The Technology Education department at the SUNY at Oswego never let us mistake the fact that we weren’t “education majors”, but instead were “technology majors”. I happened to be the president of the Oswego Technology Education Association (OTEA) during my senior year and one of the ideas that I pushed was to associate ourselves with the Education Club at the college. I couldn’t understand why we were all students in the school of education, yet our organizations barely knew each other existed. I officially joined the Ed Club and went to a few of their meetings myself, but during my tenure was never able to bring the organizations any closer together. While most of my technology classmates were working on their trucks, their houses, and their wood projects the Ed Club was inviting speakers to the school to discuss everything from learning styles to special education terminologies.

There were a lot of things that I never learned about education while in that program. Thankfully New York requires all teachers to obtain a masters degree before becoming permanently certified. Without that necessity there is no doubt I’d be an old-school shop teacher with little to no understanding of the education system (or the students) that surrounded me.

[note: from what I was told the Oswego Technology Education program has changed substantially in the last decade. I am speaking about the program before most of the current staff was hired.]

Although I was offered an assistantship to stay in Oswego for my masters, I elected instead to get something different. With a heavy background in computers and networking I decided that an Instructional Technology degree would fit me perfectly. So I enrolled in the program at SUNY Potsdam.

I was to be known as an “instructional technologist” once admitted into that program. We had thrown around the term of “Educational Technologist”, but the latest AECT definition for the field suggested that it was incorrect – so we made darn sure we used the “correct” terms when talking about our major.

The terms may seem interchangeable from most people’s points of view. Teachers deliver instruction/lead education, so the terms must mean the same thing. BUT – as I’ve been re-thinking my philosophy on education I’m realizing that teachers don’t need to be the “sage on the stage”. They can facilitate. They can lead the students to learning, but they can’t make them think. I like to think that my background and knowledge encompass more than just “instructional” uses of technology; I use technology to instruct but also to learn, guide, suggest, develop, and evaluate (amongst other things). Because of the breadth of the field I now consider myself an educational technologist… although since NY doesn’t have a certification for that I am (and always will be) officially an instructional technologist.

image courtesy of http://www.vecteezy.com

After spending all of my savings on these degrees you’re probably wondering why I’m still teaching technology (shop) to middle school kids. And you know what – sometimes I wonder the same thing.

My work background is that of a technology teacher. I’ve applied for administrative jobs and have been told that my background doesn’t lend itself to education in general – that it’s too specific. I’ve been told that I’ll never get an administrative job in my current district because “administrators are a dime a dozen; technology teachers are a needle in a haystack“. And now… with budgets the way they are… many districts in the upstate NY area are re-naming their technology coordinators as “technology specialists” and hiring civil service people for them. I spent 7 years in school, a boatload of money, and have worked my butt off for the past decade when all I needed to do was take a civil service test??? Really???

Do you have any labels that either hinder you, help you, or impact you in any real way? Do your labels reflect who you are, or do you reflect what your labels want you to be?

Anyhow, having been only to a handful of conferences before – all of them being technology-related – I wasn’t sure how I’d enjoy being somewhere with a bunch of math people.  Would I be a fish out of water?  Or would I put aside the content differences and see these pocket-protector-wielding pi enthusiasts as my equals?   (JOKE!)  It turned out that I felt very comfortable with everyone, but… definitely noticed a huge number of things that differentiated the overall crowd from my typical ed tech crowd:

First of all, it amazed me at how little teaching or pedagogical training these young math professors had.  I guess now is a good time to note that the majority of attendees were recent doctoral graduates who were now either looking for jobs or had been teaching at the college level for only a short time.  So back on topic…  Everyone seemed to know a ton about their subject (mathematics), but when it came to teaching strategies…  not so much.  How many of these college professors have taken a teaching methods course?  Or a educational psychology?  I’m going to guess less than 30% of them – and most of those courses would have taken as general ed requirements in undergrad school.  Teaching = simply Presenting Information?  Perhaps.

Eye opener number 2: Many of the profs that I talked to mentioned their “discipline problems” or “multiple preps” as if they were actually unexpected downsides to their current positions; a common belief seemed to be that better colleges wouldn’t have such problems, and it sure felt as if everyone was looking for someplace “better”.  I mentioned that many middle or high school teachers had upwards of 4-5 different preps in a semester AND had to deal with unruly kids (and parents) daily – I was then reminded by one young lady that “that’s why we got our doctorates, so we wouldn’t need to deal with that stuff”.  Hmmm…  not sure that was the general consensus, but certainly made me chuckle a bit.  Perhaps I need to go back to school!

Surprise number 3: there was a session based on “teaching with technology”, and it was not getting very good reviews.  Not because the presenter was bad, mind you, but because it was seen as “impractical”.  People were asking why they’d want to use technology in math class; a lot were saying that their IT departments were in charge (and the professors themselves had no control over it), some laughed because their departments don’t even allow calculators, and others shunned the session because “I teach math, not computers”.  I asked around if anyone knew about cramster.com, the Math Markup Language (mathML), or even twitter… I got a bunch of confused looks.  In fact the last thing that I was told was “if it isn’t laTeX, we don’t need it”.  A great way to end our conversation for sure

My sister, Bronlyn