When I entered the University of Northern Iowa's Instructional Technology Master's cohort in August of 2015, I did not really know what I expected to get out of it. I had graduated with my Bachelor's degree in 2013, was just going into my third year of teaching, and knew that I wanted to start getting a Master's degree as soon as I could. Looking back, I am glad I chose this particular program and feel that it has helped me improve my personal practice as an educator and prepared me to be a leader in instructional technology in my district. Every class I took contributed to broadening my experiences with instructional technology.
In my first term, I took a class about issues and trends in instructional technology as well as one about using digital and social media. Both of these classes served as a strong introduction to the field of instructional technology and how educators interact with technology every day. We read Inside the Black Box of Classroom Practice by Larry Cuban, which was influential for me because it described a number of reforms that have taken place in the American education system over decades and decades but which have had little effect on actual student achievement. This particular book was interesting to me as someone who has already seen a few different school initiatives in just a couple of years.
I then took a class in instructional design with a focus on the Understanding by Design format, which I knew nothing about before the class. The Understanding by Design Handbook by ​McTighe and Wiggins was helpful with learning this format. This course was one of the most challenging ones for me, but it taught me a lot about "backwards" design and how it can be effective for teachers and students.
One of the classes I enjoyed the most was Planning and Producing Instructional Media. I enjoyed learning from a professor who is a working K-12 educator in a position of leadership in instructional technology. The content of that class was very practical in that we learned about the actual production of multiple types of media - something that we are likely to do in the future and would use in our classrooms with students. This class wrapped up my first year with the cohort.
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Over the summer of 2016, I took two classes. The class on leading change was quite interesting to me since technology is constantly changing and many educators are just trying to keep up; we learned about how we can more easily introduce and implement changes with other educators. I enjoyed reading Michael Fullan's work Stratosphere and learning about the intersection of technology, pedagogy, and change theory.
I also enjoyed the course about teaching online classes. Although I currently do not teach any classes online exclusively, with the influx of online learning in the world of K-12 education and beyond, the experience in this area was worthwhile and was practical to include in this program. In fact, I made a point to keep the book Building Online Learning Communities by Palloff and Pratt on my bookshelf despite not currently leading a virtual classroom because I thought it might be a helpful resource in the future.
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My second year in the cohort started with a course on educational research. Although I would not have called myself an educational researcher at the time, learning about the different types of research, methods, and vocabulary terms was quite informative for a practicing educator. During that semester, I also started the research and writing to complete a literature review that would serve as the first stepping stone for my final literature review project.
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I soon had to think even more about educational research as I put on the hat of the action researcher in my classroom. I developed an action research plan concerning the creative use of an emerging Google tool to help in my writing classes. Then one of my last courses in this cohort covered the selection and integration of instructional technology. That course offered content in 21st century learning, digital citizenship, and other important tech topics, providing a nice conclusion to the program.
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I then returned to a common topic from my research projects - writing instruction - and focused my final project on a review of the literature concerning the use of Google tools for teaching writing to secondary students. I enjoyed this project because, as a language arts teacher, I value the opportunity to push my writing skills out of my comfort zone with a difficult project.
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I feel that, through all of these research assignments, my knowledge of educational research and my abilities in the field of conducting and writing about research have definitely improved over the course of this program. I appreciated the opportunities to push myself in this area and others, because I learned about a lot of topics that I was previously unfamiliar with.
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My professional goal as a working educator is to continue to incorporate technology into my classroom but use my newfound understanding of various topics to inform my teaching and incorporation of these tools. This program has also helped me to become a stronger technology advocate and instructional tech leader in my school and district, and I would like to extend that leadership to wherever it takes me in my long teaching career that I still have ahead of me. My passion is for the classroom, so I would like to continue to do all that I can to help students learn and see them enjoying themselves through the use of a fun tool or engaging lesson.
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References
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Cuban, L. (2013). Inside the black box of classroom practice: change without reform in American education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Education Press.
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Fullan, M. (2013). Stratosphere: integrating technology, pedagogy, and change knowledge. Toronto, U.S.A.: Pearson Canada.
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McTighe, J., & Wiggins, G. P. (1999). Understanding by design handbook. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
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Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (1999). Building learning communities in cyberspace (Vol. 12). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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