When I began my teacher career, I never imagined how vital the role of technology would be in my classroom. 2020 brought the COVID-19 pandemic to the forefront, and the world of education has transformed forever. I finished up my undergraduate classes and completed my student teaching experience. I never thought I would be teaching online and not in a classroom.

How could technology help me as a new teacher? 

As I stepped into my classroom a short year later, I am thankful for the experiences with technology. I quickly had to learn how to teach in multiple formats, such as synchronous, hybrid, and in-person. Technology had been the tool that I could rely on to stay connected and transform my teaching, but I continued to question the role of technology in my social studies classroom.

How can technology benefit this? 

The more I questioned and tried different software and tech pieces, the more I talked to my peers and colleagues about my experience. I went to different websites and blogs to learn more and see what I could incorporate into my classroom. I reached out to my school district technology coach for ideas. I got caught up in conversations about technology in education and its endless possibilities, so I decided to pursue my Master of Arts in Educational Technology from Michigan State University.

The MAET program has allowed me to explore the world of technology and understand the endless possibilities and benefits it can bring me as a teacher and my students. Throughout my year in the program, I have been advancing my knowledge of new, innovative technologies and strategies that have transformed the role of technology in my classroom. As I have learned new ideas and tools, I have shared them with my students and colleagues to help them expand their knowledge and toolboxes.

How have the technology and the MAET program impacted me?

Throughout my time in the MAET program, three areas have impacted my journey of expanding my skills around technology. Those areas developed because of the unique courses that challenged my thinking and pushed me to become the educator I am today. These areas are design and creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving, and online learning. For the remainder of this essay, I will explain how these courses have changed my approach to education technology for the better.

The Maker Movement project was another assignment that motivated me to reflect on the role of technology in the classroom. The idea was to take a tool from the Maker Movement and incorporate it into a lesson plan in my content area. The challenge forced me to think outside the box. Using the Squishy Circuit tool, my students took the invention of the light bulb from the Industrialization period and created it with modeling clay. Then, they needed to create a circuit with the light bulb, allowing them to complete a circuit with the tool. As I designed this lesson, I had to continuously think about how to create clear expectations and directions for students and solve any possible problems that my students may experience.  It was the moment when I could see how this could bring technology, problem-solving, and critical thinking together to transform my learning.

This hybrid course answered my problem-solving and critical-thinking questions and demonstrated how these ideas can help students learn. I could understand how my learning was changing after the various activities. For example, the QuickFire challenges I completed helped me understand how critical it is for students to have these skills. I could reflect on this moment and realize how it stuck with me. As an educator, I incorporated more opportunities to have students work on problem-solving and critical thinking. These aspects are something that I'm striving to include more and more.

For this course, I could choose real problems I faced in my classroom and spend the semester problem-solving to create my solution. I wanted to see more engagement from my freshman United States History class. I empathized with my students about why they were not engaged and strived to brainstorm how I could fix that. Through interviews with my students and colleagues, I listened to their perspectives on the activities my students were doing after working through each step of the design thinking process. I channeled this into my practice and created a simulation prototype to test to bring the 1950s Interstate Highway to life. My students could take on a role and plan a road trip across the United States and compare it to a trip made using present-day highways and gas prices. This journey provided my students with a choice in their learning, and I succeeded in my goal to bring engagement back. My students got locked into what they were learning about as they planned their trips and showed how the design thinking process helps one find authentic solutions to problems, whether in the classroom or in life.

CEP 818: Creativity in Teaching and Learning demonstrated the importance of design and creativity in the classroom. The concepts in the course altered my thinking and forced me to think outside the box. For this course, I had to pick a topic from my content area and then analyze it from different perspectives for the semester. During each week, I took the ideas of presidential influence and pushed my thinking to see concepts more abstractly. I see the vital role that creativity plays in the classroom. By utilizing it, I was able to rethink how creativity is used in my classroom and begin to give students more opportunities to design and create, as the courses have throughout my experience. 

As I have designed lessons and activities for my students, I use the steps of the design thinking process and strive to use innovation and creativity to help my students become more active and interested in their learning. It is crucial to give students opportunities to play and create something new where they can bring their imagination to help make meaningful connections to what they are learning. These courses shaped my teaching practice, allowing for more creative options within projects and other assignments. It engages my students more with their learning, but I also enjoy designing my lessons with creativity and design in mind. Not only does it make social studies more interesting, but it also helps to push me to find new ways to incorporate design and creativity.

When it came to understanding the basic ideas of what it is like to teach students online, CEP 820: Teaching Students Online answered any of my questions regarding the design and structure of online learning. In this course, I have learned about the benefits of online learning and the endless possibilities that are out to help students learn. With the lack of human interaction technology can bring at times, this course began with thinking about how to bring that back to the front of the approach. Throughout the semester, I have been creating different lessons, humanizing tools, screencasts, and more to survey the states and tools teachers can use to teach their students online to make learning more meaningful for all. This class was the foundation for understanding how to teach students best online.

Yet, I was curious about how to further my knowledge with the ideas of online learning. In CEP 813: Electronic Assessment for Teaching and Learning, I was fascinated by how we assess students to see their understanding of their learning. I spent the semester creating online assessments and applied different structures such as technologies, techniques, and responses that allowed me to explore the importance of digital assessments. As I continued to learn more about how it could be done digitally, I reflected on my practices and how I used technology to assess my students. Looking toward the school year, I plan to redesign and think about how I can use technology to transform learning through the increased use of electronic assessments.

My experience through this master's program has allowed me to push my ideas, question and reflect on my teaching, and learn more about educational technology than ever before. As my time ends, I have learned more than I thought. I did not think I could be so impacted by my short time in the program. From design and creativity, problem-solving and critical thinking, online link, and more, my teaching experiences have been changed for the better for my students and myself as an educator. I have grown from a student teacher trying to figure out how to teach online during a global pandemic to an almost third-year teacher who has reconstructed how technology is used in the classroom and motivated me to become the best teacher I could be. I am thankful for the opportunities, professors, colleagues, connections, and what I have learned because I have expanded my knowledge and am one step closer to achieving my goals.

Image Credits:

Platner, H. (2018). Design thinking bootleg.

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