A reflection on what I've learned throughout my master's program
Emily Fitzpatrick
November 2014
Once upon a time, there was a young girl named Emily who lived in a far-off land called “The U.P.” She was the daughter of a respected teacher who went by the name of Strazz. Emily could oft be found in Strazz’s classroom, reading big kids’ books and playing teacher in whatever ways she could. It made her feel smart and important. Emily enjoyed imagining what she could be when she grew up-- an opera singer, a veterinarian, an ornithologist-- the possibilities were endless. Always in the back of her mind, though, she would be a teacher, like Strazz.
Emily had a passion for music. Her mother, Pearl, taught her to read music just as if it were the English alphabet. Emily played the piano and sang for her own enjoyment and for the enjoyment of others. She listened to Pearl play the piano and organ and listened to Strazz sing and play the guitar. Emily grew up with music just as she grew up with water and air.
When Emily was eighteen years old, she embarked on a journey to Northern Michigan University (NMU) to learn to teach music to others. She learned about theory and history, singing and playing instruments, and the basics of teaching. During all of the learning that she did, she loved using the computer. She enjoyed typing and learning to use computer programs to their full potential to help herself learn. When she took an undergraduate course about educational technology taught by Sara Beauchamp, she was intrigued. “There is so much more out there than I could ever learn about!” she thought. Little did she know the path that was ahead…
Beginning to Teach
In 2010, Emily began teaching music to 700 students at a school in The U.P. She taught music with outdated books and an overhead projector. The only close-to-current technology in her classroom was an old iMac on the opposite side of her classroom from instruction. Emily used her personal laptop and a data projector from Strazz to project information to her students, but had to download everything ahead of time as she was not allowed to connect her personal laptop to the school wifi. One day, she tried having students use the school’s laptop cart to play note naming games to find that half of the laptops did not work properly. Her main focus was to teach music, but the conditions she faced with technology set her back several steps from what she had learned at NMU.
Wanting to Learn
Although Emily, now “Miss Strazzinski,” was a teacher, she knew she was not done learning. She had been learning her whole life, learned every day with her students, and had an interest in continuing to learn. She wanted to learn so many things, though, she didn’t know how she would ever choose a program of study. Music would have been the obvious choice-- conducting, vocal pedagogy, the male voice… She researched options in entirely different fields, too, like health and fitness and school counseling. If only there was enough time and money to learn everything!
The Moment of Change
In 2012, Emily was among a chosen few from her school district who was given the opportunity to attend the Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning (MACUL) conference. She rode for eight hours in a minivan crammed with teachers and spent two days enjoying session after session about technology integration in the classroom. While waiting to hear Steve Dembo (a leader in educational technology) speak, the woman sitting next to her (let’s call her the Fairy Godmother) sparked a conversation about the master’s program she just completed at Michigan State University (MSU). It was all about educational technology, it could be completed online, face-to-face, or overseas, and it could be completed by creating a portfolio rather than writing a thesis. As soon as Steve Dembo’s presentation was done, Emily ran downstairs to the exposition to get more information on the Master of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) program at MSU. Less than a month later, thanks to that Fairy Godmother, she was enrolled as a lifelong learner.
