​​​​Denise Ann Keil

      Twenty-odd years ago I chose a path that I had never intended to follow, I graduated high school and went off to Central Michigan University to become a teacher.  Conversely, during my first year at CMU, I met and fell in love choosing to put my education on the back burner while I began a family.  Fast forward almost ten years, I found myself in Detroit working in a steel mill, idly bidding my time to continue my education.  While my children were now in school full-time, I found myself in a very unrewarding profession.  I admit that the experiences I received working in a large foundry were awe inspiring, but between swing shift and motherhood, it was not easy.  Another man entered my life about the same time, he could not understand why I would not pursue the education I had initially set out to achieve those ten years earlier.  He encouraged me to go back to school and become the teacher I had always wanted to become.  It was with his encouragement and support that I began the journey to change my life and pursue my dreams.

 

     As an adolescent, I had a teacher that would tell me, “If the educational foundation was in place no one could ever take it away from me.  It was my job to continue to build upon that foundation in whatever direction I wanted to pursue.”  With two children in elementary school, I went back to college and restarted my educational journey along with them.  About the same time, I decided to quit my job and pursue studies full time to become the teacher I always knew I would be.  I can remember as a young child gathering the neighborhood children together, lining stacks of handouts I received from teachers at the end of the school year on my parent’s picnic table, and playing school during the summer.  I was lucky that I had a group of friends a little younger than I was and I found myself leading many activities such as playing Kick the Can and Red Rover, Red Rover.  Playing school came natural to me and it was just another activity to spend on a warm summer day in the neighborhood. 

 

     Upon returning to school those many years later I held onto that memory, I worked hard during those early years, telling myself that I was the only one to blame if I lost my 4.0 and promised myself that I would give it my all to get the most out of this opportunity.  I love learning and my new husband quickly found himself rearranging his schedule to support my schedule of classes.  We laughed about the not so orthodox way I had pursued to fulfill my dreams, but I kept focused and became a role model for my own children, sitting next to them every night doing our homework and sharing conversations of schoolwork.  Looking back, if I had stayed at the steel mill I probably would have never had the opportunity to experience their achievements as much as I have had over the years.  I truly believe this journey began with taking those first steps toward achieving my bachelor’s degree from Ferris State University with endorsements in English Language Arts and Social Studies.

 

     I began my teaching career and loved every day no matter how demanding.  My worst day

in the classroom did not compare with even my best day in the steel mill.  I loved teaching and

embraced my profession with 100% dedication to my students.  I strove to find the resources

to reach every one of them based on their learning styles.  At the same time, I worked within

my district to build blended learning environments designed in a systematic layout of skills

our students would need coming into the 21st century.  During the early 2000's, I encountered

some teachers resisting the integration of technology within the classroom for a number of

reasons I could never understand.  I later learned in a number of the courses taken at MSU, this

is still a valid concern among faculty and the performance levels that their students have

when students get to the universities for the first time. 

 

     

