Reflecting Back:
Goals, Motivation, and Technology
As I ended the second year of teaching, the reality of challenges and obstacles in education were becoming clear. After a somewhat difficult year of facing some of these challenges, I was ready to continue learning to discover how the field as a whole is dealing with these challenges. A large obstacle for my district in particular was technology. Not only how to implement technology, but also which technology to purchase, what can our IT support, and what should be off limits to students? My interest and love for technology, paired with the real world problems I could see in the field, became my motivation for pursuing a masters of arts in educational technology (MAET) through Michigan State University (MSU).
My goal became to get a masters degree and learn more about successfully implementing technology in the classroom. These starting goals were very vague, lacked direction, and gave me very little motivation for the day-to-day work of the program. Early on in my MAET course work though, I was confronted with my limited professional learning network and weak information diet. My professional information intake was very narrow and shallow while my learning network was also very limited in its scope. I created blog posts to illustrate both of these, which are linked below.
My goal became to get a masters degree and learn more about successfully implementing technology in the classroom. These starting goals were very vague, lacked direction, and gave me very little motivation for the day-to-day work of the program. Early on in my MAET course work though, I was confronted with my limited professional learning network and weak information diet. My professional information intake was very narrow and shallow while my learning network was also very limited in its scope. I created blog posts to illustrate both of these, which are linked below.
Ultimately, I needed to redefine my goals in order to provide me with the motivation to achieve what I wanted, in this case, expanded professional resources and an increase in the amount and quality of professional related information. I have worked towards those goals throughout the remainder of my MAET program, however new goals have continued to emerge during the year I have done my coursework.
This year, my district has started an initiative involving learning and professional development around student independence. This has caused me to look at how to apply what I am learning about student independence and technology together to help students. My new goal is to look at making my students more independent through tools and supports that can be implemented through technology. This opens possibilities for students that were not possible before, such as a student with a hearing impairment being able to access audio information through captioning or communication access real-time translation (CART) services.
Although my goals have changed over the past year, as I have worked through my MAET program and coursework, my love for technology has remained. I hope that I can continue to form new goals, work on my old and present goals, and continue to be a life long learner.
This year, my district has started an initiative involving learning and professional development around student independence. This has caused me to look at how to apply what I am learning about student independence and technology together to help students. My new goal is to look at making my students more independent through tools and supports that can be implemented through technology. This opens possibilities for students that were not possible before, such as a student with a hearing impairment being able to access audio information through captioning or communication access real-time translation (CART) services.
Although my goals have changed over the past year, as I have worked through my MAET program and coursework, my love for technology has remained. I hope that I can continue to form new goals, work on my old and present goals, and continue to be a life long learner.