Continuing to Learn
In the summer of 2012, Emily packed up to spend two weeks with her cousin Kathryn in East Lansing for the first phase of her master’s program at MSU. She had never been away from The U.P. on her own for more than a few days, so she was very nervous. On the first day of classes, she walked into her classroom in Erickson Hall feeling like the youngest one of the bunch. She could not believe she was a graduate student! That summer, she took three courses which were taught concurrently by Jodi Spicer, Craig McMichael, and Alison Keller. The first two weeks of those courses were on campus for eight hours each day with hours of reading and homework to do each night. They were filled with discussions and projects that were centered around TPACK (the marriage of technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge) and applied directly to Emily’s teaching. One of the most relevant (and fun) assignments was called “Content Connections” (a part of CEP810: Teaching for Understanding with Technology.) For this assignment, Emily took her cousin Kathryn to the East Lansing Summer Solstice Jazz Festival. The two of them listened to music, took videos and pictures, and interviewed musicians and artists. Emily catalogued their experience at the jazz festival into an online space and shared that experience with her fifth grade students the next school year. She still uses pieces from that assignment in her jazz unit to connect what they are learning to experiences in everyday life. Another assignment from the 2012 Summer Cohort that Emily still uses in her classroom was about the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) (a part of CEP811: Adapting Technologies to Education.) She created and re-created a unit about vocal technique for third grade students using principles of UDL such as multiple means of representation and multiple means of engagement. She has continued to re-create and re-use that unit with great success. The summer cohort continued for four weeks online after two weeks of face-to-face time. Emily spent more time on her computer in those four weeks than she ever thought she could, but was amazed at the end of July when she looked back and realized she had completed nine graduate credits in only six weeks! She was also surprised to find that when she looked into the future, there was a possibility of doing something other than teaching music, like teaching technology classes or helping other teachers with technology integration.
As much as Emily enjoyed her experience as a Spartan on MSU’s campus, she had to face the next part of her MAET journey online. (Life got in the way; she spent the next summer getting married in The U.P. and then honeymooning in Ireland!) One of the courses Emily took online was CEP820: Teaching Students Online, taught by Anne Heintz and Sandra Sawaya. That’s right; instructors were teaching students like Emily, online, how to teach students online. This course really got Emily, now “Mrs. Fitzpatrick,” out of the comfort zone of her music classroom and brought her, along with four classes of fourth grade students, into the computer lab. Emily created an entire unit on jazz music on Haiku Learning, a free course management system. She combined elements from the jazz unit she previously taught face-to-face into an online module which she would teach in a hybrid format. Her experiences in the Summer 2012 cohort really shaped this module; she included principles of UDL and artifacts from her Content Connection project. Students worked through the module online, but were all together in the lab with guidance from Mrs. Fitzpatrick. Emily created individual user names for all 120 students, so they could post to discussion boards and explore the unit more from home for extra credit. She called the unit “Jazz with Strazz.” She was always too formal to let her students call her “Strazz” like her father did, but she thought the rhyming provided an exception. She may have to change the unit title when she has students who don’t remember her maiden name! Emily was given accolades by instructor Anne Heintz for “finding unique and innovative ways to include her instructor presence into her online space.”
During the next semester, Emily was fortunate enough to be able to take a course from the director of the MAET program, Punya Mishra. Along with Jon Good, Punya taught CEP817: Learning Technology through Design. She thought she would be learning about web design. She did not know she would learn to think like a designer in all senses of the word! In this course, Punya, Jon, and her classmates taught to look at life with the eye of a designer and she has not looked at a doorknob, a window, a kitchen layout, or a website the same way since. As the course title suggested, Emily learned about web design through general design. Because of the many analyses of design in our everyday lives, Emily learned the importance of design principles like accessibility, content, form, and user testing, which helped her create yet another web space for her students. The web space was created as a part of the “Big Kahuna” project in the course. (The fun name of the assignment made the large project seem much less daunting.) The result was a space entitled “We’ve Got Rhythm,” a place with presentations and activities about rhythm for second, third, and fourth grade students. Many mini-assignments from the course which required Emily to think outside of the box are included in this project, such as a nonconventional slideshow and an infographic about rhythm symbols. One of the most valuable requirements of the course was that the space had to be user tested by people in various demographics. Emily enjoyed watching over the shoulders of elementary students and other teachers as they navigated through the site. She took notes as she hovered and made many changes afterward! Emily’s students have enjoyed the multimedia aspects of “We’ve Got Rhythm” and some have even visited the site for extra rhythm practice at home.
