From day one last May when I began, I have pushed myself as hard as I could to make sure that I can be successful in this program.  So far, I have had 8 classes and I have received a 4.0 for each class.  Thus, I feel that I have overcome my fear that I could not cut it anymore as a student.  As a result of overcoming this fear, I realized that my goals had to change.  I began my next goal which was to gain the knowledge to become a better teacher and leader on my campus.  With technology being such an important part of our lives both at home and at work, I feel this program has done a great job of preparing me to use technology in my classroom not as a simple tool but as a change in philosophy.  The technology I have learned so far in my classes have allowed me to create meaningful, interactive and rigorous lessons that have given my students more opportunities to explore their imagination and creativity in their process of mastering the content of my class.  Thus, in this essay, I will show how the MAET program and its courses have shaped me as a teacher and how it has improvement my leadership skill especially when it comes to technology. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    I guess the best place to begin would be from the very beginning of this program when I took CEP 810 Teacher Understanding with Technology taught by Amy Pietrowski in the summer of 2012.  As I began this program, I went in with the idea that I was good with technology.  I cannot remember how many times people complimented me about technology prowess.  But I was quickly put in my place by this class when we were introduced to so many new technologies that I did not even know existed.  I kind of felt like a fool for even considering myself technologically savvy.  Even today, after all these classes I feel that I have improved a lot but that there is still so much that you can learn about technology for the classroom and that there is much new technology that has not even been invented yet.  But this class definitely allowed me to grow as an educator by giving me some basic technological tools to add to my teaching tool belt.  At the time I felt a lot of optimism about this program and where it was going to take me.  I felt that I could incorporate several programs/applications that I learned into my lesson planning and that it would probably change the way I taught. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     One of the goals that I had when I began this class was to build up a skill set of technologies to teach the U.S. History technology academy class at my school site.  As a result of the lessons and group work we did throughout that first class, I felt that I was on my way to achieving this goal.  Unfortunately, school politics have stopped me from getting this technology class but I am still pushing for it.  By the end of this class, I set a goal for myself that would push me for the rest of the program.  My goal was for me to be much more proficient with Web 2.0 programs.  I wanted to learn and implement programs like Prezi, MS moviemaker, YouTube, Jing and all the Google applications into my lesson plans and I feel that I have definitely achieved this goal as of right now.  My students use technology constantly in my classes and I feel that I am helping them become 21st century students.  I knew there was still much ahead of me and I was ready and willing to take the challenge.

 

    From there I went on to take several more classes before I enrolled in CEP 817 Learning Technology Through Design taught by Punya Mishra.  When I first signed up for this class, I thought this would be a class about how to design professional websites.  I was intrigued by the idea of learning all the ins and outs of creating websites.  As I read the syllabus on the first day of class, I quickly realized that that was not the case.  I have to admit that I was a little disappointed.  I also found myself not completely ready for this class.  I needed to figure out what this class was going to be all about.  So, my next question was, what type of design are they talking about.  What exactly is this type of design?  If someone had asked me for a definition of design before this class, I would have given a simple answer like it is the way something is created.  But after this semester of analyzing this concept, my definition would be much broader and definitely more complex.  This class was all about technology and how best to design it for it to be a meaningful tool in your classroom.  Throughout the course, we got to see the importance of design by doing the readings, labs and discussions.  This was also another class that really emphasized the importance of the TPACK model.  Once again, I saw how powerful a lesson can be if you really can master the skill of creating effective, interactive and engaging lessons with this model.  This class highlighted the importance of design in using technology.  I realized how importance design was in a technology being effective.  I really did not see how much design really goes into creating a powerful technology.  This class revolved around the creation of a large web design project called the Big Kahuna.  Many of the weekly assignments were designed to help in the creation of this web site.  

