January 22nd, 2017
I think I’m finally starting to find a foothold in this program. I’m not going to lie, though I’ve had success through the first three classes of my graduate degree I felt as though I was kind of just treading water. It would be most appropriate to declare that if one were to watch from the outside I might have resembled a jellyfish. I was definitely afloat but lacked real purpose or direction. That’s not to say I wasn’t learning. I was learning many new things and most definitely being challenged. HTML! CSS! Both of them instigated a barrage of tears and a year’s worth of mumbled curse words. But, I was learning. I was out of my comfort zone. I was being challenged. And the best realization of all during this time of trial, I loved it!
Now I find myself only one class away from being removed from provisional acceptance (darn those bad decisions in my early twenties during my undergrad) and things are starting to click. I’m now realizing that I don’t have to know EVERYTHING there is about technology to be successful in this program. I’m here to become educated in this matter, of course, but in doing so I’m finally beginning to understand that it is acceptable to accept the fact that technology shifts and changes so quickly we will never be able to know it all. What we will know however, is how to find useful products. How to integrate technology in the most positive and productive way for our students and how to lead others in their quest of doing the same. Thus, at this moment I declare I’m no longer a jellyfish in the sea of Educational Technology. I am now evolving into a shark. A shark that can smell one drop of blood in an Olympic sized swimming pool to zero in on their target. My target is a well rounded a well developed understanding of technology integration. In pursing this target I will not feel inadequate for not knowing it all but instead rely on my instincts and skill, just as a shark does, to declare what I do know and to find the answers of the things I do not know.
Becky Bridgewater EDTECH learning log 