Emily returned to MSU for another Summer Cohort experience in 2014. This time, she stayed with Sara Beauchamp-Hicks, who was mentioned much earlier in this story; she taught Emily’s undergraduate educational technology class at NMU. Sara had since moved from The U.P. to Lansing, married an ed tech guru, received her degree in Educational Technology from MSU, taught a few of the MAET courses, and even helped develop part of the program. Because of this, Emily’s brain was being filled with ed tech knowledge while at class and at “home!” Emily’s instructors for this summer cohort were Danah Henriksen, Jon Good, and Rohit Mehta. Her experience in this cohort was much different from the first one. She entered this session much more confident and didn’t feel quite so young or foreign. She was surprised to learn that she was one of just a few of her classmates who had participated in another hybrid cohort. Among the classes she took that summer was CEP815: Technology and Leadership. This course shifted Emily’s focus from technology in her own classroom to technology throughout her school. Daily “Tech Tips” shared by classmates and this quote from a National Teacher of the Year in Learning from Creative Teachers (Henriksen & Mishra, 2013) inspired Emily to be more of a tech leader in her school:
As much as Emily enjoyed her experience as a Spartan on MSU’s campus, she had to face the next part of her MAET journey online. (Life got in the way; she spent the next summer getting married in The U.P. and then honeymooning in Ireland!) One of the courses Emily took online was CEP820: Teaching Students Online, taught by Anne Heintz and Sandra Sawaya. That’s right; instructors were teaching students like Emily, online, how to teach students online. This course really got Emily, now “Mrs. Fitzpatrick,” out of the comfort zone of her music classroom and brought her, along with four classes of fourth grade students, into the computer lab. Emily created an entire unit on jazz music on Haiku Learning, a free course management system. She combined elements from the jazz unit she previously taught face-to-face into an online module which she would teach in a hybrid format. Her experiences in the Summer 2012 cohort really shaped this module; she included principles of UDL and artifacts from her Content Connection project. Students worked through the module online, but were all together in the lab with guidance from Mrs. Fitzpatrick. Emily created individual user names for all 120 students, so they could post to discussion boards and explore the unit more from home for extra credit. She called the unit “Jazz with Strazz.” She was always too formal to let her students call her “Strazz” like her father did, but she thought the rhyming provided an exception. She may have to change the unit title when she has students who don’t remember her maiden name! Emily was given accolades by instructor Anne Heintz for “finding unique and innovative ways to include her instructor presence into her online space.”
During the next semester, Emily was fortunate enough to be able to take a course from the director of the MAET program, Punya Mishra. Along with Jon Good, Punya taught CEP817: Learning Technology through Design. She thought she would be learning about web design. She did not know she would learn to think like a designer in all senses of the word! In this course, Punya, Jon, and her classmates taught to look at life with the eye of a designer and she has not looked at a doorknob, a window, a kitchen layout, or a website the same way since. As the course title suggested, Emily learned about web design through general design. Because of the many analyses of design in our everyday lives, Emily learned the importance of design principles like accessibility, content, form, and user testing, which helped her create yet another web space for her students. The web space was created as a part of the “Big Kahuna” project in the course. (The fun name of the assignment made the large project seem much less daunting.) The result was a space entitled “We’ve Got Rhythm,” a place with presentations and activities about rhythm for second, third, and fourth grade students. Many mini-assignments from the course which required Emily to think outside of the box are included in this project, such as a nonconventional slideshow and an infographic about rhythm symbols. One of the most valuable requirements of the course was that the space had to be user tested by people in various demographics. Emily enjoyed watching over the shoulders of elementary students and other teachers as they navigated through the site. She took notes as she hovered and made many changes afterward! Emily’s students have enjoyed the multimedia aspects of “We’ve Got Rhythm” and some have even visited the site for extra rhythm practice at home.
