Annotated Transcript
EAD 882 Education in the Digital Age
Summer 2012 Instructor: Steven Weiland With my focus in areas of learning and technology as well as leadership, I felt this course would be beneficial to commence my next degree. We see that in education today that technology must be accounted for in all domains of teaching, learning, administration, and leadership. The subject is vast and urgent. What must educators at all levels and in all sectors know of the emerging and fast changing digital world? This self-paced course examined historical and demographic and then examined philosophical and epistemological questions of education. The second half of the course moved into a critical examination of gains and losses of new technologies and "new literacies" in education. Finally, we focused on more operational and practical uses of technology and how leaders and educators must effectively capitalize on opportunities for digital transformation. I enjoyed the breadth and depth of this course and felt it provided a great introduction to different issues of my concentrations. Each topic provided a wonderful variety of resources that allowed me to examine, reflect, and focus my thoughts in concise essays of inquiry. |
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EAD 801 Leadership and Organizational Development
Fall 2012 Instructor: Debbie McFalone I was excited about this course with its focus on the roles and responsibilities of teachers and school leaders as they address significant challenges that will confront schools for the foreseeable future. A central text was Kouzes & Posner's work which we then expanded into new perspectives and approaches of leadership. Another text I chose to focus on was Michael Fullan's Leading in a Culture of Change. The direction of this course was a Final Exploration project which I chose to focus on leadership during the process of change during our school's transformation into a 1:1 laptop school. I appreciated this opportunity to create a case study of leadership which gave me experience in writing longer scholarly work. During the research process, I posted a video of my findings of adaptive change to our class and enjoyed putting it together. According to my final reflection, my takeaways from this course were the need for leaders to establish trust but also clarify values in order to create a shared commitment to the mission and direction of an institution. |
CEP 815 Technology and Leadership
Fall 2012 Instructor: Nick Sheltrown The title of this course is an obvious intersection of my two concentrations and my goal of becoming a technology leader. The focus is to really understand what we mean by technology, learning and leadership. New technologies not only have the potential of changing what and how students learn, but they can also alter the task of teaching in significant ways. In this course, we examined the complex charge of being responsible for managing relationships between technology, teaching and learning. We looked at technology from multiple perspectives to assess its potential benefits and challenges to different audiences. Professional development strategies, project management, planning, evaluation, relationship building, along with the ethical and social implications of technology integration were examined. For my final project, I created a sustainable technology project by creating Personal Learning Networks at my current school. |
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ED 800 Concepts of Educational Inquiry
Spring 2013 Instructor: Steven Weiland This course is meant be the foundation course in the MSU online MAED program. It provides an opportunity to think and write about essential questions of teaching and learning, as well as educational leadership. Effective approaches to these questions involve different domains of educational inquiry. Reflecting on our own approaches to inquiry we encountered a variety of other writers of education and related fields from Dewey and Hirsch to Gardner current thinkers of Web 2.0 culture. I enjoyed self-paced approach with a variety of resources and the opportunities for different approaches of inquiry. Some of the assignments pushed my thinking of the meaning of inquiry including reflections of "practitioner inquiry" of Vivian Paley of her reflections on her thought and practice and ethnographic inquiry of a New Zealand fishing village. |
CEP 817 Learning Technology Through Design
Spring 2013 Instructor: Punya Mishra Learning Technology through Design is a course that investigates the process of design particularly as it applies to educational technology. Having integrated technology in my classroom throughout the years, I have been concerned about design for my educational products. This course provided time to reflect on that tension of idea and form collected in the different modules of my workspace. The course is structured around multiple design activities and one (or two) large design projects. My large project was a website looking at historical causes and effects of 9-11 for my Social Studies class. I also enjoyed my final multimedia reflective essay of The Teacher As Student and Architect in which I compared my own experiences in this course with the modernist architect Antonio Gaudí. |
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CEP 816 Teaching with Technology Across the Curriculum
Summer 2013 Instructors: Rand Spiro and Angie Johnson It is a digital age, and digital, random access media are in significant ways different from the instructional materials of traditional instruction. The new media are inherently malleable, freed from the bonds of going in a straight line and being organized into separate compartments. The assumption in this course is that new media make possible new and important kinds of learning and teaching that were hard to achieve with traditional instructional approaches. I enjoyed reflecting on different Web 2.0 technologies as well as collaborating and sharing with colleagues in our discussions. My final product was an essay of an instructional design using open web searches from multiple perspectives. I appreciated this nonlinear mindset for learning and research. For my own classes I am pushing students to work with ambiguity and complexity as we develop critical thinking skills. |
CEP 820 Teaching Students Online
Summer 2013 Instructors: Anne Heintz and Sandra Sawaya This course of teaching students online devoted time and space to think deeply about the ways that children, teens, and/or adults can learn on the Internet. For most of this course I worked on my own course module as part of a learning management system (LMS). During this process we learned essential markers of quality for online instruction, including tools that promote collaborative knowledge building and effective communication. My notes and thoughts were collected in an online designer notebook. Throughout this experience of construction and reflecting on my online graduate experience, I found that online learning design is difficult and thoughtful teachers as architects are needed. |
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EAD 860 Concept of a Learning Society
Fall 2013 Instructor: Riyad Shahjahan After focusing on classroom technologies during my summer courses, this course expanded the definition of learning and where and when it takes place. The “Learning Society” is a popular but problematic phrase meant to describe recent developments in education across the life span and to guide institutions and individuals worldwide in their educational goals, programs and activities, and plans for the future. During this course we reflected on what is meant by the term "learning society" and what primary domains, activities, and contexts where learning takes place. How do we become self-directed and lifelong learners? Eventually, how is the learning society affected by new information and communications technologies? I appreciated the readings and resources which gave me a expanded the context of where I see learning besides my classroom and school. |
EAD 824 Leading Teacher Learning
Fall 2013 Instructor: Nancy Colflesh The approach of this course is to transform the traditional approach of school administrators into Learning Leaders, Leading Learners, and Leaders of Learning. By developing all members of the school community as life-long learners, Leaders of Learning encourage and support faculty members to become more reflective and collaborative in their practice as they work together to improve achievement for everyone’s students. My big takeaways from this course is understanding the importance of dialogue and that schools need to be deliberate in creating a growth-oriented culture. This course also introduced me to a wealth of resources for creating and sustaining a learning community. |
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ED 870 Capstone Portfolio
Spring 2014 Instructors: Matthew Koehler, Andrea Zellner, Joshua Rosenberg, Spencer Greenhalgh This course was the final conclusion to the Master of Arts in Education degree at Michigan State University. This web portfolio of my work was a chance to reflect and showcase my learning throughout the program. As we created this portfolio throughout the course we shared and provided feedback with our peers. This capstone project allowed me to look at where I had come from, where I am now that I'm finishing the degree, and where I want to go. |
Photos used under Creative Commons from Kevin Van Aelst, Duane Schoon, Jescism, Cathy Morrison, C. VanHook, whistlepunch, Samantha Penney, George McDowell