BECOMING AN EDUCATOR
By Antonio Aguillon
When I was a kid I did not know exactly what I wanted to do when I grew up. In fact, it was not until the beginning of my junior year in college that I declared the major I would actually graduate with. One thing I knew and had always known, was that I liked technology. I have been drawn towards technology, computers, electronics, and gadgets since an early age. There always seem to be a slight delay from the time technologies were made available to the time I actually experienced with them. Perhaps that’s where my curiosity comes from. I was not introduced to computers until the late 80’s. Although the Internet became a mainstream sensation in 1993, it was not until 1998 that I had the opportunity to experience the World Wide Web for the first time. Thus, my curiosity for technology began to take off.
I do remember when going online meant hugging the phone line and preventing everyone else in the house from making or receiving phone calls. It was during the late 90’s and early 2000’s that I gained most of my working knowledge of technology, became interested in the education field, and began to see the relationships between the two.
As an undergraduate student, I focused on Information Systems and Business Administration. But in the back of my mind I always had the idea of working in the education field. I wanted to improve existing information systems. I wanted to fix slow or broken processes by automating them using technology. But most importantly, I wanted to create new pathways for diverse student populations to gain access to information and educational resources.
After graduating from Grand Valley State University (GVSU) with my Bachelors of Science in Information Systems and a minor in Business Administration, I obtained a job with Grand Rapids Community College (GRCC). GRCC gave me the opportunity to positively and directly affect how students, faculty, and staff interacted with technology. I have been helping out learners and educators at GRCC since 2008. My job at GRCC has brought me great satisfaction and a sense of personal gratification. Yet, I felt something was missing. I felt the impact I was having on the learner community could be improved even more.
In 2010 I decided to go back to school. After months of research and conversations with academic advisers and friends at GVSU, GRCC, MSU, and other educational institutions I settled for an Educational Technology program. I applied for the Masters of Arts in Educational Technology program (MAET) at Michigan State University (MSU). It seems like it was yesterday when I was working on my admission application and goal statement. Then, the letter of acceptance came. That is how this amazing journey of learning and discovering began.
During my first semester as a MAET student I took CEP 810 Teaching Understanding with Technology, CEP 811 Adapting Innovative Technologies to Education, and CEP 812 Applying Educational Technology to Practice. These three courses were the foundation of the entire masters program. These three courses would also allow me to meet the requirements for the Educational Technology Certificate. Certificate which I obtained in 2011. Many important principles were introduced in these three crucial classes. For instance, in CEP 810 I learned that there are other alternatives to formal education. One of them is creating or joining something called Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). PLNs allow you to exchange information with individuals interested in similar subjects. This PLN created by Thomas Whitby for instance, covers topics ranging from classroom management to parenting techniques. But PLNs are not always web based. A PLN can be composed of your family, friends, teachers, students, community organizations, and social networking sites contacts. Another important topic introduced in CEP 810 and further developed in CEP 811 and 812 was TPACK. TPACK stands for Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. TPACK was developed by Dr. Mishra and Dr. Koehler and is based on Shulman’s idea of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK). The TPACK framework is complex and comprehensive. It was not until I took CEP 811, CEP 812, and CEP 815 that I understood that TPACK addresses the complex relationship and interaction of knowledge between pedagogy (PK), technology (TK), and Content (CK). I now find myself thinking about the ways I can leverage these relationships every time I have to create a tutorial, instructional material, or any other documented process for our teachers, staff, and students at the college.
CEP 811 also introduced me to amazing resources like MERLOT. MERLOT stands for Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching. While MERLOT is a very good resource for multimedia artifacts that is not its best or only feature. MERLOT allows you not only to access all of the resources available at the site for free, but it also allows users to upload and share their own materials. MERLOT has countless articles, Powerpoint presentations, case studies, and other media files dedicated to explore a number of topics. The topics range from digital cItizenship to the Holocaust. One of my contributions to MERLOG is a short tutorial on how to utilized the cloud file storage feature in Blackboard called “My Content”. This tutorial was created as part of a project I worked on in CEP 811. Working on this project taught me how to create a Stand Alone Instructional Resource (StAIR). Some of the main features of my StAIR include audio, video, text, captions, narrations and the instructions to run the tutorial from multiple platforms. Another tool I became very familiar with while taken CEP 811 was Camtasia Studio. Camtasia Studio is a suite of tools that include Camtasia Studio, Camtasia Relay, and Camtasia Recorder.
