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Apple 2E computer at home.
I remember highly pixelated graphics, and I think all of the games were educational, such as the 1985 release of Oregon Trail. The internet was not yet in existence, and I don't remember having friends over to play on the computer. We mostly played outside! -
Tech at South Park Elementary (in Kansas)
My elementary school classrooms did not have computers. The teachers used paper gradebooks, mimeographed worksheets, carousels of slides, and occasionally a filmstrip. Or they would bring in a TV so we could watch The Letter People, Ghost Writer, or Reading Rainbow. When we moved to a better funded district the teachers had Xerox machines and VCRs. All homework was paper based, and if you had a team project then everyone had to meet up at someone's house. -
Don't Pick Up the Phone
It sounds like an R. L. Stein novel but this was our existence until I graduated high school. My dad would warn us, "Don't pick up the phone!" but two hours later we would forget and try to make a call. As soon as we put the receiver to our ear we would hear the screech of the modem and know we messed up, and run out of the house before he could yell about his report having to be restarted. Family photos were taken on film, and extended family was contacted through phone calls or the mail. -
Correspondence Course
In high school I wanted to use a study period to take a college level course. So I signed up for the only distance learning option available - a Psychology correspondence course. I basically had to memorize the textbook and mail off assignments to be graded. There was no interaction with other students or the instructor. -
We don't talk about online education
My boyfriend (now husband) moved over a thousand miles away. He didn't have email (which wasn't free at the time), we couldn't afford long distance phone calls, and Skype wasn't invented. So we had to send letters back and forth like pioneer people. Meanwhile I was finishing up my teaching degree. We did not discuss educational technology in any way. Online education was never mentioned in class, or in any of the teacher magazines that I used to read (on paper, in the library). -
Classroom Teaching
My first teaching position, an a traditional high school classroom. I learned to make visual aids at home, using my computer to get graphics off the internet and printing them onto transparencies. Later I got a classroom computer that I could hook up to a projector. Student assessments were all done on scantron forms, and it was amazing to see how fast the machine would grade them. I figured out how to use these tools myself or other teachers showed me. -
Launch of Wikipedia
While working on my history masters degree I edited and created articles, and used the talk pages to debate changes with other Wikipedians. Wikipedia is a highly effective collaborative teaching tool and its bad reputation is due to people who have misused it. Wikis in general are a great collaborative opportunity for students, in that each person's participation is clear (so one person can't be made to do all the work) and students can contribute at a distance and asynchronously. -
Launch of Facebook
I was late to join, and still have less than 100 friends. It is useful for connecting with family from a distance. I do not friend students or coworkers though, just in case the privacy settings fail. When I was teaching AP Art History, I joined a group with educators around the world. We shared YouTube video links, links to cool online museum pages, and collaborated on interesting assignments for our students. -
Online Education
I transitioned from a traditional school to an online school. I spent more than ten years working with a few different online schools, first as an instructor and then becoming a department chair. I supervised teacher communications with students and parents, and the construction of their online courses. This brought me into contact with plagiarism detection tools like TurnItIn and Respondus Lockdown Browser. -
Professional Development
In exploring LinkedIn, I discovered LinkedIn Learning and became fascinated by the courses available there. I learned that my favorite part of online education had a name - "instructional design" - and that this could be a whole career in itself. Now that I am an instructional designer I still use LinkedIn Learning to learn about new software features for Articulate Storyline, Adobe Creative Suite products, the Canvas LMS, and Camtasia.
