Running head: GROWTH ASSESSMENT 1

My Journey to Obtain an M.A. of Ed. in Learning & Technology

A Personal and Professional Growth Assessment

Patti A. Raeburn

Azusa Pacific University, EDUC 526 Capstone Experience

GROWTH ASSESSMENT 2

My Journey to Obtain an M.A. of Ed. in Learning & Technology

A Personal and Professional Growth Assessment

I was 47, and a stay-at-home-mom, when I decided to pursue my second career as a

school teacher. Having left Corporate America eight years earlier to become a stay-at-home-

mom, I began volunteering at my sons school. At the request of the school principal, I took the

CBEST test and was immediately hired as a long-term substitute teacher in a kindergarten

classroom to finish out the school year. After only three days, I knew that I wanted to spend the

rest of my adult life inside the classroom.

In the fall of 2011, I enrolled in the combined multi-subject teaching credential and M.A.

in Ed. program, but completed only the teaching credential courses and began subbing full-time

in the fall of 2012. After subbing for a year, I was hired as a temporary fourth-grade teacher and

promised a permanent position in first grade if I would commit to returning to APU to complete

my Masters degree in Educational Technology upon completion of the BTSA/Teacher Induction

program.
 GROWTH ASSESSMENT 3

History of Coursework

Multisubject Teaching Credential

Credential Course Title Professor Term Reflection
& Key Learning
TEP506 Educ. Found/Classroom Mgmt K-8 M. Riley Fall, 2011 Mary taught us many teaching strategies and also
Key Learning: Introduction to classroom and took us to visit her classroom where she
behavior management. This class also demonstrated lesson and unit planning, and
prepared me for TPA1. classroom management specifics. Very
enlightening.
TEP516 Methods: Tchg Read/Writing K-8 Dr. Ie May Lim Fall, 2011 I recall doing an author study on Mem Fox and
Key Learning: Phonemic Awareness and how completing several lesson plans which were
to teach reading and writing.. This class also profound learning experiences for me. I felt well
prepared me for the RICA prepared for the RICA as a result of this course and
passed it easily.
TEP526 Methods: Teaching Math K-8 K. Johnson Fall, 2011 Kathryn demonstrated how to keep students
Key Learning: mapping curriculum and unit engaged and improve recall of information during
planning, organization, lesson delivery lessons by turning lessons into stories and making
math fun.
TEP556 Methods: Teaching ELL K-8 M. Riley Fall, 2011 A huge part of this course was a case study in which
Key Learning: SDAIE teaching strategies and I spent a 2-week period, observing and working
lesson planning. Basic & Academic language. with an ESL student in her mainstream classroom
CELDT testing and scoring. TPA2 and during ELD pull-out lessons.
TEP566A Field Experience I K-8 Dr. E. Tresler Fall, 2011 This course involved spending time observing the
Key Learning: classroom procedures, day-to-day happenings in several different
management, planning & conducting lessons classrooms and/or work as a substitute teacher.
TEP 566B Field Experience II K-8 Dr. E.Tresler Fall, 2011 Continuation of 566A
TEP 536 Methods: Teaching Science K-8 R. Riley Spg, 2012 Rick demonstrated how to keep students engaged
Key Learning: teaching with student journals, during lessons, how to keep them accountable by
teaching science across the curriculum, using learning journals, and classroom
interactive bulletin boards. management.
TEP 546 Methods: Tchg Humanities K-8 Dr. Ie May Lim Spg, 2012 I remember planning and actually building a
Key Learning: how to design and implement a complete bulletin board on the wall in this
thematic unit, summative vs formative classroom.
assessments, TPA4
TEP 576A Clinical Practice I Master Teacher: Spg. 2012 4th grade classroom at Tovashal Elem. in Murrieta
Student Teaching K-8 L. Reed
TEP 576B Clinical Practice II Master Teacher: Spg, 2012 Kindergarten classroom at Murrieta Elementary
Student Teaching K-8 C. Reddick
TEP 586 Student Teaching Seminar K-8 K. Johnson Spg. 2012 I recall watching videos of Harry Wong and reading
Key Learning: establishing and teaching "First Days of School
classroom procedures, backwards design lesson
planning
EDUC 504 Teaching & Cultural Diversity M. Mikulics Sum, 2012 I recall discussing the misinterpretations and
Key Learnings: Deeper understanding of misunderstandings that can take place both by the
SDAIE instruction and basic vs. academic teacher and by the student, when working with
