AECT Standards Reflection

Julie Tucker-Leaton
March 24, 2020
Oklahoma State University
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Background

I am a Spanish teacher with 25 years of experience within two public school districts

in Oklahoma. Since my first teaching assignment in 1995, I have been using technology in

my classroom. For me, technology is the second- best way, after traveling to the various

countries, to expose my students to the large variety of Hispanic culture. I have used many

different pieces of technology in my classroom including a Smart slate, Eclickers, laptop labs,

computer labs, a ¨creatively¨ wired, second hand projector to use on my chalkboard (this was

before I had a whiteboard), and finally a very used Smartboard. My current school district´s

push toward student technology integration began in 2014 when a few teachers got class sets

of Chromebooks to use. The plan was to begin implementing the Chromebooks over the next

6 years. In the Spring of 2016, our district´s then superintendent made the decision to push

up the one-to-one integration to the following fall. His plan was to hold a press conference

showing the district removing all textbooks, reading books, etc. from all grade 3-12

classrooms and have the students using only their school issued Chromebooks. During the

summer, the superintendent was fired for matters unrelated to the integration. When the

teachers returned in August, almost all our schools´ administration from assistant principals

up through superintendent changed or were moved. As our new superintendent described it,

¨we are building a ship, without plans, while sailing across the ocean¨ (Armstrong, 2016).

That year was full of faulty internet, poor WIFI, untrained staff, and confused students. It

was in this work environment I began my Master´s journey working toward a Curriculum

Leadership degree. My district´s technology problems and believing in the power of using

technology in education led me to change my major to Educational Technology. For me, this

was a miracle. I was able to take ideas and sites that I was learning and take it directly into

my classroom. In this reflection, I will share with the committee some of what I have learned,

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how it relates to the AECT standards (Code of Professional Ethics—Association for

Educational Communication & Technology, 2012.), and how I have used it in my classroom.

Standard 1 Content Knowledge

One of my most common thoughts during my Educational Technology classes was it

was play time. It was time I could sit on my computer and play with the different programs,

activities, sites, etc. that was available to use in my classroom. Through my various classes, I

learned about the power of several programs, websites, and apps that I could use in my

teaching. One was Powtoon, an animation creation site. I used it to explain concepts, tell my

professor about journal articles and create activities that I then brought back to my classroom.

Another semester’s projects were a combination that I did in my Psychology of Learning and

Digital Media Production classes (Spring 2018). This was an educational photo project that

combined several of my personal topics of interest: photography and computer creation. I

learned to use the lighting equipment and backdrops my husband gave me, learned how to

use them and reported about what I learned in my Psychology of Learning project. I then

used the Nero photo and video editing program that I have had on my computer for years to

create, perform in, and produce a children's story for the Digital Media Production class. I

expanded the activity in the Production class by creating electronic trading cards, a Google

Tour Creator, and a Scratch game and a story book with QR codes that read the book to the

students. To make sure my project was ethical, I used open- sourced photo, clipart and music

sites, as well as many of my own photos. While I did not take the project back and used in

my class (it was designed for more of an elementary level), I have used various parts of the

project, such as the video editing, the trading card creator, and the Google Tour Creator and

used them differently in my classroom which I will discuss in section 2.

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While I have implemented several new programs into my classroom, there are several

I have not been able to use. My school district has over 50% of students eligible for free and

reduced lunch (School report card, 2016) and 25% of the school district’s households do not

have adequate WIFI (U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Sapulpa city, Oklahoma, 2017). As a

result, any apps or sites that require WIFI must be completed in class. This limits the types

and amounts of activities we can do in a semester. I would love to use Flipgrid as a speaking

tool, but we do not have class time to utilize it. Cost is also a factor in how I choose my

activities. If a site costs to use, most likely, my district will not have the extra funds to pay for

it. This limits programs such as Conjuguemos (a game-based verb conjugation site),

Classcraft, and Gimkit. I can only use the free parts of the sites, meaning I can only have 5

Gimkit games and 5 assignments in Conjuguemos. My department is hoping to use part of

our budget next year to possibly pay for a year's subscription for either Conjuguemos or

Gimkit. As of now, programs like Classcraft will have to wait for future funding.

