One Less Thing to Worry About

Trust the Process

The process of creating a technology plan proposal has been interesting to say the least. When first beginning the journey, I really struggled to focus on one problem within education since there is a plethora of them. I decided on student data tracking because, it is a part of education that you are just expected to know what and how to do. I always see my colleagues using the data in order to plan almost every single lesson which is something that I struggled to do in my first year of teaching. I knew that student data was important, but what to do when there is so much of it seemed impossible to process and manage. As I continued to work on the technological plan, I found myself becoming more invested and interested in my idea. I always believed that I was the only one struggling to keep track of student data since I am a fairly new teacher, but through this experience I was able to learn that I was wrong all along. First, I was able to gather research that would support my technological idea since there have been many studies on the amounts of standardized testing in the United States. Assessments start to be a headache especially when there are multiple different assessments that you are asked to administer. This does not even include the assessments that you create for lessons. It also does not help having a large amount of students in your classroom since that is another number that just continues to increase. My technological tool ended up being the best solution for resolving problems that not many talk about rather it is just taken in as a noramlity. 

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Challenges

The first challenge was actually deciding which problem I wanted to focus on. When reflecting, I decided to choose a problem that I really struggle with which is keeping track of student data. The second challenge was trying to slim down my technological plan idea since originally I wanted to track all subjects for student data. This in itself became overwhelming since there are so many assessments for each subject, so to combine it all seemed to be more stressful than helpful. The third challenge was trying to understand how to use feedback provided by the professor in order to improve my technology plan proposal. I found myself regretting the plan altogether since it seemed to complicated. As a result, I decided to discuss my techonological tool plan with my colleagues prior to peer feedback when feeling absolutely lost. My fifth grade team is extremely supportive, so any opportunity that I could use clarification or advice I turn to them. Overall, I am glad to have gone through these challenges because it only improved the quality of my technology tool. 

Potential 

I am excited about my tool because I believe that it has the potential to help teachers around the world. Through the peer review of my tool, I was able to learn that I am not the only teacher that is overwhelmed or occasionally clueless on how to use and track student data. It can be extremely stressful to keep track of the data itself let alone use it for instruction. A resource that is able to do that for you is truly a dream come true. This is why I think my technological tool has potential because it is an aspect of education that is not supported. My tool also has the ability to bring communities together in order to help all students by setting individual goals as well as creating continous involvement from teachers, students, and parents. By allowing these types of partnerships to take place, students are able to be supported in ways that were not possible before. 

Aspects

There have been way more positives aspects than negative aspects during this journey. The first positive aspect was being able to think about ways to improve educational problems that seem to be overstepped by many. I loved being able to take control of deciding which problem I wanted to focus on. I find it extremely beneficial to be able to take parts of my career and turn it into something special through education. It is satisifying to combine my educational career with my actual career. The second positive aspect was being able to receive multiple pieces of feedback to better my tool. It would have been difficult to improve my tool without the experience of my colleagues. They were able to suggest ideas that I never even considered when creating my technological tool. I appreciated knowing that my team has my back in all areas of my life including with continuing my education. The third positive aspect was stepping away from traditional assignments, and actually being able to create something that could benefit teachers anywhere in the world. The negative aspects would be any of the challenges that I went through. However, I am grateful for them since it is another factor that helped me strengthen my technological tool. 

Thoughts on Technology Specialist Roles

I can now say that I understand the complex role of a Technology Specialist. I assumed that a Technology Specialist was going to be an individual that is learning how tools work as well as teaching others. I never thought that this role would include thinking through different problems that are present in education. The different steps that were included for the Prosposal Process definitely showed their own power. Each step made me think of how important my tool was, and how I could alter it to fit the needs of teachers no matter what grade or where they teach. I felt that each step was a reflection, so it helped to use prior steps to build onto the next. It seemed like I was creating something hands on which was a completely different experience than what I assumed a Technology Specialist does.