vocabulary. Addressing GATE ELL students. students from different cultures.
Interpreting SAR report.
 GROWTH ASSESSMENT
Masters in Learning & Technology
Masters in Learning & Technology
Course Title & Key Learning
EDUC511 Essentials in Learning & Tech.
Key Learnings: The benefits of integrating
technology into the classroom. LiveBinder,
Word Cloud, Symbaloo, GoogleDocs, SAMR
Model, ISTE Standards, Transparency, Digital
Natives, Netiquette
EDTC515 Emerging Trends in Techn.
Key Learning: Project based lessons, QR codes
in the classroom which was the focus of my
MARP, and the many and varied presentation
options available. Digital Citizenship, Game-
Based Learning, MOOC, Video Editing,
Powtoons, Dark Side of the Internet
EDTC517 Digital Communications
Key Learnings: The use of Google Drive/Docs
in my classroom to create gradebooks,
forms/assessments, and shared/collaborative
documents. I have gained skills and experience
with many apps that I can now apply in my
classroom. Twitter, Website Creation, Weebly,
Camtasia, Edmodo, Skype/Virtual Field Trips
EDTC527 Special Topics in Ed. Technology
Key Learnings: Multiple intelligences and how
to recognize the various strengths in my
students. The power of assistive technology
and resources already at my fingertips in smart
phones and tablets to help disabled and/or
struggling students. ShowMe, Google
Read&Write, MindMeister, Songify,
MakerMovement, iMovie
EDUC572 Advanced Ed. Psychology
Key Learnings: Qualities of Expert Teachers,
the impact of teen issues, and the value of
addressing students needs according to
Maslows Hierarchy to motivate them to
success. Gained knowledge and application of
several learning theories and differentiating
according to students learning preferences.
Humanism, Constructivism, Motivation,
Socialism, Action Projects, Classical/Operant
Conditioning
EDUC526 Capstone Experience
Key Learnings: This course is helping me to
assess and reflect upon my personal growth and
learning throughout APUs Masters in
Learning and Technology program as I build an
ePortfolio to showcase resources, artifacts, and
knowledge gained throughout the program.
4
Professor Term Reflection
K. Hernandez Fall I, 2016 Researching and writing about technology in the
classroom taught me the value of using technology
to differentiate my lessons so my students can be
successful at their level. Adaptive technology was
designed just for this purpose. Technology offers
unlimited resources to help learners of all abilities
access information and demonstrate their learning.
T. Holder Fall I, 2016 This class opened my eyes to many ways that I can
integrate technology into lessons to engage students
and to use technology for students to demonstrate
their learning at their own levels.
J. Bruzzese Fall II, 2016 In this course I learned that teaching Digital
Citizenship must be a priority, to instill a moral
compass in our students so that they can navigate
and conduct themselves appropriately as they use
these new anonymous modes of communication.
Dr J. Courduff Spr I, 2017 This course encouraged me to apply what I learned
about recognizing multiple intelligences to my
personal relationships to see others through a
different "lens." Seeing everyone with this new
perspective helps me to appreciate and celebrate the
differences in everyone rather than judging or
criticizing. I am better able to relate to my students,
co-workers, family members, friends, and
acquaintances.
Dr G. Kaiser Spr II, 2017 This course taught me the value of comparing my
preferred learning styles to my students preferred
learning styles. I was surprised to discover that my
teaching style reflects my learning style preferences
and that I need to conscientiously and deliberately
design differentiated lessons and assessments to
address the needs and learning styles of my
students.
K. Hernandez Sum, 2017
GROWTH ASSESSMENT 5

Personal Growth

Over the course of the past six years, I have experienced a tremendous amount of

personal growth. Both the credential coursework, and now the Master's coursework, have

enriched my life and have become interwoven with my simultaneous roles of mother, wife,

teacher, student and Christian. I have discovered that teaching is not only what I do, it is Who I

Am! I am so thankful to have found this path and His purpose for my life. While I have always

been a Christian, I admit that I had never really taken the time to reflect on my Spirituality, until

I began attending classes at APU.

