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NOTHING TO LOSE,
EVERYTHING TO GAIN
As my master's program is coming to an end, I reflect on how I have changed as a teacher. I have always been a resource, but now, I have become confident in my abilities to lead.
Everything to Gain: Projects
I always root for the underdog, for the person or team who are coming in at a disadvantage. They are still on the same playing field, but have to work that much harder for success. That was the major reason why I decided to pursue a degree in special education. My kids are the underdogs. What I have noticed about the successful underdogs is the experience and expertise of their coach. In order to be a helpful tool in my student’s success, I needed to better myself. For that reason, I enrolled in the Master of Arts in Educational Technology program (MAET). Now, as I sit in preparation for graduation, I have reflected upon the many lessons I have learned these past couple of years and included them within my Capstone Portfolio. These lessons include reflecting upon the work I created, using failure as a learning mode, promoting asking better questions, teaching students how to learn, integrating technology into my pedagogy and content knowledge, and keeping a skeptical mindset with new technology. Looking back, on my time and creations, I think about how much better of a coach, educator, and leader I have become thanks to this program.
Everything to Gain: Quote
Reflection
Thoughtful reflection was asked of us in every course of our MAET program. This modeled component of teaching is so important in creating intrinsic learners. Every week that I submitted a paper, blog post, or creation, I was given specific and meaningful feedback through the teacher’s comments or peer video reflection. This feedback allowed me to become much more thoughtful in the creations I submitted and needed to revise. This practice then moved into my classroom, where it was a daily conversation with my students that teachers don’t just give homework for the sake of giving homework. The purpose is to help build their skills up in preparation before test time. I really stress to my students to keep their homework or quizzes, even if they are not happy with their original results. It is because I have learned that feedback and reflection are key components in learning, especially when needing to reflect upon failure.
Everything to Gain: Quote
Failure
In CEP 812: Apply Education Technology to Practice, I learned all about how education is filled with wicked problems. Wicked problems that don’t have just a right or wrong answer, but only have the best solution. After almost breaking both the washing machine and garbage disposal in my first year of marriage, I knew the wicked problem that I was most interested and invested in was “Failure as a Learning Mode”. Time and time again, I saw students that constantly failed, but also noticed students who never experienced failure either. Both of these situations are not ideal. Students who always experience failure do not have a chance to learn from it or how to make themselves better. On the opposite end, students who never experience failure early in their education may eventually fail and not know how to persevere from it. The first step was to change the negativity that corresponds with failure for not only my students, but for myself. I needed to reflect on my own experiences with failure and change my mindset before I would be able to change others. Next, I needed the parents to allow their children to experience failure, so that they both could understand how to learn from it. I have recently been introducing projects into my classroom that I know students will fail from. For example, I created a task for my students to make a moving car out of macaroni. They were given three separate trials and the opportunity to learn from each failure made. I wanted my students to struggle and fail, because they would be able to use those failures to learn and become more successful than the previous attempt. In this way, I hope my students can reflect upon their failures and ask better questions in order to learn from them.
Everything to Gain: Quote
Promoting Asking Better Questions
Asking better questions was a main focus of CEP 811: Adapting Innovative Technology to Education and I was asked to read Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question. This reading really opened my eyes to how I work as a teacher. In his book, Berger mentioned that success and innovation come from questioning, ”yet for some reason, questioning isn’t taught in schools-nor is it rewarded (only memorized answers are)”. (Berger, 2014, p. 2). This statement caused me to reflect on my own teaching in the classroom. Did I allow or generate an atmosphere where students felt safe asking questions? Did I promote questions? Berger continues about why student questioning decreases as they are promoted into the higher grades, “To encourage or even allow questioning is to cede power- not something that is done lightly in hierarchical companies or in government organizations, or even in classrooms, where a teacher must be willing to give up control to allow for more questioning.” (Berger, 2014, p.6). Right then and there, on only page six, I changed my philosophy of teaching. I decided I was going to promote and support my students’ questioning and inspire them to ponder what they were learning by creating deep, thoughtful questions that I sometimes did not have the answer to. When a difficult problem comes up in my classroom, such as a tough math problem or a technology issue, I try to make myself less available to jump into assistance of their “I don’t get it” comment and explain that I want students to take time to wrestle and work with the problem. Giving students time helps them move to more specific and well thought out questions that allow them to get closer to the answer they need. “When questions are allowed in the classroom, students ‘tend to become more engaged, more interested,’ then ‘ideas begin to flow, in the form of questions’”. (Berger, 2014, p. 17).To build upon Berger’s quote here, when students start learning how to ask better questions, they understand how to invest in their learning.