     Attending the 2009 MACUL conference, I met and talked with the advisors from MSU about their programs and the online structure of the courses.  I worried that the technology I was using would not be updated enough to participate within such an environment causing me a barrier to participation.  They assured me that the resources I had access to would be adequate.  I still was not committed to returning to school at that time and went in a different direction by joining fellow teachers unpack and build the district’s curriculum, aligning it with, at the time, the “upcoming” Common Core State Standards (CCSS).  During these early meetings, I thought about how we could build assessments using technology similar to what the CCSS guidelines suggested.  I sought out a number of conference opportunities searching for an answer to this goal.  At the beginning, I was more interested in the curriculum side of instruction than the technology side.  After three years of researching master’s programs I could afford or had an interest in educationally, I realized that I wanted to pursue a degree program I felt the most knowledgeable about during my life and I felt myself leaning toward MSU’s technology program.  I knew that a master’s degree would help to move my view of teaching with technology and would have a substantial influence on the skills I had already acquired during my undergrad studies and work at the district level.  As I have mentioned, I have always held a thirst for learning and I viewed this as the next passage.  I missed the knowledge I acquired because of attending classes and the dialog I engaged in with my peers.  While holding down both full time and part time teaching positions, while also attending graduate school, I embraced my learning to see what more I could accomplish as an instructional coach, learner and an online instructor.  I could not wait to learn new methods, strategies, and best practices to enhance my pedagogy.  Participating in an online program was an un-easy choice as I have witnessed students struggle with online content and thought I would have similar issues.  I have always been a self-directed learner, but I also worried I would not stay organized and lose motivation with all of my responsibilities.  I could not be further from the truth.  I successfully integrated my pedagogy with new skills and supports learned about in the course work associated with the MAET degree.  In hindsight, I could not have found the supports I received from Michigan State University in the private sector.  By attending conferences, I realized I only skimmed the material; on the other hand, the courses taken for the MAET program allowed me to dig deep and connect the pieces of educational background I have now come to know as the Technology, Pedagogy, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework.

 

     I enjoyed the master’s curriculum it allowed students to focus on areas where they wanted to pursue further depth into specific areas.  I chose to build upon the strengths I had during my work as a curriculum writer.  I knew the content and understood the pedagogy of a social constructivist classroom, which I have endorsed since I began teaching and found the TPACK framework fascinating.  Technology working simultaneously with content knowledge and our pedagogy addressed the same issues that I had witnessed teachers use to discredit technology integration within the classroom.

 

     My favorite course in the MAET program was (CEP 820) Teaching Students Online .  The purpose of this course was to learn how to build educationally structured resources to assist students using the internet.  Online learning has always been of interest to me since my part time teaching position is fully online.  My perspective has changed and I have learned so much as a teacher and a student, about online learning through pursuing my master’s degree completely online.  I now had the chance to learn about online learning from an educator’s perspective.  The main goal of this course was to create an online environment.  The new learning that took place for this course involved developing an online course module using a new course management system (CMS).  During my work for the district, I used Moodle to create online courses and I choose a completely different management system to broaden my knowledge of the systems available for educators.  For this task, I choose to create my online course using Weebly, which teaches high school students about Free Speech in America and our rights to assemble peacefully.  As students make their way through the webquest, they work on various interactive activities that allow them to experience mainstream arguments.  My course provided students with meaningful and engaging lessons, asynchronous communication with peers, and multiple forms of assessment.  Asynchronous communication methods now embed all of my online course work addressing the missing connection to assist students with poor attendance and/or students faced with adverse learning conditions.  I feel that I now can include every student within the dialogue of the classroom without physically having to be present.  During the creation of my course site, I also had to document my advancement and considerations in a developer’s notebook, which served as a guide aiding my thinking for my course from inception to completion.  CEP 820 gave me the necessary skills and tools I was missing to encourage participation and facilitation of my online courses by embedding the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) concepts.  These assistive features are a driving force when planning lessons with teachers and developing my own professional development presentations.  I feel not only students benefit from such instruction, but also educators can expand their knowledge and continue the dialogue well after the presentation.

 

     In the summer of 2014, I began one of the many courses, which I found to be exceptionally useful as a classroom teacher (TE 846) Accommodating Differences in Literacy Learners.  In this course, I learned about the dynamics that impact literacy through instruction, including evolving methods and assessment approaches that support instruction.  I also learned a variety of ways to differentiate instruction to support all children, no matter their learning capacity.  As a continuing certification requirement in the State of Michigan, teachers need to fulfill the reading literacy component of the statute and this course did just that through an intensive exploration of research based strategies and case studies.  The course explored numerous literacy strategies enhancing the underlying premise of how technology can enhance these strategies.  Dr. Zhang encouraged students to explore the reading and writing assessments that we have come to rely on in the school system for student progression of meeting the standards.  These types of comparisons between what students need to know and what students do know became the basis of my own case study.  I asked the question during the course, what type of strategies would be most appropriate to help aid students in gaining reading growth on standardized tests such as the ACT and AP assessments, which ultimately became my focus for a Literacy Case Study.  This study became the driving force behind initiatives that I am currently supporting at my building this upcoming year.  I look forward to adding additional information to this study over the years and see if I can document continuous growth of individual students.  As I begin my search for a Ph.D. program this case study would be a valuable reference from early in my career.

