Reflection+Loyola+Graduate+Courses


 * The purpose of this page is to illustrate how certain classes in the Educational Technology Master's Program contributed to the successful completion of my Internship at CATN. **

ET605 Introduction to Educational Technology
** This hands-on class introduced me to computer several applications to be used in the classroom to enhance instruction and facilitate my work as a teacher. In this class, we created brochures, excel spread sheets, and posted comments on a thread about articles relating to technology and school reform. **

ED670 Teacher Research & Inquiry
== ** Although this class didn’t impact my internship, it did bring awareness to the topic of gender differences in technology fields. I did extensive research on this topic through many literature reviews. My research suggested that there still needs to be work done in the area of gender differences in the technology area. As an instructor of Cisco Academy, I see firsthand there are fewer female students in the classroom. Knowing that there is a problem, I’m more aware of programs geared toward getting female students into the technology related fields. ** ==

ET610 Curricular Applications of Technology
This course introduced an assortment of current and evolving technologies for me to investigate and implement into the curriculum. During this course I was introduced to blogging. As a result, I took Anne Arundel County’s blog course to be certified to use the blog with student. I created a blog, which I currently use with students and is a part of my internship under technology operations and concepts.

ET620 Multimedia Design in the Classroom
This course was significant to my internship in two ways. Completed as a group, we used video equipment and editing software to create a short educational video. I used software to edit the video into segments with transition effect and saved it as a QuickTime video. As a result, I felt comfortable to use this as a staff development for my internship. We also created a PowerPoint with VBA Project. This too was used in my internship under the assessment and evaluation section.

ED608 Educational Innovations
==This course is not evident in my internship, but did give me a valuable awareness of how the board of education and unions function relating to educational innovation. As a result, I have a much better understanding of my own experiences in identifying bureaucracy and politics in Anne Arundel County Schools. ==

ET680 The Role of the Technology Specialist
==This course was very important to my successfully completing the internship. I created an AUP in this class and used it for my internship. This course also helped me to understand the concept of key stakeholders specifically pertaining to my school and their role in technology education. It truly prepared me to take a role of a technology specialist in my school to perform the necessary day-to-day tasks in completing my internship. I was also introduced to the internship experience as I watched other students present their internship/portfolio. ==

ET630 Telecommunications in the Classroom
This course was extremely helpful for completing my internship by introducing telecommunications in education. We explored and researched an assortment of Web 2.0 technologies and their impact in education. This class provided a systematic and hands-on experience in creating a blog, web design and the html, wikis, podcasting, and social bookmarks. In addition to the Web 2.0, we created a critical literacy project to help teachers and students learn how to critically analyze Web sites. This project was created as a web page, which includes a four-day lesson plan for the teacher and a detailed instruction page for the student with several activities.

AD662 Supervision and Staff Development
This course may not be as evident in my internship, but it was extremely helpful and interesting to learn the history of leadership and the top-down approach or supervision and how it ties to professional development. Basically, an effective leader knows how to plan, organize, direct, coordinate, report, and budget. I also found leadership styles to be interesting in that there are five different styles which a leader can fit into: autocratic, bureaucratic, charismatic, democratic, and laissez faire. All are totally different approaches in leadership, which make a workplace a little more comprehensible.

ET691 Educational Technology Internship
==This course was completed at CATN where I teach Computer Networking. It was a great success as I coordinated with the principal to learn what technologies he wanted me to focus on to benefit the entire school during the internship time-frame. As a result, I was able to develop a plan of action for technology staff development. I also decided to put my electronic portfolio, for the internship, onto a wiki. I completed the wiki certification and learned the technology proficiently enough to create and maintain multiple wiki sites. ==

ET 690 Educational Technology Seminar
This course gave me a deep philosophical understanding of critical issues concerning educational technology. We analyzed how computers and technology affect the purpose for schools and whether or not computers are suitable in schools and society. We critically analyzed what the Internet is doing to our brains and how it’s rewiring our brains many ways. This information is beneficial in understand students and why this new generation learns in dramatically different ways. This course ended with a debate about social networking and how it positively helps build relationships. The pros and cons were well prepared for the debate and delivered their arguments successfully. In the end the cons won the debate.

ET631 Distance Education
In the Distance Education course I learned that it takes an enormous amount of team planning and consideration to deliver quality education at-a-distance. I evaluated theories of distance education and what personality type is typical for this kind of educational delivery. I analyzed methods and roles of instructional designers as well as issues related to teaching at-a-distance. I consider the contents of this course to be extremely valuable since this is the future of education.