Lindsay Achtman
Teacher. Leader. Lifelong Learner
Annotated Transcript
Master's of Educational Technology
TE 801- Professional Roles and Teaching Practice I
Instructor: Faith Evans
I completed this course during the fall of my year-long student-teaching internship. Throughout the course, I reflected, evaluated, and revamped my teaching. Course readings and discussions helped me take a deeper look at classroom management techniques and ways to engage learners in mathematics. My class became known as my "Focus Class" to try new instructional tools and reflect on student learning. I was astounded at the progress I made as a new teacher in such a short period of time.
TE 802- Reflection and Inquiry Teaching Practice I
Instructor: Zoa Bonofiglio
This course was also completed during the fall semester of my year-long student-teaching internship. This class helped me learn about teaching all academic subjects through literacy. Zoa helped us view literacy as the foundation for all other subjects. This course focused on the language we use in our classroom and the language experiences our students have in school. Zoa urged us to think about how our students are learning language through talking, reading, listening, writing and viewing, how our students learn about language by exploring how language functions and the various conventions we use to communicate and how our students can use language as a tool for learning. Zoa addressed the importance of creating a balanced literacy classroom.
Fall 2012
Spring 2013
Spring 2013
TE 803- Professional Roles and Teaching Practice II
Instructor: Cheryl Krohn
During this course I studied six major areas. One focus area was learning how to teach Social Studies to my students. A second focus area was integrating Social Studies into my curriculum. I created an entire unit using the Common Core Standards. A third focus area was on my professional and ethical responsibilities as a teacher. A fourth focus area was how to accommodate special needs in my classroom. It was eye opening to study each type of need and how I could best accommodate or modify my curriculum so that my students can reach success. A fifth focus was creating a lesson study. The final focus area was reflecting on my teaching.
TE 804- Reflection and Inquiry Teaching Practice II
Instructor: Andrea Varricchione
This course targeted practices for teaching science in elementary classrooms. A focus of the course was using standards-based practices while planning, teaching and assessing. One goal of this course was to help teachers plan and teach effective science units. I formed inclusive science learning communities with my colleagues. As educators, we were also taught to look at and inquire into our own science teaching practices.
Summer 2015
CEP 811- Adapting Innovative Technology to Education
Instructor: Bill Marsland
This course enlightened me to the innovative possibilities that come with mixing the Maker Movement with education. The Maker Movement encourages the remix of passed objects and concepts to invent new ideas. When students are allowed to create and break the conventions, they are learning to collaborate and think in higher ways. In order to not squash the creativity of my students, I need to be careful on how I assess them. I accomplished this by engaging my students in solving real world problems and asking questions that have more than one correct answer.
CEP 812: Apply Educational Technology to Practice
Instructor: Bill Marsland
In this intellectual course, we focused on Thomas Friedman's Passion Quotient (P.Q) versus Curiosity Quotient (C.Q). He says individuals with more P.Q and C.Q to leverage all the new digital tools to invent or reinvent jobs will be the most successful. I learned that it is important for both my teaching career and for my students' future. If I am going to continue to be an effective teacher, I need to continue learning about the new technologies that develop and how to use it to help my students succeed. If my students are going to get a job in the 21st Century Working World, they need to be able to grow creatively to introduce new effective solutions to old problems.
Summer 2015
Summer 2016
CEP 800- Learning School and Other Settings
Instructor: Diana Campbell
In this course, I learned what learning is, how habits are formed, and how learning occurs. When we intake new information from our surroundings we use our schema to help us organize and interpret the new information. From the time we are very young, this new information may come from imitation and observation met in social situations. With lots of practice of a single action, that action becomes a habit. Some habits are good and some require time to change. I even learned to break my unhealthy habit of snacking on junk food and to replace it with healthier alternatives such as exercise.
CEP 810: Teaching Understanding With Technology
Instructor: Emily Stone and Ronald Houtman
The definition of learning has been evolving with a number of theories and methodologies formed by psychologists. While learning is the act of knowing that leads to acquiring knowledge and applying learned skills to real life situations, learning with understanding is a product of effective teaching approaches that utilize students’ prior knowledge and metacognitive needs. Novice and expert learners approach learning in different ways. As instructors, it is important for us to determine what type of learner our students are and how we can best utilize technology to reach them. In this course, I got to blog my experience as a novice learner while I only used online help forums and Youtube Videos to develop my cooking skills.
CEP 815- Technology and Leadership
Instructor: Benjamin Gleason
In this course, I learned about leadership. There are different types of leaders. There is the diplomat, expert, alchemist, individualist, strategist, achiever, and opportunist. When considering what type of technology leader we will be someday, you must recognize what type of leader you are and how effective that style is. In addition I learned how TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) comes together to impact our lesson plans and how to use it to plan a professional development. During the entire course, I shifted my thinking from considering how I can implement technology to the student outcomes I wish to achieve and how I can best use technology to reach that outcome. This helped me form my vision statement.
CEP 822- Approaches to Educational Research
Instructor: Yining Zhang and Ming Lei
In this course, I learned how to conduct, analyze, and utilize research on a topic of our choice. ProQuest through the Michigan State University library was a vital tool in my research. In order for an article to be considered viable, it must be peer reviewed, free from bias, and a have high impact score. Microsoft Excel helps to calculate the Standard Deviation and mean scores using the data gathered by the researcher. All of these tools allowed me to write my own research paper on reading strategies and recognize the importance of educational research.