Everything to Gain: Quote
Everything to Gain: Quote
TPACK
The cornerstone of the MAET program is TPACK, where Technology, Pedagogy, and Content Knowledge overlap to create the “sweet spot” of all three knowledge areas. “Underlying truly meaningful and deeply skilled teaching with technology, TPACK is different from knowledge of all three concepts individually. Instead, TPACK is the basis of effective teaching with technology, requiring an understanding of the representation of concepts using technologies; pedagogical techniques that use technologies in constructive ways to teach content; knowledge of what makes concepts difficult or easy to learn and how technology can help redress some of the problems that students face; knowledge of students’ prior knowledge and theories of epistemology; and knowledge of how technologies can be used to build on existing knowledge to develop new epistemologies or strengthen old ones” (Koehler & Mishra, 2009). This is especially important when teaching students how to think critically, organize thoughts, and solve problems, as previously explained. Learning TPACK helped me recognize I lacked the technology aspect needed in order to balance the pedagogy and content knowledge I was already teaching in my classroom. I made it my goal to guide and support my colleagues with courses that allow students to use technology as a main component. My favorite example is when I used StoryCorps in the sixth grade classroom for our Building Bridges project. After the sixth graders read a story about a grandfather passing down his family’s stories to the next generation, we asked them to interview the elderly members of our church congregation, known as the Cornerstones, and to develop a presentation about them. They used the StoryCorps app to plan the outline of their interview and then recorded the interview in order to create visuals for presenting their Cornerstone stories on iMovie. This project represented the perfect balance of using technology while also developing their conversational and presentational skills throughout the project. When planning a lesson, I now make it a priority to incorporate technology not only into our larger projects, but into our simple day-to-day lessons.
Everything to Gain: Quote
Skepticism
When learning the great values technology can bring to a classroom, I have to be aware of the risks that come with it. In a course pushing technology integration, the MAET program brought in speakers and text that gave us the right insight to question the programs and professionals that we used. My Summer Hybrid packed CEP 800: Leaning in School & Other Settings, CEP 815: Technology and Leadership, and CEP 822: Approaches to Ed Research into two weeks of in-person, on-campus learning and six weeks of online learning. The hybrid started with two weeks at Michigan State University where I met peers that believed, just like I did, that technology in the classroom could only do good. After reading Daniel Willingham’s When Can You Trust The Experts?, we learned to question everything. Chris Gilliard came in and taught us about the digital divide and warned us about the uncertainty of what large tech companies, such as Google, would or could do with our information and, even worse, our student’s information. These courses gave me a skeptical mindset when helping build my school’s integration program in order to maintain the school’s liability and protect our students’ privacy. For example, we decided upon using office 365 instead of other platforms because it required less personal information from our students. I teach my students this skeptical mindset as well in order for them to understand how to keep their personal information protected from the technologies they use every day.
Everything to Gain: Quote
I am a resource teacher and have always seen myself as a resource to my colleagues, but I believe that obtaining my Master of Arts in Educational Technology has turned me into a leader for them. Through this program, my beliefs on education have changed dramatically. I now understand the importance of creating an atmosphere for students to become intrinsic learners and question everything. I believe that students need to learn from struggle and experience failure to become their best learners possible. I am happy to have become the leader I’ve aspired to be, but know there is so much more to learn from people similar and different from me. Technology will always be one of my students’ greatest assets, but will need to be looked at thoroughly and used with purpose. My students may forever feel like they are underdogs, but I am confident their best tool will be the knowledge I am able to pass onto them because of the MAET program.
Everything to Gain: Quote
References
image: Engber, Daniel. “Why Do We Love to Root for the Underdog?” Slate Magazine, Slate, 30 Apr. 2010, slate.com/technology/2010/04/why-do-we-love-to-root-for-the-underdog.html.
Berger, W. (2014). A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Bransford, J., Brown, A.L. & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.), How people learn: Brain, mind, experience and school (pp. 3-27). Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Retrieved from http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309070368.:
Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2009). What is technological pedagogical content knowledge? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9(1). Retrieved from https://www.citejournal.org/volume-9/issue-1-09/general/what-is-technological-pedagogicalcontent-knowledge
Everything to Gain: About
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