Personal Statement
The past two years have had a profound impact on the way I view both education and technology. Although I have always been a proponent of implementing technology in education, I had only a small understanding of how to actually do this until entering the masters program. Before entering the program, I used items such as PowerPoint to accompany lectures and a basic school-based webpage for displaying homework. Past that, if I came across an educational website that I could use in the classroom on a rare occasion, I would.
Since entering the program, I have learned how to expand on these in-class ideas. One such idea is to use webcams to help teach and meet geography and science standards while also addressing the NJCCCS technology standards regarding the social aspect of the application of productivity tools. I have also learned how to effectively use the Internet for research and teaching (an increasingly vital state technology standard) throughout every course in the program. I have also created webquests and my own software product using Authorware and instructional design principles. Both of these teach problem solving/decision making skill which are crucial to the success of every child as well as basic computer skills that will be necessary to prepare every student for today’s workforce.
I have also learned a great deal on how to use technology to improve administrative tasks. I have learned to more effectively use Excel not only to keep a classroom gradebook , but also (and more importantly) how to analyze it. By using the built in statistical analysis tools, I can monitor student progress. It is easy to both aggregate and disaggregate data depending on whether I wish to look at the class as a whole on one examination, student progress, or class progress. I have also learned how to use Access to keep databases of information such as lesson plans and other resources. This can be kept and updated year to year with notes in order to improve my teaching as time goes on.
During this past semester, I have looked at how to use technology to assist students with diverse needs. In my Assistive Technology course, we explored a variety of ways to assist students with special needs. At the end of the course, we were given two scenarios in which we dissected the students’ needs and decided which technologies would be appropriate for their situations. Going though this process has made me realize that there is no blanket ‘cure’ that will work for all students in all situations. Different individuals and groups of individuals have diverse needs that must be considered when choosing technology.
I also came to this realization while concurrently doing work for my Independent Study: The Digitization of Public Schools. The focus was to incorporate technology into an inner-city school district. Working with the faculty, we were able to come up with plausible uses for computer technology in a poor urban situation. This process involved exposing teachers to a variety of possible ideas and collaboratively evaluating what will and will not work for individual teachers in his/her own situation. One of the biggest obstacles was how to keep digital assignments only in the classroom since many students lacked the technology at home. Although simple, creating a website resources page seemed to work well since all the resources were right at the students’ fingertips and time was not lost searching the entirety of the Internet. Other ideas such as using digital books with talking word processors are currently being tried and evaluated.
I have also had the opportunity to work with pre-service and in-service teachers from across New Jersey throughout multiple workshops. One of my most successful workshops was given to in-service teachers called Web Design, Evaluation, and Classroom Integration. There is more information than we know what to do with on the Internet. A major focus of the workshop was to search several websites to determine what is appropriate for classroom use. For the most part, the workshop went well, however, the web design section became a bit hectic. The teachers were given an option of websites to use to create their web page. They were also given a lot of freedom as to how to put it together. Next time I will be doing this, I am going to use one site to demonstrate to all the teachers and guide them a little more thoroughly through the process. I am also going to show them other options such as group discussion pages to expand past a simple homework page. During the web design part where teachers put together their own homework page and we discussed both legal and ethical issues such as public domain versus private content. We also discussed student privacy when using items such as blogs and other student-produced work that would be published on the Internet.
A major focus of this past year has been research. I have dedicated countless hours reading and reflecting on the major research ideas surrounding technology and the media to put together a comprehensive literature review as part of a larger thesis. I have learned through this process how to more systematically go through the process and details of searching through literature as well as focus my ideas as to what works and what does not in an educational setting. This process has more than anything else given me the knowledge to be prepared for the continuation of my education throughout my life.
I also gained valuable information above and beyond just the process of putting together a work of research. While doing the study, I learned a good deal about the media and its influence on high school students. I found out that short exposures to online text in the form of politically-oriented blogs and online news media sources (ex- nytimes.com) have little effect on the thought processes of high school students. I am still curious to see the effects of long-term exposure to these media sources, especially placed in a classroom setting rather than in a lab-like environment.
Throughout my master’s coursework, I have learned a great deal about technology and how to use it in a school setting. I came in as a novice teacher who was tech savvy. I am now leaving well informed about the processes of teaching and how to use technology to facilitate the growth of myself and my students. Above all, technology is a tool and should be viewed and used as such. To give an example of what I mean:
Imploding the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas required 428 pounds of explosives to get the job done. Fixing your glasses requires only a tiny screwdriver. Remember that technology is a tool. Whether it is used as a big tool or a little one, it is important to remember that to get the job done, you must use the right one. |