 

     Overall, I feel that I have a much better grasp of the idea of what quality of design is.  I have learned how important design is everything that we do.  Without design, our everyday lives would be full of chaos.  I had really never paid attention to how import design is in creating a good learning environment in schools and classrooms.  Now, I see how important it can really be and how it has to be an important part of the planning process of anything dealing with the schools and students.  I am grateful that I have taken this class this semester because I have gained valuable design skills that will help me in creating new curriculum with the big changes that are coming in the next couple of years as a result of Common Core being used.  Based on what I learned in this class, today, I would describe design as a concept of how to create a product to maximize its potential.  To create a product that is eye pleasing, easy to use, effective, efficient and ultimately helps create a useful product.  My definition of design has definitely changed and that has helped me in a large part of how I perceive my school, my classroom and my lessons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Systems (CMS) but ended up concentrating on Haiku which is a Learning Management System (LMS) because it was the program that I felt most comfortable with and it is the LMS that my district is using in their online classes.  An LMS is a software program for teachers and administrators to be able to create an online class.  It allows you to provide content notes, lessons, images, videos, discussion boards and many other applications that allow you to teach a class online without having to see your students physically. Through this class, I was able to create a Haiku course for World War II (Log in = 6400007388 and Password = online) in which my students can enroll and be taught a unit online.  The CEP 820 course focuses on ways in which teachers and students can broadcast their ideas and information to the outside world for purposes of collaboration and communication.  This was a great class to take because it allowed me to put some of the technologies I have learned in practice in an actual class.  I was able to get experience on how to properly create an online classroom and how to create an environment where rigor and creativity are still keys to a successful lesson while doing it online.  I believe this class has given me the skills to set myself apart from other potential candidates when interviewing for potential online classes this coming spring.

 

    The last class I will be discussing in this paper is the class that has allowed me to put all of what I learned together in one major project.  This class is CEP 813 Electronic Portfolios taught by Patrick Dickson.  I am currently enrolled in this class and I am working on my professional portfolio.  This portfolio has given me the opportunity to demonstrate all the technological skills I have gained through this MAET program.  It has given me a vehicle to show someone what I learned in this program by showing them my portfolio.  We are also doing this in my other class this semester, the Capstone CEP 807 class.  Even though I am still in the process of finishing this portfolio, I have already benefitted from having it.  I have a new principal this year and she has taken an active role in bringing technology onto this campus.  Our previous administration did not really put any emphasis on technology.  But she came to me and told me that she heard I was in this program and if I could give her an idea of what technologies would be good to roll out on our campus.  I showed her this portfolio as an example of what students could create if we began training our teachers on how to use some of the technologies I have learned in this program.  She liked it asked me if I was willing to show some other teachers this portfolio. 

 

    Therefore, this class has given me an opportunity to showcase what I can do and what I have learned.  But it also added another dimension to my thinking.  During this class we have been asked to evaluate what good work really is and what it means to students.  I have to be honest and say that I have done a lousy job of displaying my student’s good work.  I also learned that my school and district have also done an inadequate job of showing parents what their children are doing in these classes.  I know this something that I have to work on and I am hoping that my school leadership will think this is important enough to create an online presence for good student work to be displayed.   I think it would be a great idea if every freshman was told they had to create an electronic portfolio to demonstrate what they learned by the end of their four years in high school.  While I have been working on this portfolio, I have realized that I have learned a lot and feel a sense of accomplishment.  It would be great if students could do this well to see how much they have progressed in their intelligence, maturity and perspective over their time in high school.   I do not know how realistic this vision of mine is but I hope that in the future we will have an opportunity to do something like this.  I think it will really benefit our students and parents to see this progress in an online portfolio.

 

     So, let us get back to the question at task, how has this MAET program shaped me as an educator and as a leader on my campus. I hope that through this essay I have made it clear how much technology has shaped me as an educator.  I feel that the TPACK model has changed the way I see lesson plan creation.  The more I use this model, the more I see how I can create lessons that rigorous but interactive and engaging at the same time.  The TPACK model has shaped my pedagogy and I hope that it will also help shape the teaching of other teachers on my campus.  I am part of a new technology group that we started this year for the purpose to getting more teachers access to technologies and more importantly how to use these technologies when they have them in their classroom.  They asked me what would be a good model to use and naturally I thought of TPACK.  So, TPACK is now officially our technology-education model for our group.  In the very near future, we will be doing a professional development where we will introduce it to the entire faculty.  I thought this was kind of cool because something that I learned in MAET program will actually be used on my campus. 

 

    I know that I still have a lot of goals to accomplish in my classroom and especially on my campus but I think I am equipped with the skills I need to complete these goals.  Now, I just have to take what I learned in this program and begin applying it to my classroom and at my school site.  I hope that by next year, I will be teaching an online class and that technology will be much more wide spread through our campus.  I would totally recommend this program to someone who wanted to know more about technology and how to properly use it in their classroom. I am grateful for this program for giving me the knowledge and skills necessary to tackle my goals.