NETS•T Standard 1: Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity

“Teachers use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student learning, creativity, and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments.”

The projects included on this page are indicative of my efforts to meld instructional content with appropriate uses of instructional technology to directly benefit student learning. The collaborative wiki project addresses standards 1(a) - Model inventiveness and creativity, 1(c) - Promote collaborative reflection to understand student thinking and planning, and 1(d) - Model collaborative knowledge construction. The relating technology to curriculum project addresses standards 1(a) - Model inventiveness and creativity and 1(b) - Explore authentic issues and problems using digital resources, and the technology instructional strategy matrix project addresses standards 1(a) - Promote inventiveness and creativity, 1(b) - Explore authentic issues and problems using digital resources, and 1(d) - Model collaborative knowledge construction.

Collaborative Wiki - Resistance to Technological Change One of the main features of online learning and teaching is collaboration - with students and instructors alike working together to share information, to build a sense of community, to complete projects together, and to more deeply understand the phenomena of learning online. This project, created for ITEC 77420 - Researching Current Issues in Instructional Technology, required a collaborative effort to analyze a problem situation, identify the root causes of problems, and design possible interventions to help overcome faculty resistance to technological change. While the work here was based on empirical evidence, the assignment itself was mainly a theoretical effort for some group members, but I've made it a point to share this wiki page with anyone who mentions that they're having trouble getting people to accept change. For this assignment, I led the design and whiteboarding sessions, and configured the website so that others could add the content for which they were responsible to the predefined format I created. I helped in defining objectives for the overall effort, and wrote the entire Continuing Development section.

Relating Technology to Curriculum This project, completed for ITEC 57430 - Computer Applications in Education, demonstrates my ability to design materials that promote the relationships between computer applications and specific content areas. While the subject might seem rather rudimentary, I'm accustomed to working with adult learners, so refocusing on a much younger age group required me to view the technology-enhanced instructional environment with a much different lens.

Technology Instructional Strategy Matrix Another collaborative effort, this time for ITEC 57430 - Computer Applications in Education, this project required a group of four students to identify at least three specific technologies for each of nine research-based instructional strategies, rationalize and explain why the technologies were chosen, and recommend and design context-appropriate lessons utilizing such technologies. For this project, I led the development of the “case study” in which we identified a district and specific school scenario, and edited the entire website after working with the group to complete the content part of the assignment.