Standard 2 Content Pedagogy

I am first and foremost a Spanish teacher. This means I follow the ACTFL (national)

and OAS (state) educational standards. This means that my most important priority is the

"five C's": Communication, Connections, Cultures, Communities and Comparisons

(Oklahoma Academic Standards: World Languages, 2015). For Spanish, this means I need to

teach my students about the diverse cultures of the Hispanic world, make connections and

comparisons to my students' homes, and most importantly teach them to use all four forms of

communication (speaking, listening, reading, and writing) to reach a novice low level

(Oklahoma Academic Standards: World Languages, 2015). I have approximately 167 hours

to accomplish this task (not including classroom interruptions). With such tight time

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constraints, I must find the best ways to bring the required content to my students. I have

found that using technology is one of the most efficient ways to do this.

When we began our Chromebook journey in 2016, my district also adopted new,

completely online curriculum. It was sold to us as having the best interactivity, the ability to

edit and control the assignments, and the ability to be completely online and easy to use. My

department ran into issues with the website almost immediately. The first time we were able

to get on the site was during a two- hour training session the day before school started. We

found out during the session that the teachers would have to hand input our students into the

system as the district could not input our students directly into the curriculum site. When we

finally began using the site, it took a full class period to teach the students how to sign in and

to find the important places. Several students had issues opening the assignments and it was

very difficult to find the textbook because it is not well marked for the students. Once they

began doing the assignments, we found out that the website auto graded the them. If a

beginning student missed a letter, accent or put an inappropriate space, they received a zero

on the assignment. When we reached out to the company, we were informed that we could

not turn auto grading off. In class, we had first year beginning students to the point of tears

because no matter how hard they tried, they kept getting zeros. Even though I assured them

that I was going back to and regrading, they were still demoralized and began to resent the

class.

I learned in my Foundations of Educational Technology class (Fall 2017), that the

learning platform site used Operant conditioning and punishing my students (Ormrod, 2016).

The negative punishment of almost every student receiving a zero and getting no feedback on

what they were doing wrong, caused them to lose their self-efficacy for Spanish learning

(Ormrod, 2016). My students began to believe they could not do Spanish and were giving up.

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To fight my students' frustrations and low self-efficacy, I abandoned the website

curriculum and looked for better ways to reach my students. Because this was a year before I

began my Educational Technology journey, most of what I did that first year was trial and

error. Following the scope and sequence from our textbook, I moved my student activities

from the book site to Google Classroom and created electronic worksheets with Google Docs

for my students to practice the skills. That first year, it seemed that over half of what I was

teaching, was how to use the Chromebook. We had to learn basic things, such as how to use

Google drive, how to put accents and special characters on our Spanish words, etc.

When I began the Educational technology program, I got ideas for activities in the

university classes that I used in my Spanish classroom. In Digital Media Production (Spring

2018), I first learned about Powtoon. Before each unit test, my students work in groups to

use Powtoon to create "training videos" teaching the class one of topics that we learned. We

then share the videos on classroom so that all my students have a set of review videos to use

while studying for the test.

Another great activity that I learned at OSU were the concept of digital field trips. At

first, I used Google Tour Builder in my class to create digital field trips to the various

Hispanic countries. Then, I learned about Google Tour Creator in Advanced Computer

Applications in Education (Fall 2018). Tour builder uses Google Maps to create a route

around a country, state, or city, add pictures of the places, and then present their project using

my classes Smartboard. Tour creator is more interactive and immersive. Students use

Google Street view to create scenes with photo overlays. They can then create a virtual

fieldtrip with their projects on Google expeditions. With a group of students leading, the class

follows the fieldtrip on their Chromebooks. When I have time, I also put their fieldtrips into

my cell phone VR set, so they can see them in 3D.

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These project-based assignments are more popular with my students because they are

an example of authentic activities (Ormrod, 2016). Instead of just quickly reading about the

places, they get to spend time and immerse themselves in the country. Instead of just doing a

worksheet, my students are creating animations explaining what they learned. Instead of

quizzes, my students play Smartboard, Kahoot, or Gimkit. While my students are doing these

projects, I hear them talking about the new places they have found, try to figure out a

problem, and what looks the best on the presentation. By transitioning my class into more of

a Constructivist approach, my students get to make choices, get their own meanings, and

learning in an individual manner (Ormrod, 2016). My students tell me it makes the class

more exciting, more interesting, get to show learning on their own level, and get to learn what

interests them.