Emily returned to MSU for another Summer Cohort experience in 2014. This time, she stayed with Sara Beauchamp-Hicks, who was mentioned much earlier in this story; she taught Emily’s undergraduate educational technology class at NMU. Sara had since moved from The U.P. to Lansing, married an ed tech guru, received her degree in Educational Technology from MSU, taught a few of the MAET courses, and even helped develop part of the program. Because of this, Emily’s brain was being filled with ed tech knowledge while at class and at “home!” Emily’s instructors for this summer cohort were Danah Henriksen, Jon Good, and Rohit Mehta. Her experience in this cohort was much different from the first one. She entered this session much more confident and didn’t feel quite so young or foreign. She was surprised to learn that she was one of just a few of her classmates who had participated in another hybrid cohort. Among the classes she took that summer was CEP815: Technology and Leadership. This course shifted Emily’s focus from technology in her own classroom to technology throughout her school. Daily “Tech Tips” shared by classmates and this quote from a National Teacher of the Year in Learning from Creative Teachers (Henriksen & Mishra, 2013) inspired Emily to be more of a tech leader in her school:
"We started a group at my school for teachers; we began to meet in my classroom once a month. Everyone's ticket in the door was to bring to the table something new, something of their own to offer, so that we could share ideas and try out things that had been successful in other classrooms."
A Master of Educational Technology
Emily continued teaching in The U.P. and completed her MAET portfolio before graduating with a Master of Arts in Educational Technology in December 2014. Her classroom looked entirely different as she was finishing her master’s program from how it did at the beginning. Her computer was hooked up to a projector provided by the school, she had two iPads at her disposal at all times, and wifi was no longer a thing of the past. Her projector was on most of the school day, with ClassDojo as the default screen for tracking students’ behavior whenever she wasn’t projecting material or media that would enhance her students’ understanding of music. Her class website made it possible for students to practice their music at home and for parents to be a part of their children's music education. On top of the technological growth in her own classroom and teaching, though, Emily began to create a name for herself as a tech integrator in her school. She was asked to be on the “tech team” at her school and initiated an open group that met once each month before school to share ideas, “tech tip” style.
Emily will never admit that she is a Master of Educational Technology. She has always been learning, from the times of playing school in Strazz’s classroom and learning to read music from Pearl, and cannot imagine a life without learning. Perhaps one could master the subject of grammar or basic arithmetic, but Emily believes that technology is an ever-changing topic that will never be mastered by anyone. The only way she can justify bearing the title “Master in Educational Technology” is by looking back at the foundation the MAET program has given her. That foundation sets her apart from many others and upon that foundation, she can continue to construct knowledge and understanding for her students, her colleagues, and herself.
As a child, Emily enjoyed imagining what she could be when she grew up. The possibilities were endless, but teaching was always one that stood out among the rest. Emily did grow up to be a teacher, but she’s not done growing. Teaching still stands out; it’s rewarding, fulfilling, comfortable…
Emily will never admit that she is a Master of Educational Technology. She has always been learning, from the times of playing school in Strazz’s classroom and learning to read music from Pearl, and cannot imagine a life without learning. Perhaps one could master the subject of grammar or basic arithmetic, but Emily believes that technology is an ever-changing topic that will never be mastered by anyone. The only way she can justify bearing the title “Master in Educational Technology” is by looking back at the foundation the MAET program has given her. That foundation sets her apart from many others and upon that foundation, she can continue to construct knowledge and understanding for her students, her colleagues, and herself.
As a child, Emily enjoyed imagining what she could be when she grew up. The possibilities were endless, but teaching was always one that stood out among the rest. Emily did grow up to be a teacher, but she’s not done growing. Teaching still stands out; it’s rewarding, fulfilling, comfortable…
...but the possibilities are endless.
Image Credits:
All pictures of Emily taken by friends and family members TEAMMAET2012: http://edutech.msu.edu/2012/03/02/maet-and-macul-12/ TPACK: Reproduced by permission of the publisher, © 2012 by tpack.org |