Showcase

I have always loved learning and pride myself on being a lifelong learner. This led me to continue my learning journey at Michigan State University. This page showcases my learning and growth throughout the Master of Educations in Technology (MAET) program. The pieces highlighted on this page are broken into three categories:

Understand - As educators, our goals are to ensure students learn and are successful. We can do this by helping our students develop a deeper understanding of the information being presented to them so they are ultimately able to transfer and apply their knowledge from one situation to another. My work through the MAET program helped me to understand this importance and to discover ways to help ensure that my students are achieving this deep understanding.
Technology - Too often, technology is incorporated into lessons simply for the sake of being able to say that it was utilized within a lesson. Through the MAET program, I developed an understanding of the connection between Technology, Pedagogy, and Content Knowledge (TPACK). It is important to remember that utilizing technology within lessons should help students gain a deeper connection to the material and that technology should be incorporated to help enhance students' skills and knowledge.
Change - It is easy to identify problems within our practices. However, it takes time, dedication, and confidence to stand up to address these problems. After completing the MAET program, I realized that I had been complacent in not being a voice for change. By examining who I am and whom I want to be as a leader moving forward, I realized that it is important to speak up and stand up for causes that will help ensure the success of all of our students.

To view the artifacts below which highlight my learning and growth in these areas, click the images to view the full PDF version.

Understand

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Photo by Pixabayl from Pexels

Being in the education field for almost twenty years, I have seen numerous changes in curriculum and how information is presented to students. Normally, the information is given as a directive as to how things will change with very little reasoning as to how this will affect student learning. This essay helped me to step back and analyze all of the changes I have witnessed throughout the years and gain a deeper understanding of the reasoning behind them and how they drive student success. This essay in its entirety shows how I can take information and make connections to my own life and experiences.

I worked through all of the steps of the Design Thinking Process related to a problem that I was able to identify within my practice. I identified a problem, empathized, defined, ideated, prototyped, and tested in order to come up with a solution to my problem. Ultimately, when going back to reflect on the process, I came to the realization of how important the Design Thinking Process can be to student understanding. I was also able to draw connections between the Makerspace I am growing within my school and how it could be a hub for both students and teachers to help drive the Design Thinking Process and student learning. See my reflection which shows how I can creatively incorporate these ideas into my practice.

In this presentation, I showcase my understanding of what expert knowledge is and what things teachers can do within their classrooms in order to help students achieve expert knowledge. This presentation shows how I can organize information into a coherent, engaging, and approachable presentation that engages others to watch it.

Technology

Photo by Rujroad Kaewurai from Flickr

A current buzzword in education and in my district is 21st-century learning. Currently, one of my district’s main initiatives is a push to incorporate the 4Cs (communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity) of 21st-century learning and develop a plan for what that looks like for students. This project allowed me to reflect on how 21st-century learning has evolved since the start of the century and how I am able to contribute to strengthening my students’ 21st-century skills. This shows my reflective and engaging blog post and the creative and engaging multimodal presentation I created on this topic.

Photo by Adafruit Industries from Flickr

This lesson takes an innovative piece of technology, littleBits, and uses them to create a lesson that truly encompasses the ideals of Punya Mishra’s Technological Pedagogical Content Framework (TPACK). The plan focuses on students developing their skills at creating character analyses. By incorporating the littleBits, a creative component was added to this difficult subject to help drive student engagement and willingness to work towards achieving an understanding of the concept. In this learning experience plan, see how I creatively incorporate this technology to take my students’ learning and understanding to the next level.

My first experience with Punya Mishra’s idea of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Framework (TPACK) was having to complete a “cooking” task using predetermined utensils. This helped me to solidify the importance of how technology can not be used as the driving force in lessons and student learning. Instead, there has to be a connection between content and pedagogy, and then technology can be tied in creatively to help drive students’ learning and understanding. This blog post shows my reflective nature and how I am able to make connections between what I am learning and what I am doing.

Change

Photo by Overdrive

Photo by Jessica Lewis Creative from Pexels

I had the opportunity to explore a “Wicked Problem” related to my practice. I spent in-depth time exploring how we can offer eBooks to students in a more cost-effective manner so that students can have access to books that will spark their interests and encourage them to read. As part of the process, I researched, polled teachers, analyzed the resources available to me. Ultimately, I wrote a letter to publishers requesting a change in current eBook lending models in order to help ensure students had ample access to books that piqued their interests. This letter shows how I was able to take my learning to the next level and share my findings with others to elicit change.

I researched how standardized testing came about in America and has changed and shifted over time. Upon completing my research, I was able to transfer that information and write a letter of my findings and the necessity for change in the system here in Michigan, and why now is the right time to make this change. I also created a unit plan and assessment grounded in the ideals of Project-Based Learning that could be used to assess student learning and understanding in a meaningful way that creates deeper engagement and interaction with the learning content and provides real-world and personally meaningful connections. This letter shows how I am well-researched and incisive in order to elicit change and how I can creatively make authentic, real-world applications that students can make connections with.

To showcase my skills as a leader, I created a Professional Development (PD) session for teachers within my building. The goal of this PD session was to provide teachers with the opportunity to authentically engage with reading a text together and to showcase different strategies to engage readers with the content. Teachers then had the opportunity to work through the process together as a Professional Learning Committee (PLC) and ask any questions that they had along the way. There was time for questions and answers, and then they were then asked what components from the PD they were going to take back to utilize with their students in their Advisory classes to help continue to build and develop our school-wide culture of reading.