Of course, not every activity I have tried has worked the way I think it should. One

activity my Spanish II tried was to create a video teaching a topic. Many of my students used

their cell phones to create the videos. It was then that we found out students could not email

their school accounts from their private email. They also could not connect their phones to

their Chromebooks to move the video over due to blocks IT placed on their accounts. While

this is for my students' protection, it also meant my students could not complete the activity.

We finally had to scrap the assignment and complete it another way.

One of the most important concepts I teach my students is to fail spectacularly. This

does not mean to not try, but to keep trying even if it doesn’t work out. I tell them that I

make at least 500 mistakes a day and I expect the same from them. My students know that I

will try new things that they may have not done in their other classes. They also know that

some will not work, but that if a project crashes, we will regroup, redo, and it will not affect

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their grades. They know I will evaluate them on their work. I will not punish them if the

computer does not function or the project fails.

Standard 3 Learning Environments

In my Foundations of Educational Technology (Fall 2017) and Psychology of

Learning (Spring 2018), I began to learn the theoretical perspectives that guide our field. For

me, it was like a door opening. I finally had names for what I had been trying to do in my

classroom. I had known for years that many of the behaviorist principals, such conditioning

is not as effective in a Spanish classroom (Ormrod, 2016). Just making my students sit

quietly with a mountain of vocabulary and expecting them to regurgitate it is not an effective

way for them to learn. Instead, over the past three years, I have converted my Spanish classes

from a traditional classroom to more a constructivist environment (Ormrod, 2016). Instead of

rows, my desks are in groups of four. This facilitates project- based cooperative activities.

These can be as simple as having a Spanish conversation with a partner or as complicated as

creating a magazine cover on Canva demonstrating what clothes vocabulary they have

learned. I have found that while my students do not get as large of a vocabulary, they learn

the vocabulary better and are able to use the vocabulary they do learn in more real-world

ways.

I have found the best way to manage the massive amount of digital data I share with

my student is by using Google Classroom. This is different from the other core classes in my

district. For most of the district, the classes use the learning management system Oasis.

However, the Spanish curriculum uses a competitor’s learning platform which does not work

in Oasis. As I described before, the Spanish learning system had several learning barriers for

my students. Oasis is difficult to use and to get new assignments imputed, discouraging my

students. With classroom, I can assign the work and give each student a copy, let them
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collaborate, or just view the document with just a push of a button. This is not an easy option

in Oasis as several steps are needed. With classroom, I can to assign work, share websites,

and give information in one area. It also automatically places assignments in my students'

calendar to keep them organized. It also gives me a place for each student to put their work.

When parents want to see what their student is doing, I can pull up their account with their

work.

Because of the fluctuations with the school WIFI, the lack of student WIFI in many

homes, and the fact that this is a more individualized approach to learning, I do allow my

students to turn in work up until the day of the test. This gives my slower performing

students a chance to catch up and my quicker performing students to be able to work on extra

game-based learning website that we use in class. While I do have students that abuse the

ability to turn things in late, most do not. My students will take more time on an assignment

if they know I will take it later. I also allow them to redo things when they mess up. As I tell

them, I am more focused on them learning the material than giving them a C or D on an

assignment.

Because of the technology available to me, I constantly evaluate my students. For

projects, I use rubrics to assess the students' work. This shows them what they did well on

and what they need to fix. For quick, formative assessments, I use games and activities on

Smartboard, Gimkit, or Kahoot for my students. Because it is competitive, they tend to try

their best. When we review the questions at the end of the activity, I can see how many

students missed a problem and I can go back to reteach the lower performing topics. Three to

four times a unit, I give my students a short summative quiz using Google Forms. I like

using forms because I can block students from other sites while they are testing, it gives them

instant feedback, and I can quickly see where students are having problems. At the end of

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each unit, I give a summative assessment using our districts Oasis learning system. Although