Each week, I was deeply inspired by the incredible Christian women in my cohort who

taught me the power of prayer, and the Professors who asked me to reflect on scripture and other

spiritual readings. The integration of Christian faith into each course has served to deepen my

faith and knowledge of scripture as I integrated the Christian values and attitudes of my

instructors and classmates into my life, into the lives of my family, and into my classroom. The

Christian influence has contributed to my spiritual growth significantly and has motivated me to

instill in my students the value of living a virtuous and ethical life. My students learn this in my

classroom every day through my modeling and also through integrated lessons in ethics and

morality which serve to teach them how to belong, and how to get-along so that they may live a

successful and harmonious life. I sincerely believe that, as educators, we have a profound impact

on the lives of our students and have a moral duty to teach values that develop our students into

people who are honest, thoughtful, ethical, caring, respectful, and therefore successful in life.

Due to the online nature of the newly redesigned Masters in Educational Technology

program, I did not feel that same spiritual connection and nourishment that I had hoped for again

as I returned to APU to complete my Masters Degree this year. However, I appreciate the
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spiritual focus and reflection encouraged by the professors through some of the online class

discussion forums.

As I now write this growth assessment, I realize that I am incredibly thankful to have

been a student at APU and am so proud of my completion of this Masters program. As the only

family member to attend college on both my husbands side of the family and mine, I know my

family is extremely proud of this accomplishment as well.

In addition, I have been able set an example for my children as they watched me set goals

for myself and transform from a stay-at-home-mom into a classroom teacher with an advanced

degree. As I attended this program, they have learned the value of hard work, dedication, and

perseverance while I sat with them at the kitchen table each night completing my own homework

as they completed theirs. Besides the enriching reward of a new career path, this program has

also allowed my family to reap the benefits of dual-incomes as we have progressed from

struggling paycheck-to-paycheck to financial stability.

Professional Growth

Completing this program was a condition my Principal and I agreed to when she hired me

and would advance my classification from temporary to a permanent teaching position. I

enrolled in this program in the Fall of 2016, and true to her word, the classification on my current

employment contract reflects a permanent status. However, with the completion of each course

in this program, I have continued to experience tremendous growth as a professional educator

due to the invaluable lessons, assignments, collaboration, and access to technology offered in this

program. I am confidentially integrating technology throughout my daily lessons and my

students are far more engaged and better able to demonstrate their learning.
GROWTH ASSESSMENT 7

I am confidentially collaborating with my grade-level team and bring many of the

teaching strategies and technological tools gained from this program to our weekly PLC

meetings. I no longer depend on my curriculum to provide scripted lessons for me to follow, but

instead apply what I have learned in this program to plan meaningful lessons with technology

integrated throughout, to address the many needs and learning styles of my diverse group of

students.

EDUC 511 set the tone for the program and served to establish a foundation on which to

build my new, knowledge and skills. I learned the importance of engaging my 21st century

digital native students with relevant and authentic learning that prepares them for the careers of

tomorrow. This course also provided much needed organizational strategies and tools to ensure

that I can easily access all that I have learned and will continue to learn.

In EDTC517 I learned valuable Google Drive, Google Forms, and Google Docs skills

that I use on a consistent basis. I also learned screencasting and how to make an interactive

website for my students and their parents to navigate. I learned about Skype in the classroom and

actually set up a virtual field trip for my entire grade level on the giant screen in our multi-

purpose room this school year.

