Problem of Practice
There is a countless number of problems in our world of education, ranging from funding issues, to policy issues, to communication issues. This assignment involved me thinking about a large issue that teachers face and I chose to focus on the lack of work/life balance for teachers in our public school system because this is what ultimately pushed me out of the classroom. I designed a reflective tool that teachers could use to help make their classrooms more student-centered, so teachers had more time throughout the day, allowing for more of a work/life balance. This artifact showcases my ability to complete the design process, using and learning different pieces of technology along the way. The actual tool is linked here. |
Definition of "Success"
Another course I took, similar to the idea above, was solely about problems in education, and as I stated above, there are many. For this assignment, we were to choose a "wicked problem", research why it happens, and come up with ways to solve it, or begin to solve it. My idea first came to me when I was still in the classroom and I wrote about it in this blog post. After conducting research, I decided to create a professional development session to help teachers overcome this "wicked problem" in their classrooms. This artifact showcases my instructional skills, professional development skills, and classroom management skills. The actual google slides are linked above while the participant link is here. |
Digital Portfolio Course
This was perhaps one of my favorite assignments because it was something I used to do when I was a Technical Intern in Education (TIE) working in the Center for Teaching and Technology at Michigan State. CEP 820 was all about designing your own online course. We learned about different learning management systems, we could pick our context and subject matter, and we really made the final product ours. I decided to base my course off of a workshop I held when I was a TIE: creating digital portfolios. I presented to a group of interns (student teachers) so I decided to create a course that could fit into an MSU intern's seminar time with their field instructor. This artifact shows my skills in course development and organization. |
Accessibility Metagaming Guidelines
A colleague and I worked on this project for our course about electronic assessments. We were focusing a lot on how we could bridge assessments and video games. We thought this would be a unique opportunity to work together, not only because we knew each other in middle school, but also because we wondered how using video games in the classroom could be more accessible, especially for us neurodivergent students. We created this artifact to give educators and game creators, in general, guidance on how to make games and electronic assessments accessible for all students. This artifact shows my professional development skills as well as my dedication to accessibility. |
Encouraging Student Voice
In one of my favorite MAET courses, all about leadership in learning, we were given a very authentic task of creating a professional development session for our colleagues. One issue I was having at the time in my own classroom is trying to encourage students to use their voice during the day. I meant this figuratively and literally at the time because I was teaching online and my students absolutely hated un-muting themselves and speaking in our Google Meets. This PD session includes tips, tricks, and tools to help encourage more student voice in the classroom. This artifact shows professional development and classroom management skills. The link above is to a PDF of the slides, but the participant link is here if you are interested. |
21st Century Classrooms
This was one of my very first assignments in the MAET program and came from a course all about learning with technology. The terms "21st century classroom" and "21st century learner" get used a lot in conversations about pedagogy, instruction, and goals for students. I took these terms and broke them down in a short presentation about what this actually looks like in a classroom. This project gave me the opportunity to practice creating and leading presentations, on a more professional level, rather than in my elementary classroom. |
Personal Learning Theory
For one of my courses, I was given the opportunity to really go back to the basics. This course was all about the psychology of learning, which I hadn't thought about explicitly since my freshman year of college. Throughout this course, I was reflecting constantly because of how much my beliefs about learning changed while being in my own classroom. This personal learning theory is an essay with my definition of learning. This was a living document the entire semester, so it was updated and revised many times. This artifact shows my writing abilities, APA citation skills, as well as my ability to adapt and reflect on my beliefs, |
"Learning is Everywhere" and other Teacher sayings
This link is to a blog post on my website where I reflected on my time in the course I mentioned in my personal learning theory section. This course was taken towards the end of my MAET journey, but also at the end of my teaching career, so there was a ton of reflecting going on. This reflection discusses the importance of bridging the gap between learning inside of the classroom and outside of it and shows my informal writing skills as well as reflection skills. |