Throughout my educational process with Michigan State College of Education Master’s program, I tried to put myself into the shoes of my students and reevaluate myself as a teacher.  I know that I am in the early stages of my career with much more learning to take place within my own classroom.  However, I want to grow and show my students that even as an adult, I am growing with my educational needs.  The courses that have had the biggest impact on my teaching practices and pedagogy are CEP 811, CEP 812, and CEP 800/815.  The first two courses happened during the school year and CEP 800/815 took place during my summer cohort.  I did not want to become the teacher that uses technology just for the sake of using technology.  I have had teachers in the past who used technology just to say that they had used it and it did not cause an impact on students’ takeaway.  Through these courses I was continually asked and pushed to think about the process of the how and why I go about teaching in my classroom and the way that it impacts the takeaway that my students receive.

 

           CEP 811: Adapting Innovative Technology to Education was the first class that I had in the Masters of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) program and I was not sure what to expect.  As the class progressed, I started thinking about my teaching practices and how I could incorporate technology and explain what technology is to my students.  This was also my first introduction to the TPACK where I learned the framework necessary to make a meaningful lesson that engages my students.  Since learning about TPACK I have changed the way I approach lessons in my classroom.  I have become more focused on the overall goal of the lesson and how I connect to each part of the TPACK.  While technology is often assumed to be electronics it can be as simple as a paper and pencil.  When I started this class, I was wondering what I got myself into since I had only been in the classroom for one year on my own and was just starting my second year.  I am not one who is naïve in thinking that I know everything but I was thinking of the reasons why I need to learn about teaching practices just one short year after completing my internship year.  I also contemplated this program because I was in the midst of coaching three sports that cover the entire calendar year and it was then that I realized that I was becoming selfish about my practice.  I needed to meet not most, but all of my students.  My lessons needed to be diverse and vary or the students would get used to the routine and lose interest in the material.  Part of becoming diverse with my teaching is making sure the I apply the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles as well as the TPACK framework.  While I was not completely unaware of the different learning styles, the UDL principles makes them more prevalent.  In the program, I learned that I could incorporate technology on a small scale but still make a big impact.  I began to implement small video clips and interactive lessons to help keep the attention of my students while helping them learn and retain the material.  Here, I also learned about the NETS or ISTE, which are the standards for learning, teaching and leading in the digital world.  These standards reinforced the practices that I wanted to have in my own classroom where students are put in charge of their own learning in a manner that allows them to show their understanding in multiple perspectives and prepare them for the “real-world”.

 

           It did not seem like more than a week later that I was already in my second semester of graduate school working on my next two classes.  That semester I had CEP 820 and CEP 812: Apply Educational Technology to Issues of Practice.  CEP 812 had the greatest impact on me because going into the Master’s program I was sold on the idea of “flipping” the classroom.  I liked the idea of spending more time with students one-on-one and letting students set the pace at which they cover objectives within a unit.  Drawing from experiences of my own, I was the student who liked to race through the section and get my homework done in class so I could spend time hanging out with my friends rather than doing my homework after school.  I was aware that I was one of those students but it didn’t bother me until I arrived at Michigan State.  I noticed there was a fatal flaw in my plan and I did not experience it until I got to college; I had no idea how to study.  I graduated high school with a 3.9 GPA and did not have the slightest clue how to study or how to pull information from a textbook without a guided reading sheet.  The more I got to thinking about this, the more I realized that by me rushing through my work and never being held accountable on single objectives, I was able to “scam” the system.  Although, I did work hard while I was in the classroom and did take challenging classes, I was just fortunate that I could retain information long enough so I would do well on the tests.  This ties in with CEP 812 because I wanted to make a flipped classroom so students could move at their own pace, however, this time they would be held accountable due to section quizzes which they had to pass with a certain percentage.  If students did poorly on the quiz they were forced to go back and rework the lessons until they became proficient.  In this course, I had the opportunity to build my own learning management system and I decided to use myhaikuclass that allowed me to construct the classroom that I envisioned.  While the site took a long time to complete I was able to get a full chapter of my physics class up and running.  After modeling for my students how to take notes from the videos and text within the site, I soon found out that it was difficult for my students to access the material outside of the classroom.  They had access to the videos and some basic text, however, due to the large amount of information on my site, they could not use their cellphones or IPod’s and needed access to a computer. Just like I had to learn to study in college, I had learn to think “what’s the worst that could happen with this lesson” and from there I learned that the flipped classroom was not what I wanted it to be.  I have not given up on the idea completely, but I need to adjust that plan according to the access that my students have, just as I need to adjust a lesson when students are struggling with a concept.

