About this Page
MSU's Master of Educational Technology program (MAET) has been a journey filled with self-discovery, trial and error, and, in my case, a plethora of infographics visually depicting my time in the program and the work that has come out of it. Throughout the program, my learning has taken the form of lesson/unit plan creation, individual research, projects, and blogging, the culmination of which can be found on this page. In the space below, I have selected work from all courses pursued throughout this program as well as a variety of tasks and manifestations of my learning. Many of the photos or project descriptions are hyperlinked to lesson plans, photos of the work in action (i.e. my classroom), or the original blog post where the work can be found. I encourage you to explore the page and its interactivity, and please feel free to leave any comments or questions that you may have. One of the elements of my work that I most enjoy is discussing ideas with colleagues or peers, and I would love to continue the conversation about these ideas and their practicality.
Page Organization
Rather than group my work together by course, the showcase is organized by purpose of artifact. In other words, work exploring my content area can be found in one section, lesson plans & classroom activities in another, and personal reflection or pedagogical exploration in the final section. The reason for this is that I find the course and its description/boundaries to be less important than the work created throughout the program. I also try to avoid the chronological approach to organizing these ideas as I hope this showcase will serve less as a demonstration of growth or improvement and more as an overall portfolio of my work throughout the course of the program. If you are interested in more information about the courses that I pursued throughout the MAET program, please visit my annotated transcript located under the "Graduate Course Work" tab on my webpage.
Content Area Exploration
The following posts, infographics, and videos focus on my exploration of my content area, English Language Arts. In this section, I have featured work or projects in which I have explored an area of my content or have reconsidered how to deliver content in my subject area. The following are not lesson plans nor are they necessarily meant for student consumption, but are reflective of my own personal and professional development.
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In this video, I am exploring the nature of language. When I teach my students about verbs, I typically talk about actions or states of being. In this video, however, I ask students to consider other aspects of their favorite verbs. What does it feel like to run, for example? What does reading smell like? By asking students to reconsider how to describe and define words I am opening their perspectives and encouraging them to think about their learning from a different angle. This is part of a project on shifting perspectives and redefining something we feel we know well. To learn more about this project and its original intent, please continue reading here.
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This research essay (available as a Google Doc by clicking on the image to the left) explores the benefits of peer feedback and review in secondary English classrooms. Through exploring both qualitative and quantitative research articles and studies, the essay synthesizes the ideas presented by researchers and their subjects and presents conclusions on the benefits of peer review as well as the limits teachers should consider when integrating peer feedback into their classrooms. The essay also aims to tackle the question of whether or not peer feedback without training is beneficial at all and the methods that can make feedback of any kind valuable and meaningful. This essay also represents one of my first forays into educational research, having primarily relied on narrative "research" to make pedagogical decisions in the past.
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Lesson Plans & Student Documents
This section features content created specifically for a student audience--either in the form of a lesson plan or a student-centered document. The work in this section represents a significant development in my thought process throughout the program, although the work featured here is not necessarily in chronological order.
This lesson plan (available as a Google Doc by clicking the image to the left) encourages students to consider the news and information they consume every day and how that information would be best produced for a teenage audience. The driving question behind the lesson reads, "How can we work to make our school community a more well-informed population? What tools or resources can we provide to teenagers to encourage them to be global citizens?" The driving question is purposefully ambiguous and asks students to consider this topic from multiple points of view before creating a product that seeks to address the issue at hand. The lesson plan (linked to the left) also features a student exemplar that can be found by clicking here.
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Ignoring the somewhat creepy shape of the eyes on the image to the left, this lesson plan, available as a Google Doc by clicking on the image to the left, asks students to jump into the Maker Movement by creating literary postcards with a circuit sticker Maker kit. While playing with (and failing miserably) the circuit sticker kit myself, I created a light-up book cover and did some personal writing about how lights or electricity enhanced the cover. With that in mind, the postcard project was created. The driving question for this project/lesson is, "How can we creatively analyze and represent the relationship between two characters in a given text and its impact on the individual character?" While the driving question does not specifically ask students to use the Maker kits provided (nor did they necessarily have to in order to complete the project) students spent the week prior to this playing with the kits and brainstorming ways to incorporate them into their work and products.
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This hyperdoc, embedded to the left and available as a Google Doc by clicking here, is a lesson plan created as part of a redesign task. The goal was to examine a text used in my classroom and reconsider the cognitive load placed on students by the text itself. Then, I was asked to alter the text or task in a way that lowered the cognitive load and increased student engagement. This hyperdoc lesson asks students to explore, explain, and apply a concept, while accessing information available through the document itself. Students have the option to gain the information through traditional text, video, a collection of images or song lyrics, allowing students to drive the learning process and work in a self-contained manner.
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Pedagogy & Teaching Philosophy
The following writings and infographics demonstrate a personal exploration of my own pedagogy and the elements of educational technology that have been/continue to be incorporated in my classroom. As a visual learner myself, I often chose to present information visually, rather than through more traditional means, as seen below.
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This meme, created to explore how various stakeholders view learning, was created to explore my own view of learning and to begin forming an introductory philosophy of education. When asked to consider how the various stakeholders or groups view learning, I found that my own thinking was very much aligned with how my principal views the learning process, but diametrically opposed to how lawmakers and many in society view learning. Overall, I enjoyed being able to brainstorm and consider my own points of view visually before trying to explain my philosophy of learning through writing, as it helped me to clarify my own beliefs and to consider where misconceptions in education may arise.
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The following infographics highlight my research and exploration of Student Centered Learning (left) and the Maker Movement (right).
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Left: this infographic discussing student-centered learning was created to encourage teachers and educators to take on a student-centered mindset. The infographic contains both research and classroom strategies to make the concepts tangible and approachable. In addition to adding information and static elements of research, I have also added links to a Google folder containing additional research and articles as well as a Youtube playlist featuring videos about student-centered learning. What I enjoy about adding these interactive elements to an infographic is that they can be constantly changing as new research or exemplars become available, turning what was once a static poster into a truly interactive and updated experience.
Right: this infographic promotes the use of the principles and tools of the Maker Movement in the classroom. The infographic combines research, suggestions, multi-media links, and first-person testimonials about MakerEd so that teachers can gain a better understanding of how the movement could support learning in their classrooms and have a positive impact on student engagement and growth. The target audience of the infographic is teachers who, like me, have/had little to no prior knowledge of the Maker Movement but who are open to incorporating new ideas into their classrooms.
Right: this infographic promotes the use of the principles and tools of the Maker Movement in the classroom. The infographic combines research, suggestions, multi-media links, and first-person testimonials about MakerEd so that teachers can gain a better understanding of how the movement could support learning in their classrooms and have a positive impact on student engagement and growth. The target audience of the infographic is teachers who, like me, have/had little to no prior knowledge of the Maker Movement but who are open to incorporating new ideas into their classrooms.