Reflective

My original purpose for beginning this education was to achieve a master’s degree. I had no thought process put into the idea except simply achieving the degree. As time progressed into my first semester my competitive nature kicked into gear. I did not just want to achieve a degree and slide by the next two years I wanted to excel. I had found my drive again and I wanted to soak up everything I possibly could about technology. A considerable amount of time and effort needed to be put forth and I made up my mind to achieve this goal I set for myself. This experience has brought about some exciting and phenomenal advancement in my career, as a media specialist and educator. I have always loved computers and have always found them rather fascinating. I originally decided to major in computer information systems when I began my college career. How I was ever deterred from a CIS major still puzzles me. I ended up majoring in health and physical education with an emphasis in exercise science. I have been an athlete my whole life and the aspect of exercise science is my second passion. I quickly realized that with this master’s degree I could merge my two passions into one love. This is a broad enough master’s degree that I could use in the clinical realm of exercise science and with that known my drive for this degree ignited. Upon completion of this master’s degree I feel adequately prepared for any technology challenges I may face in the future. I feel I had the opportunity to gain a generous amount of skills and tools that will allow me to help my teaching staff differentiate instruction, as well as, integrate new technology applications throughout classrooms. I gained a major confidence in my ability to serve teachers, tackle technology challenges, and create solutions to everyday facets of our school curriculum.
During these past two years I realize how I have changed and how technology has ever so quickly evolved. I gather plenty of headaches wondering if I will ever be able to keep up or at the least soak up enough information just to stay abreast. This has also made me aware of how our teachers are lacking in their technology skills in the classroom. I chose to step up my game and make some changes and the more I learned with this major the more excited I became in my job. I wanted to share all my knowledge I was acquiring with my teachers. I chose various assignments to be my artifact four in my portfolio. These assignments are from ITED 7400 class that I took during Fall semester 2009 with Amanda J. King. I loved this class and it was so much fun to be a part of. I used the Domain of Development with every project that I created in this class. I introduced screen capture to my teachers because I knew they could use this tool with creating their school webpages for their students. They would be able to easily create tutorials or easily display problem examples for their students on their webpages. I introduced the Picassa application to teachers for the ease of having a web-based picture editor. The computer configuration and cord connections lesson helped me set up a short tutorial for teachers on how to hook up their computers and the identification of cords. I posted this to our school website for ease of access and a quick refresher incase our tech specialist was not able to reach them on a short notice. I was assigned by my principal to randomly videotape teachers and to help me be more organized I designed a video check sheet. I also put a copy of this sheet in the teacher’s box when completed.
The artifacts in ITED 7100 class taught me a lot about myself. It made me turn inward and reflect on short and long term goals that I wanted to achieve. Why I wanted to achieve these set goals and what it was going to take to be successful? This reflection set me up for my next step towards success. I made a plan of action and I developed my mind set without ever looking back. These artifacts reintroduced me to group work and what it was truly like to work as a team. I was not fond of group work and I had some bad experiences in the past, but these wonderful group members helped me realize what teamwork was truly about and we banned together in the development of three great projects. In the domains activity I started off rather lost but quickly became familiar and associated with the five different domains and sub domains that I would be using throughout the rest of my master’s degree. The domains activity made me think and it challenged me to recall all of the ways that I use each domain and sub domain in my job every day. Through performing this activity I realized there are numerous jobs I execute daily and I never realized they could be listed under some of these domains and sub domains. This activity gave me a better understanding of all the domains in everyday job tasks. The other artifacts helped me become more involved with my community that I work in and with my students. It taught me that I was actually more involved than I thought. As an educator I realized how my involvement with my surrounding community is an important role in shaping our students and helping them succeed. It is important to be involved, active, and a positive role model in the community so that we can better lead our students towards a successful path in life. If we, as educators, are positive role models then it will be easier for us to lead by example and to give our students actual insight on ways for them to be successful, as well.
