FROM STRAIGHT "A" TO STRAIGHT "L"
Synthesis Essay
Nancy Nasser
You know that girl. She was the one that did everything perfectly at school. She got straight A’s and was every teacher’s dream. She was always the most prepared, always the most organized. This was me. At work, I was also a straight A employee. I just enjoyed being as close to perfect as I can in everything I do.
Life, on the other hand, is far from perfect. Being the way I am, it would be highly unlikely that I consider switching careers and delving into a different work field, but I did. After moving to Saudi Arabia with my husband, I found myself with very few work options, especially in the technology industry. When I got the call for an interview for the Educational Technology Specialist opening at the American International School of Jeddah, I was ecstatic. I was overwhelmed with mixed emotions of joy, excitement confusion, and uncertainty. “What if I fail?”, I asked myself. Soon after, I was granted the position and I started a whole new journey of learning and challenges. In my new job, I was eager to learn all about technology in the education field and I wanted to excel with coaching others on effective technology use in the classroom. Fearing from failure in my new job, I sought to pursue my masters in the field of educational technology. The Master of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) program at Michigan State University has exposed me to the foundations of learning and educational technology, but more importantly, had challenged me to value the most significant underlying purpose for my job - students. Although I originally joined the MAET aiming to gain knowledge and exposure to technologies to excel in my new job, I exit the program with the ultimate goal of focusing on students’ needs and learning and how technology can help prepare today’s students for tomorrow's challenges. With this realization, I believe that the MAET program had particularly contributed to developing my approach in leveraging the use of technology to advance learning for a very diverse group of students and made me realize that despite my own fear of failure, I need to lead by example. I need to create a vision that goes beyond my own goals and extends to empowering students in the digital age because ultimately the work I do should translate into enhanced student learning.
Reading about the various learning theories and what Willingham (2010) discusses in “Why Don’t Students like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions about How the Mind Works and What it Means for the classroom” about learning styles opened my eyes to the need for analyzing and catering to different types of learners and engaging all students in active learning. These concepts reminded me of Universal Design Learning framework which is about providing multiple means of representation and expression opportunities for students. In my practice, I strive to always equip teachers with technology skills and tools to provide access to the content to all students so they may construct meaning in every way that works for them. I realized that I must value and support students’ creativity in carrying out their thoughts and visions in order to validate their individuality. In this course, I also learned that true learning happens when students investigate, discover and make sense of knowledge. If I want to help teachers develop effective and purposeful instructional activities, I must design technology infused tasks that allow students to solve real-world problems in authentic environments.
Secondly, we suggest the implementation of project-based learning (PBL) enhanced with gamification that inherently requires students to work through their learning and navigate through bumps via trial and error. Indeed, I applied this recommendation to fourth-grade classes in my school by allowing students to design and plan their escape from an island through Minecraft Edu. With this PBL activity, students faced many challenges that they had to think creatively to overcome. They surprised me with their ingenuity. Although they struggled along the way, they did not stay frustrated for long; they continued to push themselves until they all found success. As the game harnesses problem-solving skills, it also builds rigor and persistence in students which I find essential for retaining knowledge. Lastly, we recommend the use of adaptive learning technologies which could deliberately promote students’ engagement, enhance motivation and remove a student’s fear of failure (Rohrkemper and Korno, 1988, p. 301).
So, you know what learning means and you developed resilience to face challenges, but what do you really want to achieve? What is your vision? These were the questions that I was faced with going into the CEP 815: Technology and Leadership course . This course really opened my eyes to what it takes to be a leader in the educational technology field, as it requires much more than simply having knowledge of technology. In this course, I learned that a leader drives transformational change through a vision. In order to have a vision for the future, a leader must examine the present. Once the leader understands his/her local context, an endpoint needs to be determined and the leader can then start to develop a vision. One of the main projects that I worked on in this course allowed me to develop a vision statement and action plan for meaningful use of technology. I envisioned our school to be one where students want to come to school and are enticed to engage in the learning process. Through harnessing the power of social media technologies, project-based learning and game-based learning, I believe that a group of students who were previously at risk of failure in the school develop the motivation and skills to become performance enhanced students. With this practical application of leadership, I learned that for purposeful and effective technology integration to take place, I need to provide strategic direction to the school.