In EDTC527 I learned how to integrate a huge variety of technology and applications into

my lessons and design a unit plan to engage students with differentiated instruction. And

EDUC572 deepened my learning about learning preferences and taught me how to assess and

plan lessons designed to address my students individual learning preferences This course also

taught me the value of meeting my students needs according to Maslows Hierarchy in order to

motivate them to a higher level of learning. According to Maslow model, students must be

adequately sheltered and fed, have adequate love and attention, and feel secure within my
GROWTH ASSESSMENT 8

classroom community before they can learn effectively (Chapman, 1995-2014). In EDUC 572, I

refined and carried out the unit plan that I developed in EDTC527, observed behaviors, assessed

student learning and reflected on what made some lessons successful while other lessons were

not as effective. I also learned the value of implementing several different learning approaches

into my lessons and classroom management plan to motivate my students to be successful

learners in my classroom.

Technical Growth

Going to high school in the eighties, I was witness to the birth of technology and

immediately embraced it! In my high school typing class, I learned to use one of the first hybrid

word-processing typewriters which had a very small, single-line LCD screen that allowed me to

correct errors, before printing line-by-line on paper. This skill landed me my first job as a clerk

typist where I also learned how to use teletype and facsimile machines. At home, I played on my

Commodore and then moved on to Atari, Nintendo, Sega, and PlayStation. I eventually learned

WordStar and then moved over to MSWord and its cousin, PowerPoint. When the internet

arrived in the 90's, I became a stay-at-home-mom and began earning my paychecks online. All

this is to say that my love of learning and technology has set me on natural path to earning this

degree that I have been following my entire adult life.

I went back to school in the digital-age of the 21st Century to get my teaching credential,

and naturally brought my love of technology into my classroom. Many of my lessons already

included basic PowerPoint presentations, online videos, and a few apps using my classroom iPad

before I returned to APU this year. Now, as I complete my Masters in Learning & Technology, I

have learned how to bring technology into my classroom in a huge way!

GROWTH ASSESSMENT 9

Move over, PowerPoint, thanks to EDTC515 and 517, I am now using PowToons,

iMovie, and screencasting software to make powerful and engaging tutorial videos. I can use

MindMeister, PiktoChart, Glogster and other cloudbased platforms to create amazing interactive

lessons to engage my students. I learned to create a website in EDTC517 which enables me to

create unit-specific, interactive websites to engage and inform both my students and their

parents.

Beginning next school year, my first grade classroom will have 2:1 student iPads and my

students will be using many digital applications and platforms that I discovered through

EDTC527 to both learn and demonstrate their learning. They will scan QR codes, annotate

pictures and record their learning through apps such as ShowMe, Songify, Telligami, Brushes,

Google Read&Write, GarageBand, Audioboo, Wordle, Edmodo, and yes even good-old

PowerPoint. I also learned how to use assistive technology to help struggling students and how

to limit my students' iPad activities with GuidedAccess. Some assistive technology that I learned

and now use in my classroom include SpeakIt which converts written text to audio for my

struggling readers, and VoiceRecorder to improve my students' fluency as they record themselves

reading and then listen back to themselves. They are always so motivated to improve their

recordings, and re-record themselves again and again, which is an awesome and fun way to

improve their prosody.

In EDUC572, I applied what I learned in EDTC527 to design and teach an entire 3-week

science unit to my students with technology integrated throughout every lesson. The focus was

to assess each of my students to determine their specific learning preferences according to

Gardner's Multiple Intelligences, and then design lessons using technology to address the many

different learning preferences of my students. With borrowed iPads, I was able to carry out these
GROWTH ASSESSMENT 10

lessons in my classroom and assess my students as they demonstrated their learning using a

multitude of technology resources.

Finally, I will use what I learned in EDUC511, to keep my resources organized and at my

fingertips using LiveBinder and Symbaloo. In addition, the ePortfolio that I am creating in

EDUC526 will serve as a collection of evidence and artifacts of my educational journey.

