Thoughtful Problem #1

Thoughtful Problem #1

Briefly describe what attracts you to educational technology. What do you think will be the most interesting part of the kind of position you desire? What personal quality, interest or expertise best qualifies you for this position? What do you see as your biggest challenge in such a position (in terms of your personal qualities)?

I believe my attraction to educational technology can be linked to two overlapping and significant spheres of my life, my personal and my professional interests. First, personally I have been attracted to the benefits technology affords me in my day-to-day life (for example the numerous outlets available to me as I peruse my passion for the process of life long learning). In many ways I have made a personal commitment to embrace technology into my life. I feel it is important to learn from the historical perspective of technology growth, invention, and integration. As technology becomes further ingrained into our society either by choice or by demand society must make a conscious decision, either to embrace or be left behind. From my perspective embracing technology is the only true way to step forward and guarantee that new technologies will be integrated and developed for my personal needs, interests, goals, and benefit. This perspective molds into my second reason/interest related to technology specifically for the benefits of my profession, education. Through my past experiences as an educator I have been granted the opportunity and perspective to attempt comprehension of how truly behind many of our school aged children are in the US. With those experiences I have come to a realization that our teaching approaches/philosophy in today’s schools need to be focus on inspiring students to work and granting them outlets for motivation and construction of knowledge. Changing the mentality on how we teach, especially for our low achieving students moving away from direct instruction to outlets like technology, which through proper integrated can support inquiry-based learning.

My beliefs in the way technology should be embraced and integrated into modern day life and education has influenced my career path. I have begun to think about educational technology integration on a larger scale. I have become more interested in not only using technology in my classroom but also helping others adopt technology as they teach and learn. Supporting an overall goal of helping others see first hand the benefits and growth students can make with proper integration of technology. Within my career path this overarching goal can be fulfilled through multiple levels of positions or specific jobs.

As I evaluate different job positions and professional roles I feel that my best qualification for technology integration is the time and experiences I gained as a classroom teacher. I have learned a great deal about the two most important constituencies in the successful development and use of educational technology. The students and the teachers need to be the main focus and I have experienced their true needs and the demands that influence teaching and learning in today’s classrooms.

Although I do feel qualified from my background knowledge for a leadership position as related to educational technology. I do feel that I would learn and personally grow from experiencing leadership on a larger scale then what I have previously experienced. I feel that in leading a large group of people my biggest challenge may come from my personal quality/flaw of wanting to please everyone. In a large group I may not have the opportunity to explain to all parties involved my reasoning for a decision but instead need to deal with doing what I feel is the best decision even if does not please everyone.