find a job in Michigan and I was lucky enough to get an offer in the same school district as my husband, Sandusky Community Schools, teaching third grade! I was very excited to start this part of my life but knew that I would eventually go back to MSU to complete my master’s degree journey. After teaching for 2 years, I was starting to feel confident in the classroom and felt that I was ready to be a full time teacher and student, but what should I get my master’s degree in?

 

I have known since I was little that I wanted to be an elementary teacher but I never realized the challenges that I would face in order to succeed in this profession. Teaching for the past two years in a low-income school district has been very eye opening and has allowed me to grow as a person both professionally and personally. As a teacher, I must continue to grow by learning about new teaching strategies and techniques to use in the classroom. To accomplish this goal, I knew it was time to complete my master’s degree and I was very excited to continue that journey. I knew that I had to find a fully online program because of my location and MSU offered many. I started thinking about getting my master’s degree in administration but soon realized my love for being with students in the classroom. Then I thought about a master’s degree with a focus in science, since that is my passion. But I decided I should start down a new path because I had already received a degree with a science focus. Finally, I saw that MSU offered an educational technology master’s degree and I immediately knew that was the program for me because technology is my second passion! I applied to the Master of Arts in Educational Technology program, was accepted, and then began this challenging journey of being a full time teacher and student, in the spring of 2013.

 

The first course that I took in the MAET program was CEP 810: Teaching for Understanding with Technology. When I began this course I was ending the year with a very difficult group of students who continued to be very unmotivated. This course quickly gave me insight on how to effectively motivate my students to learn by using technology appropriately. Learning how to teach with the TPACK framework allowed me to understand that not all technologies are made for education, instead I have to find ways to repurpose them to fit the needs of my students. I was able to come to this conclusion by completing an assignment called Cooking with TPACK where I created a peanut butter and jelly sandwich using three random items my husband picked from our kitchen. This assignment also allowed me to see that technology doesn’t necessarily mean computers and smart boards. The technologies in this assignment were a bowl, hamburger grounder, and a platter. I repurposed these “technologies” to make a delicious PB&J sandwich! The idea of repurposing technologies to fit with lessons and curriculums quickly helped motivate my students, at the end of the year. I applied this TPACK framework to a 21st century lesson where I used an online tool called Create a Graph to enhance our measurement and data unit and my students attitudes instantly changed. The lesson that I created for my students to participate in allowed them to access a new technology tool to showcase their work, create their own bar graph, analyze the data in the bar graph they created, reflect on their findings by discussing their data with a partner and recording them in Microsoft Word, and acting by presenting their new knowledge to their peers. These competencies helped my students to think about the “big ideas” of the lessons and help them to transform from a novice to an expert learner. Finally, the main focus of this class was a Networked Learning Project where I had to teach myself something new only using Youtube and online help forums. This assignment brought all of the course objectives together for me! I not only learned how to reupholster a wingback chair but I learned how a student feels while learning through the TPACK framework, I helped increase my personal learning network, and I found a new tool, Evernote, to help me with getting things done efficiently. In the end, this course allowed me to see the new definition of learning in the 21st century and how to effectively teach students with technology.

 

The next course that has benefited my teaching career is CEP 812: Applying Educational Technology to Issues of Practice. This course allowed me to understand how educational technology can help solve many of the issues that I have in my classroom and in our school district. For example, this past year I had two autistic students in my classroom. This was my first experience with special education students so I felt lost when it came to dealing with their anger outbursts, communication difficulties, and their frustrations with learning. To help with this issue, I did a lot of research on autism and how to help autistic students in my classroom. After I researched this issue, I wrote a paper explaining my findings. My main finding was to use different methods to positively reinforce good behavior in the classroom. I found this difficult to do with spelling because they both struggled in this area. To help solve the problem, I went looking for assistive technologies and found a Simplex Lite App that had a very simple format and constantly gave students positive reinforcement while playing. I knew this would be an excellent addition to my spelling program and found that it really helped motivated my autistic students. This experience gave me the confidence to continue to research issues that arise in my classroom and find assistive technologies that could help solve the issue of practice. Next, I learned the importance of the internet and how it affects the information diets that each person has. As teachers, we all have our own educational beliefs but it is important to also see the other side of the argument. This not only allows us to see where others are coming from but also allows us to communicate effectively with people when it comes to common issues of practice. To fully grasp this new concept, I started following three new websites on Twitter that focused on anti-Common Core Standards and pro standardized testing (both the opposite of what I believe). This assignment has shown me the importance of seeing both sides and understanding that there are many “wicked problems” in education that are very difficult to solve. This brings me to the final assignment in this course where a group of colleagues and myself was asked to solve a “wicked problem” in education, reimagining online learning. Online learning is where education is headed in the future but this type of learning is a completely different than what we are accustomed to4. As teachers, we have to find ways to motivate students to learn in an online classroom instead of a face-to-face classroom and at times this can be very difficult. As a group, we found research that proved that incorporating digital gaming into online learning increases student motivation and engagement along with constant communication with peers and teachers through discussion forums, blog post, Skype, and/or e-mail. This course opened my eyes to all of the wicked problems that educators face every day. There is no right way to solve these problems but they also can’t be ignored. As educators, we have to work together to find multiple solutions to these wicked problems so that we can help students succeed in the classroom.

