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Blog | Master's Work Reflections

About Marie Zorn

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I am an enthusiastic educator who has a passion for Language and Literature and technology. I educate young minds at Harvest Middle School in Napa and have many hats I wear during the day. I teach Language and Literature, AVID and Leadership as well as being the ALP’s Liaison for the school. I am very student centered and I strive to make my classroom a strong 21st century learning environment so that students can have the skills necessary for their future careers. My TPACK journey began when I realized that teachers at my school, including myself, might not be using technology in the most meaningful way in and outside of classrooms.  

Through learning about Innovative Technology in my Master’s Program, I am dedicated to bringing relevant technology to my school and classroom. I want to use technology in order to fix the engagement, equality and equity issue. Harvest Middle School is a BYOD school that embodies the IB curriculum, AVID as well as the 4 C’s and I am trying to figure out how that looks with technology to help teachers, students and parents make sense of this change. I am currently working on making a website for all three of these groups to go to for help as well as figuring out how to have students make websites to portray work for next year!

    Questions or Want to Learn More? 

Lasting Learning from the Innovative Learning program

​Some eye opening and confirming takeaways:
  • Technology is only successful in the classroom when it is used in conjunction with Pedagogy and Content (TPACK)
  • In the classroom it is better to have teachers and students learning together with the understanding that the teacher knows more and can guide to the answer
  • To create students ready for our global world we need to teach them the skills necessary to know how to solve problems on their own.
  • If we do not teach holistic curriculum and have opportunities for students to apply the skills they are taught in meaningful ways, students will not understand how to solve real world problems. 

Reflections from My Journey

My Innovative Learning journey has been such an eye opening and rewarding experience for me. There was so much I wanted to do in my classroom in terms of technology but I wasn’t sure where to start and what would actually be beneficial.This program along with the cohort I was a part of was nothing but supportive, flexible and thought be to really think outside the box for my own success. All assignments were valuable for my classroom, my students and myself so that we could all have the 21st century tools we need for progress. This program has really made me dedicated to keep researching and trying new things with my students so that they have a wide range of skills and abilities when they leave my classroom.

TPACK Reflection
TPACK is something that I have really been studying at Harvest Middle School, because we have implemented the BYOD system. I want to make sure that this system not only works, but is beneficial for students. TPACk if used correctly really helps students to be engaged in content while learning new skills and showing what they know. Because students are heading out into a fast changing world I want to make sure that they have the skills and know how to use technology, but I also want them to be able to be grammatically correct when writing emails, and know how to read and understand it well. It is hard to teach this all separately, you have to do it together for times sake and for learning sake. Students will understand these concepts better when they are actually put into the situation rather than just learning about a tool. I have been trying really hard to do this in my classroom by having students explore tons of tools and by using a wide range of tools in my teaching. They read, write, and communicate with me and each other over technology doing the same things we did in class with paper and pencil. Students feel the need for their computers in my classroom so they can engage in and access things far beyond the book and articles we read in class or writing structures I teach them for essays. During this current unit, students are researching their own driving question that they created themselves. They have had to learn to explore google and evaluate sources before they took the time to actually dive in to close read them. Students took this very seriously because they didn't want to waste their time reading invalid information. I think this tool was so valuable to teach them because they could go to any classroom and use it to help them. I find myself having to google and research things all the time, so I know that they will also take this tool out into the real world. When teaching English, I feel like I have a lot of flexibility for technology in our content because it is so open on what content we have to teach. I have found that TPACK is something that is a big part of my classroom and curriculum.