 

     Another course that had a significant impact on my leadership abilities was (CEP 815) Technology and Leadership .  This course was very enlightening and really made me step back from my role as a teacher and look at my role as a leader.  This was challenging to do, but it helped me to expand my view of schools; moreover, how administrators work through issues at the district level.  It was interesting to learn how an administrator might approach technology purchases and what factors they need to consider when rolling out a technology initiative or requesting a purchase order technology for the district.  In CEP 815, I also learned about multiple leadership styles and the characteristics that represent each type.  This helped me to envision and refine what type of leader I want to become.  Due to this course, I have a better idea of what type of careers I could have in educational technology and broadened my interest into what type of career I might have in the future.  A major project I completed during this course was to think about a problem of practice within my school district and create a reasonable answer using technology.  This particular project opened up my eyes to everything that is involved when trying to develop a technology initiative or bring in new technology at a school-wide or district level.  As I progressed through the MAET program, new responsibilities and leadership opportunities became available to me on a professional level and I dove into this course expecting to take what I was learning and immediately apply it.  Mr. Rosenberg and Mr. Rapa encouraged students to commit to our visions for technology acquisition or support of resources in a formal research based method.  I continually update that original vision I set forth in this course, but it gave me the basis to support the path I see education is taking integrating technology.  Moreover, the poster I created of this original vision will always be a reminder of these initial queries into my commitment and dedication to further this type of educational technology and the capability to broaden my professional opportunities.

 

     As the finale to my career in the MAET program, I participated in the (CEP 807) Proseminar in Educational Technology .  This course encouraged me to review my efforts throughout the online master’s program in a set of reflective projects.  I have always been interested in technology and have found learning new techniques to be relatively easy.  Not only has the Capstone Course guided me to create an online portfolio, which demonstrates who I am as a learner and an instructor, it has helped me to synthesize my education to date.  I have become a better teacher and leader because of the focused work the program had me complete. 

 

     As my master’s program ends, I realize now the journey I have undertaken over the past two years has given me the ability to reach students in ways that I had never thought of from podcasting within the classroom to creating audio clips to aid second language learners.  Education begins when teachers directly assess a student’s needs and attempts to reach this learning expectation by utilizing technology, and if need be, repurpose the technology to aid the learning for the student.  I am excited about the possibilities that educational technology holds for students.  I believe everyone should have the ability to obtain education equitability across America and I think that Open Educational Resources has this ability.  It inspires me to continue to follow the journey I began more than twenty years ago through the many updates technology has taken over the years and the courses I pursued during my program .  The educational technology program offered a number of pursuits, but I would never have opened the social networking that the internet has offered to teachers as much as I have to this point in my career. 

 

As I sit here and reflect, I hear of the History channel offering courses in history free or for credit reinforcing the nature that the resources available for all students should be freely accessible for the joy of learning not just for the necessity of a career.  However, we live in a world where education opens the doors to the world where education is highly valued, building a solid community of learners to continue to further the collective knowledge base that will aid in the world working together to solve real world issues.  Educational technology has the ability to level the playing field for students in need of scaffolding or instructional supports not just for a few, but also for all learners.  The opening sequence of courses culminating in a Technology Certificate opened the closed doors I had resisted participating in prior to enrolling in courses at MSU.  I was socially avoiding this world.  I thought putting too much information on the web was screaming “Big Brother” and I managed to keep my personal network away from my internet network.  I am happy to say that the MAET program turned a pessimist into an optimist and I celebrate the new foundational level I have to continue to build upon as a learner.