Life Long Learning Plan

As I reflect on what it means to have a lifelong learning plan, I realize that there has

never been a time in my life when I was not actively engaged in learning and enriching my life

with new skills and knowledge. The very fact that I am completing this Master's Degree

program in my 50's is testimony to my already long life of continued learning. Although my

journey through this Masters program is coming to an end, I feel like my tutelage in educational

technology is only just beginning.

Just as I strive to engage my students during my daily lessons, I hunger to be engaged in

learning every day as well. Completing this Masters program has opened my eyes to the value

and endless possibilities of infusing my classroom with technology-rich lessons to engage and

enrich myself and my students. With the ever-increasing technological advancements and

applications, the learning potential is literally endless there will always be new technology to

learn and implement.

My immediate next step is to become a Level 1 Google Certified Educator and I plan to

continue on that path to ultimately become a Google Certified Trainer so that I can share my

newfound technology passion with other educators at my school and even throughout my district,

if possible. I have already joined the ISTE Community to connect with and learn from other
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like-minded educators and I look forward to participating in any upcoming ISTE sponsored

conferences and events.

In addition to becoming Google Certified, I am looking forward to learning and

implementing more and more technology into my classroom on an ongoing basis. As a result of

the various assignments and projects in this Masters program and because my classroom will

have a 2:1 ratio of iPads in the coming school year, I have already searched out and connected

with many technological-savvy educators through blogs, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and ISTE

and look forward to learning much from their combined experiences and knowledge.

During the course of this Master's program, I researched, developed, modified, and implemented

an Earth Science Unit to use in my current first grade classroom. I planned this 3-week-long unit

with the technology and learning approaches that I learned from this Master's Program embedded

into each lesson. The idea of this unit began as a simple slide presentation assignment to satisfy

a course requirement showing how I could use Skype and some other technologies in the

classroom. Later, as I began progressing through the courses in this program, I returned to that

unit again and again and used it as an on-going project on which to apply and practice my new

skills and technology.

My learning from each of the courses in this Master's Program is integrated throughout

the entire unit, and as a whole, I believe this project now is a good representation of my growth

across Bloom's Taxonomy and Webb's Depth of Knowledge Levels as I progressed though the

courses in this program and will serve as a model that I will be basing most of the other

instructional units that I will be teaching across the curriculum.

The coming year holds a lot of new integration as well as I am planning to use an

interactive classroom website to hold digital lesson content, engage both students and parents.
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This website will contain resources used during my lessons, including links to video clips,

activity instructions, handouts, student work samples, a gallery of pictures taken in the classroom

throughout the year for students and parents to view, a blog written by me to replace my current

weekly newsletters, and more.

Conclusion

As I write this Growth Assessment, I am amazed at the growth I have experienced while

completing this Masters Program. Personally, professionally, and technically my growth is

measured and documented within this writing. My approach and methods of planning and

implementing lessons in my classroom this year as I have progressed through this program, have

changed significantly from previous years. I am comfortable with using technology in my

classroom across the curriculum to differentiate my instruction and see the value of using

technology to not only engage and enrich my students, but also as a means of assessment by

allowing students to demonstrate their learning using technology. Integrating technology

throughout my lessons allows me to address the multiple learning preferences of my students

through a variety of engaging activities and performance tasks.

I can especially see the impact this program has had on my teaching when I look back on

my lesson plans from last year and compare them to the lessons I planned and implemented this

year while progressing through the courses of this program. Previous lessons include a lot of

direct, teacher-lead instruction and paper-and-pencil assessments. While I did use a couple of

classroom iPads for students to use during my learning centers in the past, the technology used

by my students was limited to listening to reading and math fact practice. I have always been

good with PowerPoint and MSWord and have made some fun presentations to show my students

in the past, and of course I have made my share of worksheets for them to complete in order to
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assess whether students have mastered the content. But none of that comes close to the

technology that I am now incorporating into my lessons on a daily basis as a result of this

program. My students are now making videos, annotating pictures and creating documents of

their own as they use technology to demonstrate their learning. My lessons are far more

interactive and project based, and more and more of my assessments are performance tasks using

technology to provide differentiation and engagement.