Reflection
Where I began
When I initially decided to return to college to work on my Educational Specialist degree, I thought administration was the route I would pursue. After taking two courses through the University of Missouri's Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis program, I was convinced I was not administration material. I related more to teachers and lacked the drive to be in that type of leadership position. As a digital media teacher at Hickman High School (via the Columbia Area Career Center) in Columbia, Missouri, I was thoroughly immersed in the field of technology and knew the Technology in Schools (TIS) program through the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies at the University of Missouri was a much better fit. After investigating the program and talking with colleagues, I knew my career opportunities would be limitless and would only reinforce my teaching in the digital media content area.
At Hickman High School I taught the introductory digital media course and the advanced graphic design and page layout course. My strength was in the area of graphic design and page layout but in the introductory course I also taught the basics of digital audio and video, illustration, and HTML, the main units in the course along with image editing and page layout. Teaching these classes left me little time to further explore other areas of technology but I felt strongly that the TIS program would provide the means to do just that. I was interested in exploring other avenues of technology other than digital media. I had no idea just how much more there was to learn.
What I learned
When I think back on the things I learned that I see as significant, the three that immediately came to mind can be summed up in three different ways. The first was an "aha" moment, the second was pure interest in something I wanted to learn, and the third was an entire course that changed my way of thinking and more than likely had the biggest impact on my decision to change careers.
My "aha" moment came as I was taking 9440 Learning with the Internet. One of the first assignments was to share with the class via a discussion post a Web 2.0 tool that I had used or was interested in using. As I read through all the other students' submissions I was in awe at the variety and scope of Web 2.0 tools available that could be incorporated into classroom assignments in many different ways. This really excited me. Throughout the course I was exposed to so many exciting, interesting, educational Internet sites, tools and activities that are interactive, engaging, and collaborative. I had no idea most of these existed. Though I taught technology it revolved around the Adobe products and I already knew how to find supporting documents and websites to support that content. Cloud computing and Web 2.0 were new concepts and I was anxious to incorporate some of these collaborative tools and sites into my curriculum. This led me to look at how I reinforced the concepts learned in the design principles unit, one of the most important foundational components in my graphic design class. I had always struggled to find ways to get students to fully understand what each principle represented and how to apply the principle to the projects they were creating. I decided to try using Pinterest.com, a virtual pinboard that lets you organize and share all types of things you find on the Internet, to help reinforce the design principles. In this pinboard assignment, students had to find examples of the five principles of design, explain how the principle was applied to that example and then comment on fellow students' submissions, either agreeing or disagreeing with their explanation and explaining their position. The students loved it and they made great strides in their grasp of the design principles much better than my previous assignments had.
Secondly, in my introductory digital media class we taught the basics of web page design using basic HTML coding. I was anxious to learn more about web page design even though I wouldn't teach much more than the basics. I knew it would help me when students had questions beyond the scope of what we taught. In both the Introductory (7360) and Intermediate Web Development (7370) courses, I was so excited and interested to learn how to use cascading style sheets (CSS). I knew what style sheets were but didn't know how to use or apply them. I knew how to write HTML code but without styles, I knew it was very difficult, if not impossible, to create a very modern looking web page. I was amazed at how easy you could change the look of a page with the same material simply by changing the style sheet. I think my final project, a club website, in the intermediate course illustrates just how much I learned with CSS, though I would still like to learn more about the design aspect.
The third thing I learned that completely changed my way of thinking was the entire 9471 Instructional Systems Design course. Yes, I've written curriculum and used the backward design model, but never have I gone through an entire design process with the depth taught in this course. I truly believe developing a fictitious training program for teachers through this Adobe Buzzword project and all I learned through this course was the final motivation for the new position I recently accepted.
Where I am now
In July 2012 I moved from the secondary digital media teaching position to a position in which I provide support to Columbia Area Career Center teachers. Though I do miss teaching the digital media content, I am not far removed from the classroom as I am working with new and novice teachers (one being my replacement), helping them in their classrooms with things such as teaching strategies, differentiated instruction, curriculum development, classroom management, formative and summative assessment, and technology integration, of course! This is a position I would not have even considered prior to the TIS program. Though the focus of the TIS program is technology, I have learned so much more that will prove invaluable to me in supporting teachers as they develop and/or revise their curriculum. This program has given me the confidence that I have the knowledge and ability to help teachers create a quality classroom environment for their students and the knowledge that in my position I can still have a positive impact on those students.