Design & Technology
"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." ― Steve Jobs
Introduction
This is my first course, (ETEC-524) in the Educational Technology - Leadership Master's Program at Texas A&M University-Commerce and I in this course, I have created a Blog of technology playtesting, which you can view below. Up until this course, my only experience with Blogs is reviewing them for information, hobbies, and interests that I have. Exploring this technology tools available to use when I created this Blog, I found that there are many technology applications, sites, web applications and other resources available. I learned throughout this project that this resource would be a great resource to use as an educator moving forward when facilitating classes. I was able to familiarize myself with the Google Sites application that I chose to create my Blog as well as additional posts through additional assignments. This was a great learning experience learning about, how-to create, use, and maintain a Blog, and I look forward to adding additional Blog posts to this course's initial three. Furthermore, the first Blog assignment for me didn't go so well, so I may decide to go back and correct and clean up on the mistakes that I learned from with my first Blog. The majority of my work in academia up until now, has been of that as a supportive role with students, faculty, and other colleagues. Although, I have previously taught high school chemistry dual credit courses in early academic work. The following sample collection of training, tutoring, and course materials that I designed and created throughout the years are resources that I developed as a direct result in observing the need for these such resources in courses I have taken, as well as returning and reflecting upon academic course work students and fellow colleagues that I have worked with who were then able to use them to facilitate trainings, workshops, and courses using these technology resources that I designed, created, and distributed to others as needed throughout the learning processes throughout various jobs I have done within Dallas College (formerly, Dallas County Community College District with seven campuses) during my years of service up until now. I look forward to learning about newer technologies in this graduate program that I am in at TAMUC so that I can improve on my knowledge, skills, and technology resources to use as an educator in the future.
Reflection
Today, two years postmortem from my first course back to graduate school, this has been meaningful and fun for me to continue my learning journey and not give up! When I reflect on the first course of introduction to educational technology at TAMUC, there have been many revelations in the process and journey of learning for all individuals, which is great for me to know as I genuinely do not want others to have the initial primary learning experiences that I had. It warms my heart to learn that educational technology and current research on critical issues, trends, diffusion, and adoption of technology and history and theoretical foundations of the field of teaching and learning have had a complete overhaul from the initial academic experiences I had that were painfully meaningful, but not fruitful. Thankfully, this most recent lifelong learning journey for me has been positively meaningful, fun, challenging, and encourages me to continue this journey of learning in my life.