1. Personal Growth Plan
Lisa Chizek CEP 810
Using technology to make a difference in education
There are many areas concerning technology that I am hoping to make a difference in as
an educator throughout my time and experiences in CEP 810. If used effectively,
technology has great potential to influence, guide and facilitate learners on their journey
through school and knowledge building. In a general sense, my goals are simply to
understand technology more richly so that I can better implement technology to enhance
student learning. I have recently been introducing social software technology into my
writing classes to support constructivist pedagogies and facilitate a community of writers
beyond the limits of a physical classroom. My experiences have proven to be successful
not only in capturing students attention but in learning new ways to publish, present and
build knowledge through writing with technology. I hope to grow more in this area of
focus and to garner a greater knowledge of how to use the technology tools available to
me to continue to support my student writers in an engaging and exciting way. For many
of my students, working with technologies to publish their writing (such as blogs and
wikis) has motivated and stimulated them to think more deeply about their actions and
audience. I do believe that the world of writing has benefited greatly from new
technologies and will continue to do so in the future. It is my hope that I can extend some
of these exciting opportunities to my students to not only prepare them for the digital
world we now live in, but to help build fundamental writing skills necessary for all
avenues of life.
Increasing your skill in using technology
For many years I believed I was not technology efficient. Technology was a scary word
that I proclaimed I knew nothing about. But as time passed and the world around me
changed, I found myself using the very technologies I once claimed were impossible to
conquer. Although I now have a certain level of comfort with technology and can claim
myself technology literate, I still harbor many doubts about how to effectively and
accurately use technology with specific purposes in mind. There continue to be moments
of apprehension, confusion and fear with the integration of new technologies, but my
ultimate goal is to overcome those terrors as I have in the past. I want to continue to put
myself out there, to learn new technologies, and continue to contemplate how
technologies can best ignite growth in students and also in myself. Specifically, I want to
become more comfortable using social software tools because I have found them to
already be extremely beneficial to my writing students. Additionally, my goals are to
become proficient using Microsoft Excel and to learn how to increase my knowledge of
programs I already use regularly, such as Microsoft Word. The most important goal I
have for myself for not only this class but for all future endeavors with technology is to
keep an open mind, face the challenges with a smile and learn from the mistakes and
errors that undoubtedly occur anytime you try something new.