Jenna Gabel
Teacher of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
"Love - Sign" by Cindy Andrie is liscensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Bringing It All Together
By: Jenna Gabel
It is safe to say that I have loved children for as long as I can remember. As early as middle school, I served as a babysitter and a tutor for elementary aged children. In high school, I became a camp counselor so that I could spend my summers making a difference in childrens’ lives. Therefore, when I went off to college for the first time at age 18, it seemed like a no brainer that I would become an elementary school teacher. While others around me struggled with deciding what their major would be, I found choosing a career to be one of the easiest decisions of my life.
After college, I obtained a teaching position in Clinton, Iowa as an elementary teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing. Although I found that MSU had prepared me well for the real world of teaching, my first year was one that challenged and stretched me in ways that I never thought possible. I taught seven deaf and hard of hearing children with hearing losses ranging from mild to profound. These children spanned five different grade levels beginning in preschool and ranging all the way to fifth grade. They used several different communication methods ranging from American Sign Language, to Manually Coded English, to being completely Auditory Oral. Some students came to see me as little as 40 minutes while others stayed in my self contained classroom all day, and there were students everywhere in between. Needless to say, my classroom was somewhat of a revolving door and it was anything but dull! During my first year, I gained confidence as an educator, but I also began to understand that there was so much left to learn.
"My New C.I." by Chris and Shelley Mallinson is liscensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Therefore, I made the decision to go back to school to earn a masters degree beginning in June after my first year as an educator. While deciding to become a teacher was a piece of cake, I found that deciding where to focus my attention for my masters degree was not quite as easy. My interests in education were becoming vast. I was learning about more and more areas where I wanted to increase my knowledge so that I could become a better teacher for my students. I knew that many of my students struggled with literacy so I considered making this the focus of my masters study, but ultimately there was another issue that had been plaguing me during my first year of teaching. Since deafness is not high incidence, there are low numbers of deaf students in my community, and even less deaf adults. My students often didn’t have access to many other students who signed, and they certainly didn’t have access to successful deaf role models. How would they know that there were successful veterinarians, teachers, scientists, etc. who were deaf or hard of hearing if they had never seen them. I knew that using technology, I could help bridge this gap for my students and enhance their everyday instruction as well, but I didn’t know how. Thus, my decision was made to get a masters degree in educational technology from Michigan State University.
Teaching in deaf education can be an isolating field because there are not often many deaf education teachers in the same school district. It can also be isolating for the students because there are often not many other students who are deaf or hard of hearing that they interact with on a daily basis. In CEP 810, I learned how to use my Personal Learning Network to connect me to other teachers of the deaf, elementary educators, and technology experts who have had great suggestions for me. I now use blogs, Google Drive, Pinterest, Skype, email, Twitter, websites, Sorenson Video Relay Service and many other aspects of my Personal Learning Network to connect me to other teachers who have the same passions as me, and to connect my classroom with other similar classrooms across the United States. It was in this course that I learned that I don’t just have to learn from people who are in the same physical room as me. As a result, the world became a lot smaller as I began learning about teaching and technology from teachers across the country.
I arrived at MSU during the summer of 2012 for the MSU hybrid summer cohort. To be honest, I was scared that I wasn’t as tech savvy as everyone else in my class. What I quickly learned in my first course, CEP 810: Teaching and Learning With Technology, is that there is so much to learn about in the field of educational technology that no one knows everything. I began to understand that technology will always be changing and evolving, and one of the things that’s most exciting about this field is that there will always be something new to learn. In CEP 810, I was encouraged to be creative. Failure was not a limiting factor. If I tried something and it didn’t work out, then I was encouraged to go back to the drawing board and try again. I learned about a wide variety of tools that I wanted to bring back to my classroom, most of which were not designed for education, but could be repurposed for classroom use. I also learned that I don’t need to know how to use every tool that is out there. Instead, I need to have the confidence to play around with different tools and find web tutorials to help me understand out how to use them. I now feel confident that when a teacher in my school comes to me with a technology question, I may not know the answer right away, but I can quickly find it by using the web or utilizing trial and error with the technology.
In CEP 810, I learned a great deal about improving my own technology related teaching practices, but in CEP 800: Learning in School and Other Settings, I began to really focus on my students as learners. I learned that my students have to be able to connect what they are learning to their own prior knowledge if I want that new knowledge to stick. I also learned that students come to the classroom with their own ideas about how the world works (some correct ideas and others incorrect.) If I truly want my students to understand new material, then I must ask them the right questions at the beginning of each unit in order to figure out what they know, and what their misconceptions are. Then I must target my teaching to change those misconceptions so that students don’t walk away from a lesson believing the same misinformation that they came into the lesson with.