I use Google Classroom for most of my curriculum, I use Oasis because I can put a block on

keeping my students off translating apps or other academically dishonest places. My

assessments follow the units learning objectives that I give my students at the beginning of

the unit with the "I can statements." I test my students on all four forms of communications

that we practice with during the unit. When I create the assessments, I can change the point

value, turn off auto grading on written activities, and make a rubric to assess their written and

speaking parts. Grading is easier for me also. I can set any multiple-choice sections (usually

the listening section) to auto grade. I then evaluate any written parts myself. As with any

system, this is not a perfect way to assess my students. First, students must open the test

before I turn on the blocking software or it blocks the test. This is a glitch on our blocking

software, but we have found a work around. Next, the test cannot be changed once it is

assigned to students. If I have a mistake on a multiple-choice answer, I must go through

every students’ test and adjust the points. On my Google Forms quiz, I can change the

answer choice, and the student's scores are automatically adjusted. However, I cannot add

writing rubrics to the form in order to evaluate their writing on Forms. Finally, I cannot

record my students' voices on assessments in either of the two programs. This affects the

way I do the speaking section of the unit test. Until Oasis or Forms has a fix for this, I must

complete the students' speaking portion separate from the rest of the test. I give my students

10 questions they could be asked. They are then paired up on the day after the written portion

of the test. The pair draw two questions each and ask each other. Using a paper rubric, I

evaluate the students individually on how they answer and ask the questions. After going

through the entire class, I input each student's score in their electronic rubric on Oasis.

Standard 4 Professional Knowledge and Skills

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Even before starting the Educational technology program, I have been working in a

tight knit department. All three of us are career teachers who have known each other for

years. My colleague did her student teaching under my other colleague and I years ago for

high school and elementary Spanish levels (our teaching certificate is K-12). We have also

all been in the district for several years. I am the "newbie" with 13 years in the district. We

are also all in the same hall in an annex building separated from the rest of the junior and

senior high. Because of our background, we work extremely well collaboratively. Our

school meets Monday mornings for 45 minutes for PLC with students coming to school thirty

minutes later. In these meetings, my department, creates lesson plans together, shares what

we have found that we can bring into our classes, and plans all school-wide Spanish projects.

Many of these plans use the Chromebooks in some manner. For instance, three years ago,

my colleague found a "March Madness" online. The site shows different music videos and

students nationally vote on their favorite. She shared this with us during the PLC that year

and we decided to participate. This began as a small endeavor with about 5,000 students

nationwide participating. This year, about 50,000 students in over 20 states are voting daily

for their favorite videos. Another group project we do together is Foreign Language week.

This is a 300-point assignment that our students work on for over a month and a half. We

work together to plan the activities the students do, which includes playing a trivia game.

When we started doing this 13 years ago, the trivia game was on notecards taped to the board

in a Jeopardy style format. After learning about Kahoot, I created one for the trivia

competition. After sharing with my colleagues, they agreed that this was much easier, so we

moved to this. This fall, one of my transfer students showed me Gimkit, that he played in his

old school. After my students tried it on a unit review and liked it, I created a trivia game

with it. This year, I gave my students the choice by class vote on which trivia game we

played. My colleagues liked the game and we are planning on coordinating in the future to
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make more Gimkit games to use in our classrooms. On the PLC after a major project like

Foreign Language Week, we meet to reflect on what went well and what didn't. We look at

ways we can improve or change the project for the next year. As department head, I keep

notes of these meetings and use them the next year when we plan.

In addition to my department, the rest of my school knows that I am the teacher for

help with tech. I will go to other departments as I have time to teach them a new activity and

how they can use it in their classes. I have also begun giving presentations during our

district's professional development workshops. This year, I gave a presentation on how to get

the most out of the Smartboard. While this is a very basic topic, I have noticed a need

amongst our faculty for basic instruction. Many teachers in my school do not use the

Smartboard for anything other than a screen for the projector. Many did not realize there is a

Smart program that goes with the Smartboard and the activities you can do on it. In my

workshop, I showed them a few of the gamification features of the program and then some

basic functions, such as turning it on, using the pens, etc. While we have lots of professional

development for using apps and websites, we are lacking on very basic websites to catch our

slower tech learning teachers up with some of our faster tech learners. I have had several

teachers come to me personally to get help on very basic things, such as learning how to use

Google drive. They are afraid of looking "dumb" in front of their peers. I will go after school

to their room or answer emails to help them when they need it.

