This is not the end...
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Early in 2015, I made an important life decision to continue my academic career and applied to graduate school at Michigan State University. I was already working at the College of Education in the Office of K-12 Outreach and had trouble deciding if I should earn my Masters in Media Information or Educational Technology. Since I was already working in an education environment, I decided to pursue my masters in Educational Technology [MAET]. Not to mention, the program was online and I would be able to work full time and complete my degree.
When the program began, I had a very broad goal of wanting to have a better understanding of how to apply technology to educational content. Unlike many people in the MAET program, I am not, nor will I ever be, a teacher in the classroom. However, in my current job I work with a program that trains educational coaches and my team relies on me to have a clear understanding of how we should implement technology when it comes to instruction and the development of digital tools. I knew that this program would help me in accomplishing that task.
Looking back, I feel I still have the same goal as when I applied to the program but that goal has expanded into the development of many different projects. For example, one of my favorite classes in this program was CEP 820 Teaching Students Online and in this class I had the chance to design my own online class. As it turns out, my boss looked at the website and decided that it should be the model of how all of our online classes should function. One of my current goals, it to continue to develop three more classes like the one I designed for CEP 820.
In addition, I also learned how use Adobe InDesign to create an interactive handbook in CEP 810 Teaching for Understanding with Technology. In the class, I actually initiated the development of an online handbook for educational coaches which includes interactive videos as well as checking for understanding. I am still working to expand the digital book to include three more chapters by September 30, 2017. If you would like to see a sample of what the project looks right now, you can flip through the pages on the right.
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I think my goals have become more specific because I have learned so much more from this program. I have had learning experiences in creating serious games, developing my own online class, exploring the TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) learning model, as well as learning how to incorporate tools such as Adobe InDesign into my current job.
As I move on from the program, I hope to keep developing digital tools with all of these experiences in mind, especially TPACK. Even though I have not graduated yet, I have already seen my coworkers relying on me more when it comes to incorporating technology into their content.