© Nancy Nasser
Lastly, as a technology leader, I am committed to prepare our young students to succeed and deal with complex challenges of our age. To succeed in the 21st century, all students will need to perform to high standards and acquire mastery of rigorous core subject material, but will also need to gain the cognitive and social skills. CEP 815 inspired me to consider true purpose for introducing new tools, resources and technologies and pushed me to craft a directive for a review, refinement and redesign of teacher and student expectations when using technology. In addition, in order to ensure student mastery of 21st Century skills, I now plan to work with the curriculum director at our school to analyze how and where the K-5 Common Core Standards align with competencies such as critical thinking, creativity and collaboration and identify where technology and digital media tools can be used strategically to advance student readiness and learning.
Placing students at the center of the classroom and learning requires us as educators to provide a safe learning environment where students are allowed and encouraged to take risks. CEP 812: Applying Educational Technology to Issues of Practice is a course that sheds light on the immense impact of technology on intricate issues that face the education system. Through a collaborative project, I analyzed, discussed and brainstormed causes of a “wicked problem” described as failure as a learning mode. Wicked problems are those issues that are impossible to solve because of the contradicting elements and the many independent factors that comprise the problems. Unfortunately, in education, particularly in this high-stakes accountability era, failure has become the term attached to our persistent challenges. We argue over how to “prevent” more failure. Increasingly, failure has come to mean something terrible. As a straight A student and a perfectionist type myself, I could never accept failure. After studying this wicked problem, my think tank and I proposed education reform that promotes failure tolerant learning environments where the negativity associated with failure is re-imagined and maybe even re-branded. We first recommend integrating growth mindset and grit into teaching practices. Success comes to those who hang in, who bounce back after being knocked down again and again, and who try harder and longer.
Reflecting on this course, I am certain that it prepared me to tackle complex issues in my work setting. By learning how to frame academic and professional challenges in ways that encouraged brainstorming solutions through technology, I feel that I gained the confidence needed to address and design a technology-infused solution for such complicated problems. Moreover, this course brought about a change in my perspective on failure. Failure is an inevitable part of learning. As a technology coach, I strive to embed the development of grit in students by incorporating technology enhanced activities where they stay at a task, learn from failures, and work until they demonstrate mastery and true learning.
Transitioning from working in the corporate world to the educational realm, I found learning to be a concept that is hard to define. How and why do students learn? This was a question I had never given as deep of thought as I should have. As a technology coach, I placed greater emphasis on technology than on students when setting tasks for my job. However, uncovering what learning really means was instrumental in reimagining my tasks and goals for technology integration in my job and the approach I took to achieve it. In CEP 800: Learning in School and Other Settings, I began to concentrate on students as learners.
Indeed, for one of the CEP 800 course’s projects I created a lesson plan that allows students to analyze and imagine living on Mars with the use of Virtual field trips as a technology tool. From here, this course taught me that if I make the classroom a place where diverse learners discover and do things within the real-world context with technology, then I am helping them reach meaning making and understanding. This is true learning. As a result of this course, I now consider learning for understanding as the foundation for all my goals as a technology coach.
Furthermore, through this course, I gained a greater appreciation for the value of communication and involvement of stakeholders when implementing a leadership vision. For a vision to become reality, attention must be made to not only what it says, but to how it’s communicated and how it’s lived. Basically, I learned that to see desired movement in transformational direction, I must enact sustained initiatives of communication and education. Therefore, in order to bring my vision forward to the school’s stakeholders and coordinate efforts, I plan to invite parents and teachers to meetings and training sessions to bring awareness of the framework of my vision and respond to any concerns with my educational technology vision and plan in my school. I believe that as an educational technology leader, I can shape teacher and parents’ resistance into resilience by building a trust relationship with them through the power of communication.
I came into the program with significant skepticism and fear of failure in my new job and new responsibilities. I am leaving with an expanded skill for leveraging technology in purposeful ways to maximize student learning. I am also leaving with a mindset of a leader aspiring to be an agent of change. It is true that the actual magic of meaningful, authentic transformation in learning with technology happens in the classroom between students, teachers, content and technology tools (Read about TPACK). However, as an Educational Technology Specialist I hold the responsibility of setting the conditions with the right vision within which transformative practice and change happens. I am ready to be a leader.I am ready to prepare students to lead their future. As a result of this program, my thought process in critically looking at technology, where to place it and how to use it, and better understanding how students learn are things I hold closest to me when moving on. Learning never stops, growing is ongoing and my skills are always expanding. Moving forward is a daunting challenge filled with hard work, trial and error, successes, and learning experiences. I’m ready for the challenge and excited for the future. Most importantly, I am ready to move from the mindset of straight As to a straight road of "L"; a road of learning.
