I have always been aggressive at reaching my goals, and I am proud of how much I have accomplished in the short amount of time I have been teaching. Since graduating from American University for my Undergraduate degree, I have earned two Master's degrees, taught two different grade levels, and held numerous leadership positions in my school. Additionally, throughout the years, I have been able to narrow my focus about where my educational passion truly lies: education technology integration. I have increased my confidence with integrating technology and have continued to teach not only my students about the technology, but also my colleagues in hopes they too would incorporate technology into their  instruction. As I am starting my sixth year of teaching, I have new goals that will help me become the educator I want to be and hopefully give me the experiences I need to transfer my job from teacher to technology specialist in my district. The three goals I would like to focus on are creating teaching videos for all of the fourth grade standards to use in my blended learning classroom, completing Google certification trainings, and developing a coding curriculum for the coming school year.

 

I knew I wanted to create my own videos for students to watch once I learned about a blended classroom. I envisioned using the videos as a center in a rotation model for students to learn or review the skill and then rotate to the teacher led-center to then practice and apply the skill with teacher guidance. Creating and implementing the videos in one school year by yourself was a lofty goal. I did create some videos, but I did not complete the entire fourth grade Virginia Standards of Learning (SOLs) that I teach each year. From creating the few videos, I did learn a lot about video creation through trial and error. I tried out different devices such as an Apple Computer, Chromebook, and iPad. I also tried various platforms to develop the videos such as Screencastify, Educreations, Show Me, and Doceri. None of the apps worked seamlessly, which contributed to the lack of video creation. Therefore, I would like to continue achieving this goal not only by generating more teacher created videos but also through reaching out to other tech savvy teachers that make their own videos using an interactive whiteboard platform so I can learn more about perfecting the process and product.

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My school district recently became a Google Apps for Education district and bought 1:1 Chromebooks for students in grades 4-12. Luckily, since I teach fourth grade, I just made the cut for experiencing this amazing technology opportunity. As I immersed myself with the Google Apps, I recognized their ease and efficiency quite quickly but was disheartened when I realized that almost none of my colleagues were using these apps. In an effort to create change and be a leader in my school, I have connected with a representative at Google to come to my school and deliver the Google Boot Camp training to 25-30 teachers in order to be Google Certified level 1 educators for next school year. If I am able to coordinate the training, my goal is to continue  the certification on my own for level 2 and then become a certified trainer. That way, I will be able to deliver the professional development for my colleagues on level 2 the following school year. Although this is a lofty goal, I feel that my drive and determination for success will make it happen. I want to earn these certifications and become a trainer because it will improve my ability to work with adults rather than children, which is what a technology specialist will need to do. The more practice I have, the more confident I will be in that position later on.

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           Coding has always fascinated me. The fact that I can type in a language to the computer and make something move, appear, or change is incredible. It is this fascination that encouraged me to try out a coding project using Scratch.com this year after our state testing. I have never seen my students more interested and engaged prior to the coding project. They were challenged to use their creativity and imagination to create their own animations while problem solving and discovering. The project brought the class community together. Students who hadn’t been friends all year were standing by one another’s desks helping to set up game timers or generate block codes to make the ball bounce. A student who kept to himself all year asked to present an app to the class he found that would help them add music from YouTube to their project. Students left words of encouragement and compliments in the comment feature to one another. I was in awe. From this, I decided I wanted to teach coding during my science class twice a week next year. Even though my district doesn’t provide any curriculum or resources to make this happen, I still want to try it.