In additions to expanding my understanding of TPACK in CEP 812 I learned how to create and maintain a blog. My blog contains many posts of my course work and other topics of interest. Maintaining a blog comes with a great deal of responsibility, but it can also bring great gratification. Seeing one’s work published is one of the most fulfilling rewards one can receive. In CEP 812 I also worked on a project we called “The Wicked Problem Project”. The project consisted of finding a complex problem and proposing a solution with a twist. I chose to address the communication deficiencies within my department at the college I work at. IT personnel is not necessarily known for their abilities to communicate in simple- easy to understand- jargon free terms. My proposal was to create a private Twitter group and have everyone post project statuses to the Twitter feed as often as their projects, tasks, or work agenda had a minor but significant changes. Given the 140 character limit I figured it would be easy enough for everyone to do it, yet it would fill in the communication gap that phone calls, emails, and even project reports did not address. Prior to working on the wicked problem project I had no experience with Twitter. By the time I was done with it I felt pretty confident not only about the features of Twitter but also it’s potential to deliver timely, accurate, and concise messages to all members of the gruop.
The essence of the MEAT program became clear to me when I had the opportunity to create my own online course using one of the many Course Management Systems (CMS) available. This task was not easy. I struggled along the way, but for the first time in my life, I learned how a course management system works. Creating My own course allowed me to experience the CMS from the instructor’s side. I explored Moodle, Blackboard, and Haiku among other CMSs. All of these CMSs offered a free version of the software. So I had the opportunity to become quite familiar with each of them. However, for my course, I selected Blackboard. Creating a course in Blackboard that included tests, lessons, a syllabus, exercises and other interactive materials helped me understand the difference between traditional lessons and interactive tech-rich and engaging self contained class modules. This type of technology rich courses can only be achieved by taking full advantage of the CMS’ features. Students can really gain a better understanding of the subject matter when the material is organized and presented in a logical progressive order.
Another class that really made a positive impact on my learning was CEP 822, Approaches to Educational Research. Perhaps one of the most valuable things I learned during my time as a student in the MAET program at MSU was how to conduct professional research by finding and selecting reputable sources and critically analysing the literature collected. In CEP 822 we worked on a semester long project that taught us the research process step by step from beginning to end. We begun with the initial Google search, however, that is barely the beginning of the research process. At most one out of ten Google results provided relevant leads. Nonetheless, Google was helpful because the results obtained allowed me to filter out promotional articles, company sponsored results, and otherwise irrelevant sources. I learned some of the best places to find good resources are university sites, online educational databases, and library sites. Other sources that proved to be vital for my research project included: editlib, MERLOT, and MSU’s Library site. In the process of finding useful sources I learned to identify database, university, and professional research articles and case studies. I also learned that published theses and dissertations can be a trusted source of information. In my final paper titled, Digital Citizenship: A Literature Review and Findings you can see a works cited page with over fifteen different sources I consulted for this project. All articles were carefully selected, reviewed, summarized, and quoted throughout the text. Additionally, I had a good refresher of the APA citation process when I properly cited my sources.
Finally, the class that taught me how to put it all together was CEP 807, the capstone. Synthesizing ten classes, taken over a three year span, in a multi page web site is not easy. Nonetheless, this process allowed me to remember basic projects such as the lesson plans, vodcasts, and podcasts. It also allowed me to recall important frameworks such as TPACK. Most importantly, the capstone class allowed me to bring it all together, intertwine the different tools I learned about throughout this journey, and show what I learned over the past few of years.
The truth is that, from my first class (CEP 810) to the last (CEP 807), I always found myself learning something new. Whether it was the basic principles of TPACK or the advanced application of said principles in a lesson plan, podcast, or tutorial. I was always learning. Each class seemed to build up on the previous one even if the subject matter was different. As I approach the end of my journey I realize how much of an educator I really have become. Through the course of my masters program I have prepared written tutorials, podcasts, vodcasts, and other instructional materials for students, colleagues, instructors, and even friends. Most importantly I am conscious I have not learned everything. But I know I have gained knowledge of a number of tools and resources I can top into when I need them. Furthermore, I have been equipped with multiple personal learning networks such as Classroom 2.0, ISTE, NYSCATE, Edutopia, and The Educator’s PLN. I can always count on these PLNs to find good discussions about topics such as the use of cell phones in education, personal blogs, mobile apps, iPads in education and many more resources that will allow me to continue expanding my knowledge. I am looking forward to the opportunities my masters degree will bring me. I am also aware of the challenges. Those opportunities, afforded by this advance degree, will bring great challenges. However, I feel ready. I see a wide range doors opening up right in front of me as a result of having obtained a Masters of Arts in Educational Technology from Michigan State University. In closing, I hope to have the opportunity to give back to the community and the institution that helped me along the way. I would like to share my newly acquired skills by helping others learn how to take advantage of the many educational technology tools available out there. I would also like to thank Dr. Punya, Dr. Koehler, Dr. Wolf and all of the other great instructors who help get to this point.
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