I wanted to include my internship because of the artifacts I created and the experiences I had performing as a media specialist. I have retained so much valuable information, tools, and skills from this semester. I have learned how to become more organized as a media specialist, I have strengthened my technology skills, I am a more well-rounded educator, I feel more valuable as a teacher, and I feel this internship has helped me master my craft. In January, I was given the task to set up each classroom with selected technology equipment. My principal thought of this idea in hopes of making teacher transition quick and easy. If every room was set up with the same equipment then a teacher would only have to take their laptop. To show proof of this I created an excel worksheet with all equipment listed at the top and the teacher classrooms in a column. As I made my way setting up each room I checked off each piece of equipment. There are still some rooms that I am working on and it has taken most of the school year to get to where I am now. I know this will be an ongoing task and I will need to check back over the rooms periodically. I also made a laptop inventory chart for my technology coordinator. He wanted an exact count of all the laptops in the school, where they were, who had them, their identification numbers, and the condition of the laptop. I blew this chart up poster size and laminated it to hang on my wall. I write on the chart with an expo marker to keep track of the whereabouts of the laptops, the dates they were checked out/in, and the condition. Students are also allowed to checkout laptops for a certain period of time so I created a laptop user agreement form. In February I continued my technology classroom equipment chart and working on completing the rooms one by one. I had to do a school-wide inventory of all of our technology equipment and I made an excel chart to turn into the board office. Our teachers are learning how to use CPS (Classroom Performance System) clickers in the classroom and I made a step by step tutorial to help them convert their exams from a word document to Exam View and pull them up in the CPS (Classroom Performance System) program. I really enjoyed creating the tutorial and the teachers loved it. In March I was given the task of creating a virtual classroom that we will use next year. I was so excited to do this task I could not wait to get started. This classroom will be taped live every period with a different subject taking place. The class size will be small with about 7-10 students. It will be aired on our local CNS channel 6 in Camilla. This virtual classroom will be for students who may not be able to come to school for various reasons but this will definitely give them the opportunity not to get behind in their studies. I think this will be a great opportunity for this community and very educational.
The one project I am most proud of I chose to be an example of my best work. Artifact five is a Business and Computer Science Curriculum for tenth through twelfth grade. I used the Domain of Evaluation and its sub domains for this project. Before constructing the content for this curriculum I had to perform a vast amount of analyzing data, thinking, critiquing, weeding information and devising. I analyzed the problem we faced as educators in not giving our students the fundamentals they need to be successful in the workforce. Our school technology curriculum was not keeping up with the ever advancing world we work and live and our students’ needs were not being met. I analyzed past grades to get an adequate understanding of what worked in class and what failed for our students. I used this formative data to begin molding the content that would push our students to the peak of creation. This class was designed to fit the student according to the fundamental skills they need to compete in our global market setting. I wanted to revamp the curriculum to catch up with our advancing students to challenge and engage them in other various technologies and to push a step further toward a new realm of creation. This class was also designed for a society on a global scale which is a concept I wanted to bring to the students of this small town. I wanted to help them think beyond what their surroundings had to offer and show them educational and developmental skills they will need beyond the workforce. The subject matter of this curriculum will help students serve as more well-rounded citizens in society and be able to incorporate many of the foundational skills they learn into their livelihoods. The educational goal sums up the purpose and development of this curriculum. Overall the ultimate goal of this curriculum is to help students gain a competitive edge in the global market. This is a critical step in a young adult’s life and it’s our job as educators to make sure they are prepared in every way to be successful in the world and in the workforce. The summative data will be fully gathered by the end of the school year and if any revisions need to be made the technology teacher and I will make revisions before the beginning of the school year. So far, according to the technology teacher, the class has been pretty exciting and a success for the students. I am very proud of myself for this accomplishment and I am so excited to see the outcome of this curriculum class.
I have retained a vast amount of valuable information, tools, skills, and knowledge from this master’s education in instructional technology. I will continue to utilize everything that I have been taught in these past two years. I am very excited as to what my future holds for me with this education and the many ways I have thought of in advancing my career. It took me five years to finally choose a major and I struggled with a decision but I am definite I finally made the correct choice. I have so many ideas that I want to incorporate into this job position of ways to excel and ways to help our faculty become better in the classroom. I will use these different technology applications and tools that I have learned to help our students reach their fullest potential as they advance onto college and the workforce. I know I still have a lot to learn and I look forward to the challenge in keeping up with technology. It is an ever advancing world so I know I have to be a sponge and soak up all I can when I can. I look forward to increasing my knowledge and learning new and exciting ideas in and out of my career discipline. I feel with this education I have the capability to be the best possible media specialist in my field and in my school system and I can set the bar high of what it takes to be a great instructional technologist.