I am
from Taiwan, and was a middle school chinese teacher for 5 years. After I was
graduate from college and soon began my 1-year internship as a student teacher
and learn how to teach chinese to 7-9 grades student, it was the time that
Taiwan government begin to promote technology integration in k-12 classroom. So
I can say that I am the first wave of student teachers who experience this educational reform.
I can totally understand what are the barriers that hinder teachers to use
technology in their practices. I was very lucky, in my student-teaching year, I
have enough time to learn and use the computers that are newly installed in my
school. As you may understand that most in-service teachers may mot have such
sufficient time to learn new technologies that never happened in their first
half of life. Their time for teaching is pretty full.
But
the so-called “technology” at that time, was allowing every teacher have their
own laptop. They need to learn some basic applications such as word, excel,
powerpoint and how to connect to the internet…etc. The fanciest “technique” to
use in the classroom, is compile your teaching material in powerpoint slides,
and connect your laptop to the projector, and then teach students with
powerpoint presentation, which is nothing different from we are doing a
presentation in the conference. Even with these techniques we think is very
simple today, some teachers still are reluctant to use technology. Because you
never know what will happen to your computer next when you are teaching.
Sometimes your computer doesn’t work, your projector doesn’t work, your speaker
doesn’t work. And all of these problems may make your teaching process more
complicated. When you are trying to fix the problem, students are waiting for
you.
So
that’s the main reason I came here and study learning technologies, because I
can understand the importance of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge.
When I finish my M. Ed and when back to work in the same school, I found that
the problems in Taiwan are still the same. And I found out these problems are
very similar to the problems in USA. Those barriers, I will say, includes,
time, facility, support, culture that put too much emphasis on high stake tests
are exactly the same. So that pushes me to continue pursuing PhD and understand
how technology integration will happen in classroom.
Recently, the idea of “learning designer” intrigues me. In contrast of
the traditional term “instructional designer” that the field used to adopt, the
role of learning designer implied adopting the approach of learner-centered
instruction and designing the learning environment that facilitate learners’ learning.
The term also brought up the discussion that if learning experiences can be
designed. As an advocate of constructivist learning theories, I believe that we
are not designing learner’s learning experiences; instead, we are designing for their experiences. Learners have
their potential to construct their own knowledge through their learning
experience and negotiate the constructive meanings through social interaction.
Based on Vygotsky’s theory of scaffolding (although he never used this term), teachers’
roles are not only instructors that “deliver” the content, but also facilitate
learner’s learning by providing more support when the learning begin and
gradually decreasing the support to fit learners’ potential level of
performances. All teachers should be able to become student’s learning
designer. My passion is not only become a learning designer to facilitate my
own students, but also want to assist teachers to become learning designers for
their students. With more and more affordances provided by modern technology,
today’s teachers become more and more capable and comfortable to use technology
in their daily life. However, the knowledge of technology doesn’t equal the
knowledge of integrating technology into their classroom practices. Teachers’ technological
pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) serves as a key to assist and transform
students’ learning through technology. I’m interested in how teachers develop
and construct their TPACK in their teacher preparation process, as well as how
their knowledge grows as a in-service teacher in their professional
development.
After
I finish my PhD, I want to be a researcher that is focus on teacher education.
I have taught some undergraduate courses in the U, and some of my students are
planning to become k-12 teachers in the future. I like to work with these pre-service
teachers. I want to explore some potential technology tools that can actually
been used in their classroom. I would like to work with them to help them
design content specific curriculum with technology. Also, I want to link these
knowledge to their pedagogy in their specific content areas. In addition, I
want to assist K-12 schools to develop their technology integration plan, and
help these in-service teachers for their professional development. I want to
let them understand that teaching is a form of learning as well, just as I am
learning from them when I’m teaching them. I want to help them know that
learning is a lifelong journey and never stop, especially with technology,
which always progresses so fast beyond our imagination. If I got a chance, I would like to be a
researcher and instructor in the university with teacher education program.