CEP 815, Technolgy and Leadership, is another course that really opened my eyes. Before this course, I had become comfortable integrating a wide variety of technology into my classroom, including but not limited to tablets, SMARTboards, digital storytelling platforms, blogs, etc. However, I had never thought about myself as a technology leader. In fact, I had never thought about the wealth of information that I had to share. After taking this course, I am now an informal technology leader in my school. Teachers come to me for help with new technologies that they want to use and technology related questions, and my door is always open. In the future, I can see myself moving into a formal technology leadership position where I am able to devote much more time to helping other teachers to effectively integrate technology into their own classrooms. I have seen first hand how how technology can enhance lessons when it is used properly. In order to do this, teachers must first decide on the content that they want their students to learn, and second understand their own pedagogy for teaching that content. Only then can they select the appropriate technology tool to enhance student learning. As a result of this course, I have become much more confident in my ability to help other teachers utilize technology appropriately and effectively.
In CEP 800, I also learned that sharing, making your knowledge public, and learning from your mistakes are extremely important. We often fail alone when we could succeed together. Learning is most powerful when it becomes public and communicative. Therefore, I strive to make both my learning and my students learning public and collaborative. We share what we are learning and creating in the classroom, in the school, and on the web. As a result of this course, I have set up a classroom environment where we share our ideas and we welcome feedback from others because we understand that is how we improve. This course taught me that if I make my classroom a place where students explore important and meaningful questions, then I can capitalize on students’ natural enthusiasm for learning.
"Redefinition" by Ian Guest is liscensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
As a technology leader, I also want to push teachers that are becoming comfortable with using educational technology to think more deeply about how they are using each piece of technology. I want to show other educators that they don’t have to just substitute technology for a book or a paper and pencil tool that could do the same thing. We should be using technology to modify and redesign educational tasks instead of just using the technology to substitute one tool for another. Ultimately, I would like to help other teachers redefine education and create tasks using technology that would have never been possible before the technology existed. This is all part of the SAMR model, and it is a lofty goal, but it is also one that I strive to achieve in my own classroom. As a technology leader, working with other teachers, I think that this is something that we can all reach for and achieve together.
The final course in my masters degree CEP 807, Capstone in Educational Technology, was focused on creating a portfolio to showcase my educational technology work both in the classroom and throughout the MSU Masters in Educational Technology (MAET) program. This showcase took the form of a website. It was through the creation of this website that I learned about effective web design. I learned about the importance of choosing an appropriate font, color scheme, and layout. I learned about the affordances and constraints of online media and figured out how to use those affordances (videos, links, and pictures) to my advantage in order to make my website very user friendly.
In this course, I explored copyright as well. I spent a lot of time ensuring that the images that I used were copyrighted appropriately for me to do so. I selected images that were free to use under Creative Commons licensing, and I gave proper attribution to the original owner of each image. This is one aspect of being a good digital citizen. I know that the imprint that I make for myself on the internet is forever, and I want to make sure that I am responsible when I am creating and sharing web based resources. If I expect my students to be good digital citizens, then I need to model this responsibility myself.
This course also allowed me the opportunity to complete a great deal of reflection. I looked back at my goals when I entered the MAET program and explored how they had changed over time. I also looked forward to discover what my next steps as an educator would be. Additionally, I created a new resume, which helped me to understand just how much I had learned and how far I had come in my first three years as an educator. I also had the opportunity to create a showcase of my best work from my masters program, and I was pleased to see the vast number of projects that I created for my masters coursework which I am still using in my classroom every day.
If there is one thing that getting a master’s degree in educational technology has solidified it is that I will be a lifelong learner. I know that I will continue to use my personal learning network to help me become a better teacher and to learn about new and innovative methods for using technology in my classroom. Although this is the end of my time at MSU, it is only the beginning of my career in teaching and learning. If you are impressed by how much I know about teaching and learning with technology now, just wait until you see me five or ten years from now. There is so much more to know, and I am so excited to take what I have learned at MSU out into the world and continue to learn from others!
"Be a LEARNER and a LEADER" by diane cordell is liscensed under CC BY 2.0