Professional Growth through Technology Education

 

Having made the decision to change careers and pursue a teaching credential, I was immediately presented with the choice as to whether to pursue a masters degree in education as well.  Salary structures for teachers in California provide an economic incentive for teachers to pursue additional education.  However, in the CSET prep courses I took, rumors were circulating that given California's budget issues it may be more difficult to get a job as a new teacher if you have a masters degree because of the salary bump.  I decided that I would only pursue another master's degree if I felt that it would really help me to become a better teacher. 

Throughout my credential program, I learned the importance of individualizing instruction for each student.  I learned to prepare lesson plans that include additional challenges for my more advanced students, to accommodate my English language learners and special education students, and to present lessons for different learning styles.  And yet, when observing classroom teachers I realized the difficulty of implementing these concepts.

As I have pursued my masters degree in digital teaching and learning at Azusa Pacific University, I've come to  realize that technology was the missing piece of the implementation puzzle. The credential program included useful technology components; but, I believe the masters program really allowed me to grasp how teachers were utilizing technology to actually implement individualized instruction in their classrooms.  Learning about the amazing online resources for teachers and the great teachers that were willing to share their knowledge online has been inspiring.  However, when it comes to technology you can't just learn by observing, you have to actually try out the different apps, software, and websites and learn by doing.  The masters program has allowed me to test out the new technologies in a supportive environment before I try to do so in the classroom.  But more importantly, it has truly shown me how to stay current in my field and how to help my students learn to utilize technology to their advantage.

Students need to be taught how to find and use information effectively in this internet age.  It was recently reinforced to me how important technology skills are in the real world outside of the ivory tower.  In February my mother was  diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome, which  is a collection of blood disorders that range from manageable to very serious.  The medical profession is shifting many documents to digital format which presents many opportunities for patients who are computer savvy to learn about the latest research on their disease.  However, it presents many challenges to medical practitioners, similar to the challenges that teachers face.  As the medical profession is shifting many documents to digital format, those who are not comfortable accessing information in this realm will not be able to perform effectively. Unfortunately, my mother is in the process of changing doctors in part because it became clear that her doctor was not able to navigate in this new digital world. A patient's ability to conduct effective research on their disease and evaluate the qualifications of their doctors could make the difference between living and dying.  As teachers, we need to help students develop the necessary skills to be successful in the new digital world.

CUE 2013

I spent three days in Palm Springs attending my first CUE conference.  Wow, what an experience.  I'm so glad that I went and  hope that I will be able to attend every year.  I enjoyed every session that I attended.  However, with so many to choose from I can't help but feel that I missed some great sessions.  The schedule was somewhat overwhelming with so many of  the sessions at the same time.  Choosing was very difficult.  I decided to try to attend any sessions with middle or high school math teachers presenting so that I could see which technologies were best suited for math classes.   Every subject has its own unique challenges and opportunities and by focusing on math instruction I felt that I would be able to borrow from more experienced teachers in my field and identify a few things I would be able to implement in my future classroom. 

I've been intrigued by the flipped classroom model because I think it should work well for math instruction.  I remember as a math student thinking that I understood the lesson until I tried to do the math problems for homework and they weren't turning out right.  That would be so frustrating to struggle with the problems not knowing what you were doing wrong and not being able to understand your notes.  So I was excited to hear what the math teacher presenters had to say about their own experiences flipping their classrooms.  While acknowledging that making the videos was very time consuming, they felt that the results were worth the effort.  Of course if they had tried it and hated it, they probably wouldn't have been presenting at CUE.

The information that was shared was very valuable, particularly the links that were provided to their favorite products for creating and uploading videos and the lessons that the teachers learned in the process.  The presenters shared how flipping their classrooms allowed them to do more interesting math projects in the classroom and to get to know their students better because they had more one-to-one time in the classroom.  However, they recommended collaborating with other teachers and starting slowing to reduce the workload which can be overwhelming if you try to switch to the flipped model too quickly.  Also, being able to add these experienced instructors to my personal learning network is a great benefit of attending the conference.  The willingness of presenters to share not only their experiences but also their materials was inspiring.   I've attached a link to the schedule for the conference.  By clicking on each session I discovered that many of the presenters included links to their resources in the schedule.  I am still in the process of reviewing many of the resources for sessions I wasn't able to attend in addition to those I attended.

 An additional benefit of attending the conference in person is the opportunity to win goodies.  Perhaps it was because it was my first conference but I was lucky enough to win several drawings.   I was thrilled to win  a free copy of Camtasia video-making software to help me prepare videos for my flipped classroom.  Then the next day, I couldn't believe it when my name was called  at the closing session of the conference and I had won the closing raffle of a new Epson multimedia projector.

In addition to what I learned at the sessions, the keynotes were really inspiring.  They reaffirmed why I wanted to become a teacher.  I think that attending events like this and connecting with teachers who really care about doing the best job they can will help keep me from becoming jaded and burning out as a teacher.

Check out how many people attended  Jason Seliskar's  session on Common Core.  It was packed!

Still Reluctant to Tweet

So I have been exploring Twitter, mostly spending far too many hours reading or viewing the links that educators have attached to their tweets.  I am both impressed and overwhelmed by the volume of information that is available.  While it is both inspiring and intimidating to see the different opinions expressed about educational issues and the use of technology, my own opinions are not clearly formed.  As a student, my learning style is to absorb and reflect on a fair amount of information and consider different sides of an issue before forming an opinion.  There are so many knowledgeable  and experienced educators utilizing Twitter, I think my time is better spent learning from them rather than contributing content at the present time.  I expect that my future tweets will likely be limited to re-tweeting links that I found particularly helpful for newbies like myself.

One area that I have been following on Twitter is the references to copyright law and educational use of copyrighted material.  I used to be very familiar with copyright law as I studied it in school and am curious as to how it is being interpreted in the real world.  I personally don't believe it should be as big of an issue as it appears to be.  I am curious to do more research on this issue and possibly do some blog posts about the topic in the future.

Clearly Twitter is a tremendous resource to learn about utilizing technology in the classroom.  I have also discovered some very useful links for math lesson plans.  However, I have found myself struggling with  how I might best utilize Twitter in my teaching career.  I'm not particularly interested in collecting thousands of people to follow or having people follow me.  As a new teacher, I think I need to focus primarily on being effective in the classroom and only after teaching for a while will I have obtained sufficient experience to be truly helpful to others.  Of course, learning how a particular app or program works and sharing that information with others is one way even as a new teacher I could contribute to the teaching community.