 

One of the most influential courses that I took while completing the MAET program was CEP 820: Teaching Students Online. This is because I was introduced to how to effectively create an online class that I could immediately implement into my third grade classroom. At first, I was completely overwhelmed by the whole idea of teaching elementary students online but was soon amazed at the endless possibilities that online learning has to offer. I was given the opportunity to explore many online learning management systems (LMS) and found one that focused on K-12 online education, Haiku. This was exciting because there is very little research in the field of online elementary teaching and learning, but this LMS emphasized it! Next, I was introduced to the standards for online learning and teaching. I had no idea that these standards existed, but it makes sense why they need to be followed. Just like we have content standards to follow we also need online learning and teaching standards to ensure that students are getting the same academic and social experience online as they are in the classroom. Keeping these standards in mind I began the large task of creating a mini unit on force and friction. During the entire creation process, I had to ensure I found ways to engage and motivate students, make sure the directions and steps were clear and concise, use third grade word choice and keep the readability at a third grade level, follow content standards and online teaching and learning standards, and make sure there was an ease of navigation while completing the class. This creation process took the entire semester and I learned many things about writing online classes and myself as an online educator. But the biggest thing that I took away from this course was creating an online experience is not about taking a curriculum and putting it online but it’s about using the curriculum as a resource to make a engaging online learning experience for the students. This is exactly what I did and I plan to use the mini online force and friction unit with my third graders this coming year! Finally, this class has motivated me to continue my formal education by completing a Graduate Certificate in Online Teaching and Learning, in the future. Without this course, I would not understand the power of online learning.

 

The final course that has reshaped my thinking as an educator and has also made me rethink my future is CEP 815: Technology and Leadership. As stated above, at one point in my career I thought that I would like to pursue a degree in educational administration but decided my passion was working with children. This course has shown me how I could become a technology leader and still be able to work with children, during my career. Throughout this course, I learned that there are many different types of leaders and each leader has a different leadership style. A leader’s style affects how he or she interacts with the people around them and how those people respond. To gain a better understanding of these different leadership styles, I was asked to tweet different leadership style responses to five different scenarios. This experience allowed me to see how educators would respond to these leadership styles, which in turn helped me see what kind of leader I would like to be in the future. Next, I learned about the difference between instrumental and missional thinking. I have never realized the importance of this difference until applying this concept to my school district. Unfortunately, my school district continues to use instrumental thinking, which focuses only on the technology. When in reality we need to move towards missional thinking that helps us see how technology is going to help us reach a goal, in the future. For example, our school district shouldn’t be purchasing iPads because that’s what neighboring school districts have done. We should be purchasing them for a reason and that reason should be to help achieve a goal that we have set as a school district. It is very hard getting people to change from instrumental to missional thinking and I have seen this first hand. It is my goal to help show my colleagues the importance of changing our mindset to help our students succeed in the future. I now understand that I can be a technology leader and a third grade teacher at the same time. I plan to take on a leadership role in my elementary school and start positively presenting different technologies that are available to us. This course has given me the confidence to become an educational technology leader in my school district and I hope that I can make a difference, starting this year!

 

To bring my MAET program all together, I ended this experience by taking CEP 807: Proseminar in Educational Technology. This final course allowed me to reflect on my master’s degree experience in a unique way, by creating an online portfolio! The online portfolio allowed me to showcase the work that I have completed during my master’s degree in educational technology in an engaging and personal manor. This course not only allowed me to see how much I learned over the course of a year and a half but also to reflect on how my goals have changed over time. I saw this change while writing a Goal Reflection Essay. This essay showed how the courses I have taken at MSU have shaped the goals that I have set for myself in the future. With the future in mind, we were asked to write a Future As A Lifelong Learner Essay. While writing this essay, I realized that even though my master’s degree journey is coming to end another is about to begin. A teacher never stops learning. We have to find ways to continue our education and I plan to do that both formally and informally. I plan to take the knowledge that I have gained from the MAET program and use it to enhance my teaching and leadership, in the future. I will never forget all of the things that I have learned in this program and the opportunities I was given. This may be the end of my Master’s of Arts in Education Technology journey but it is the beginning of new journey in my life: sharing my passion for educational technology with all.