EDLD+5370+Comprehensive+Examination+3

EDLD 5370 Comprehensive Examination 3



Examination of Masters in Educational Technology Leadership Acquiring Knowledge by Using Educational Technology J. Andres Gallardo-Virgen Lamar University

**Examination of Masters of Educational Technology Leadership ** My first contact with computers was fascinating. I had the opportunity to use one of the big 16-bit computers PDP-11 sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and those Apple IIe. Since those days, early 80’s, I have never being //disconnected// from them. For this reason, I studied engineering in computer systems and masters in information technologies that allowed me to get experience in diverse areas such as geographic information systems, database management systems and networking. In most of specialized jobs that I had, I barely interacted with people. Reflecting in how I had being utilizing my knowledge and experience, I decided to switch my activity to the most rewarding field: education. **Position Goals **  In the professional life, my goal is to produce some material that could help students to succeed academically. There are some steps that I need to complete in order to pursue my goals. My vision is to promote access to technology to all students of my district, regardless of the economic household income. With my new role of administrator, I think that my voice is louder to advocate for this children to be aware of the technology since early childhood. Being in the position as technology director would allow me to research, promote and propose the cutting edge tools applied to the education and give access to all students in my district. **Leadership Goals **  In my position as educational technology leader, I would like my district to be recognized for the community as a good center of education where students could meet all the educational needs to succeed in middle school. I recognize in every student as a future lawyer, doctor, educator and even one possible president of the United States. To accomplish this dream we need to motivate our student to learn and to create the same opportunities that other schools with more resources provide. Technology is a mean to optimize resources both students and teachers. In my district, that has more than 90% of students economically disadvantaged and knowing that this is a factor that determines the academic performance and the existence of technology gap between our population and the rest of the students that has access to technology (Barry, 2005).

 I understand the social background or most the students and the need of attend this population that does not have equal opportunities for the lack of support of their parent caused for the language barrier, in addition to their economic position. After finishing my program and holding my credentials as principal I will be able to negotiate better with all stakeholders and probably could have a higher position in the administration in order to allocate the resources that our students need. **Vision of Educational Technology **  The Horizon Report: 2011 K-12 Edition, allows me to have a more documented vision of the educational technology, because it examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative expression within the environment applicable to our schools, since I work a district that has EC-8. Even though, this report suggests the latest technology applied to schools, it could not be applied extensively worldwide, because there are some countries that spend small amounts or their budget in education, or others developing countries that cannot afford the state of the art devices and applications in their classrooms. However, the abundance of recourses throughout the use of internet opens a window of possibilities that we could explore, in order to make more accessible to all students.

 One important aspect is that digital literacy is less about tools or applications and more about thinking. We are in the same situation when the Television started to be accessible to the world: people believed that another <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Renaissance would take place all around Earth, illiteracy would be extinguished and music, history and science would be available in every household. <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Now, that cloud computing and the use of mobiles is a trend to be extensively used within the next 12 months, educators has the dilemma if this personal devices that are almost always connected to internet are going to be allowed on campuses. Indeed, some districts consider them distracters and are prohibited in schools. Leaders should promote them for being able to create ubiquitous environments to access valuable information to promote productivity and learning and discourage the abuse of social networking.

<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;"> The vision of educational technology in a term of two to three years is the use of games in the classrooms. In my opinion, gaming approach is one best ways to introduce the use of technology, especially to early childhood students but is not limited to introduce content for PK-8 students whose ages range from 4 to 13 years old. The open content is another concept that must be evaluated for schools to share resources and curricula. Even though, many organizations open their contents to be used for others, this trend should be more remarkable in the next two years in order to create the profound shift in the way students study and learn and make the knowledge more accessible to schools with small budgets. The content should be translated to other languages. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Within a period of four to five years learning analytics and personal learning environments could be used in the classroom; however we know that technology changes every day. With the use of learning analytics, teachers could adequate the lessons, activities, homework and assessment to practically all the students according to their individual needs. It could be beneficial to enhance differentiated instruction in the classrooms. Theoretically, this approach will address the specific student needs but the role of the teacher must be revised to be more a facilitator of these resources to guide the students how to navigate in this ocean of information. The personal learning environment will allow teachers to engage students more actively in order to meet the class expectations, and students will explore ways that best suit their individual learning needs. However, it suggests better teaching supervision or a good design on the learning environment in order to prevent students to divagate or get lost. As technology leaders and educators, it constitutes a good opportunity to contribute in creating better educational resources.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;"> I have learned that I have capabilities for being administrator. After several reflections during the program, I described myself using the words tenacious, persistent, cooperative, smart, honest, likes to learn; I can add some trait such more related to the leadership role. Visionary and guide are some adjectives that can help to describe me that were absent when I started my program.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Some of my skills that I noticed are my capability to work properly in the evaluation of students, personnel, and program performance. I have been conducting a series of research on the personnel background in order to meet our commitment to have highly qualified teachers. Schools must make sure that they have the credentials they are supposed to earn to occupy each position, and the experience. For those who don’t meet the criteria are encouraged to make and pass the necessary tests. Teachers who did not perform well, based on the Professional Development and Appraisal System (PDAS) were positioned as Teachers In Need of Assistance (TINA) and they must attend some training and they must show some improvement throughout the next school year. Administration has been going it this is for the sake of the quality in the education that students receive in our classrooms.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;"> I develop my leadership skills, while I monitored third grade teachers. I evaluated teachers’ performance and made some notes during observations and walkthroughs. I conducted evaluations in the students’ performance that were utilized by teachers, administrators and the students themselves leading to support some decisions that we made.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;"> Some attitude that I think that I have reinforces is related to my self-esteem. Starting my professional carrier as teacher and growing through the administration staff in short term, put me in a position where I need to supervise people with more years in the school and inevitably, we have a different relationship that was not easy to admit the first day in my administrative position.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Barry, J. (2005). The Effect of Socio-economic Status on Academic Achievement. Wichita State University. Retrieved from http://soar.wichita.edu/dspace <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">/bitstream/handle/10057/616/Barry_Jennifer.pdf?sequence=1
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