 

              I seemed to catch my breath for a month and then jumped head first into the summer cohort year two.  While there were three classes during this time, two portions stick out specifically, CEP 800: Psychology of Learning in School and Other Settings and CEP 815: Technology and Leadership.  This reminded me of what it felt like to be a student working 8-4 with the lunch hour as the only consistent mental break period.  During this time, I made some great friends and the underlying themes of these courses did not become clear until the end.  When it finally ended, I could not believe the extent and depth to which we covered material.  We were refreshed on how students learn and the basic psychology that creates conceptions.  While some of this was a fresh review of my internship year, this time it took on a completely different meaning.  Experience in the classroom has changed my mindset and these courses once again pushed me to think about how my students learn and what engages them.  Am I employing the same technology that my teachers used when they were teaching me and the difference is that my notes come from a PowerPoint rather than a transparency?  I was reminded of TPACK and how am I connecting with all parts of the framework for my students or what areas I was lacking.  Since these courses took part during the summer while on campus, they weren’t defined individually which is similar to the learning that takes place in my classroom.  Students not only learn about Geometry or Physics but also skills on how to behave and respect each other.  We discussed how technology impacts the learning that takes place and how it can help with the students who had behavior issues because they were bored with a normal classroom setting.  While this does not take care of all of the issues in the classroom, it helps by allowing the students that were bored to now be pushed further by exploring new ideas and concepts.  Instead of them sitting bored and disrupting others, now they have tools so they can explore additional ideas related to the unit which will only help them further.  The greatest part about the program was working with people who have a diverse educational background and are in different parts of their career.  I know that I benefited greatly from working with another young teacher and a middle school principal.  They allowed me to have a different perspective of the education system.  In one case, those different perspectives were located just one town over from where I teach.  I know that it was not part of the course description but it was a byproduct of the situation.  The projects that we worked on were varied and sometimes complex, but they all had a similar theme; a focus for us on a personal level of taking away as much as we could and trying to find ways to meaningfully connect the material to our classrooms.

 

           Those four classes have had the greatest impact on my evolution as an educator.  While I am still just beginning in my career, I know that the lessons learned in this program will have a great effect on my practices later in life.  If there were to be a single idea that I had to use to sum up the course of my MAET degree it would be “Who needs sleep?” This is not because I lost sleep over the coursework, but because of all of the doors and ideas that have now sprouted in my mind.  There seem to be endless options and ways for me to go about creating engaging and meaningful lessons for my students, however, they would come with the cost of lost sleep.  I have learned that I can do without a couple extra hours of sleep each week if it means that my students are involved with lessons they enjoy and learn from.  I know that not all of my lessons will be the best, but my students know the effort that I am putting forth into my own education along with theirs.  Within those lessons I have to make sure that I have TPACK framework and UDL principles included into the design of my lessons.  I can still implement the ideas and lessons that I learned from my attempt at a flipped classroom as well.  I know the classroom needs to be constantly evolving with the needs of my students.  With the use of the UDL principles and technology, teachers will be able to provide multiple means of action and expression.  Teachers can present students with digital answer keys, online quizzes, and screencast videos as ways to help support their classroom activities.  With all of these new methods and ideas, this is the biggest gain for myself and my students to not only learn the material but the skills to go about solving life’s problems.