Standard 5 Research

Even in my first semester in the Master´s program, which was not in the Educational

Technology program, I knew I wanted to get more information on how to integrate

technology correctly my classroom. I was interested in how to help my district figure out

how to make the Chromebooks more beneficial to our students. Because I knew this was one
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of the largest barriers we were experiencing, I began studying how the abrupt Chromebook

integration affected my department in my first semester´s Pedagogical Research class (CIED

5073) (Fall 2016). My coworker, who took the class with me, and I looked to explore how

the sudden integration affected our Spanish Department. During the class, we looked at how

to ethically study people, how to protect the participants privacy, and how to ask and build

appropriate survey and interview questions. I also learned how to record and report on our

research methodology and how to evaluate the data we received. In the research paper, we

included our Literature Reviews. My Review looked at Teachers' and Administrators'

responsibilities and roles in technology integration. I found out from my qualitative research

project that part of the problems my district was having with the integration stemmed from

the district’s poor infrastructure, lack of knowledgeable leadership, inappropriate professional

development, and a general resistance to change among the teachers.

I built on this learning in the Psychology of Learning (EPSY 5463) (Fall 2018) class,

finding out a lot of teacher´s hesitance in embracing the new technology was due to

Bandura´s Self-Efficacy Theory (Bandura, 1977). Many teachers do not embrace new

technology because they had the feeling of stress from technology and felt like they would be

unable to use the Chromebooks with their curriculum. I also learned that without teacher buy

in, the technology would not be used (Ormrod, 2016).

I used this theory to expand on my research in my Research and Methodology (Fall

2019) and Library Networks and Databases (Spring 2020) classes. I began to look at my

research through the Self-Efficacy Theory lens. In the Research and Methodology class, I

designed a research project updating my 2016 research project. In the Qualitative research

project, I would ask my district's Spanish teachers similar questions to the ones they

answered in 2016. Since the participants were all the same, I would compare their responses

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from how they answered before. I would then explore and examine the change in the

teacher's attitudes three years after the integration. In addition to what I had already learned,

this literature review taught me that teachers job satisfaction, technostress, and how much

support the teachers have are also major factors in determining whether teachers will adopt a

new technology (Joo et al., 2016). Although I did not get to complete the research study due

to time limitations, I did gain knowledge from the class that I was able to take back to my

school.

This current semester, I am taking Library Networks and Databases. Again, I am

expanding on the theme of technology integration. This time, I am researching the barriers to

technology integration and how to overcome them. While I have not finished the project, I

have already learned that many barriers teachers face are infrastructure issues, cost of

technology and software, and school climate (Ottenbreit-Leftwich et al., 2018).

Conclusion

Completing the Educational Technology program has been one of the best

experiences I have had. I have learned new ways to get information to my students, new

ways to practice that information, and new ways to organize my curriculum. This program

has changed the way I teach for the better. In the coming weeks, our state is going to be

doing distance learning due to the Coronavirus. I have already had discussions with my

principal on what activities we can do on our Chromebooks, how to use the technology

components, and how to help teachers with this transition. I look forward to using what I

have learned to help my students succeed through these trying times, as well as in the future.

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References

Armstrong, R. (2016). Sapulpa’s Back to School Rally. Welcome Back, Sapulpa HIgh

School.

Bandura, A. (1977). Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change.

Psychological Review, 84, 191–215.

Code of Professional Ethics—Association for Educational Communication & Technology.

(n.d.). Retrieved November 16, 2017, from http://aect.site-

ym.com/members/group_content_view.asp?group=91131&id=309963

Joo, Y. J., Lim, K. Y., & Kim, N. H. (2016). The effects of secondary teachers’ technostress

on the intention to use technology in South Korea. Computers & Education, 95, 114–

122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2015.12.004

Oklahoma Academic Standards: World Languages (pp. 1–18). (2015). Oklahoma State

Department of Education.

https://sde.ok.gov/sites/ok.gov.sde/files/2015%20World%20Languages%20Standards

.pdf

Ormrod, J. (2016). Human Learning (7th ed.). Pearson.

Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A., Yin-Chan Liao, J., & Ertmer, P. (2018). Evolution of Teachers’

Technology Integration Knowledge, Beliefs, and Practices: How Can We Support

Beginning Teachers Use of Technology? Journal of Research on Technology in

Education, 50(4), 282–304.

School report card. (n.d.). Retrieved November 25, 2018, from

https://www.schoolreportcard.org/doc/profiles/2016/reports/src/201619i033705.pdf

U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Sapulpa city, Oklahoma. (2017).

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sapulpacityoklahoma

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