FUTURES REFLECTION

Jessie Shipman

Introduction
I am currently a Social Studies Teacher at Regis Jesuit High School. I teach every grade level but
sophomores. I have designed and implemented the World Geography curriculum from scratch
and I have taken on a new endeavor this year with a team taught class called “American
Studies” which is a combination of American History and American Literature. I am also
currently designing and implementing a new class to our school this year, psychology. Regis
Jesuit is where I started my career in 2007 after having student taught at Grandview High
School in the Cherry Creek School District. Technology has always been a big part of my life,
even from the time I was in 3rd grade and we created a digital portfolio on our Apple
Computers. Technology also comes easily to me the logic of it works perfectly in sync with my
brain. It was this reason that I chose to enroll in the Information and Learning Technologies for
K-12 Teachers Masters Degree program at the University of Colorado at Denver. Once I was
enrolled and started to attend classes I began to notice how important technology was in my
school environment. I also noticed ways that we could improve, such as making sure that our
money spent on technology was educationally beneficial and not just expenditure with no real
thought behind it.

In the future I am looking forward to gaining more useful information and insight so that I may
one day be able to lead the charge in my school’s technological endeavors, as my school’s
instructional technology coordinator. I see myself using this position to not just improve the
learning at Regis Jesuit, but to improve learning at our sister school in Belize through emerging
technologies.

Future:
It’s 3:30 in the afternoon and I’m sitting at DIA waiting to board a plane to go on my third trip to
our sister school in Belize to continue to build their technologies and learning opportunities.

It’s been 4 years since I began my job as the Technology Coordinator at Regis Jesuit High School
in 2010. I started my job as a supplement to my full time teaching job and in the last 4 years I
have developed it into a full time, on site job that now involves traveling to Belize once a year
to catch up with and improve our outreach learning technologies program there.

In my first year I trained educators to effectively use technologies that were readily available to
them such as SMART boards, Web 2.0 applications, and document cameras. This started out as
one growth module per technology and I had maybe 4 takers. These growth modules have
boomed and I now have to have more than one because they are in demand and they have
become a requirement for new teachers. I have purchased a set of clickers for every classroom
and have trained every teacher how to effectively use them with higher order thinking
questions.

Within the last two years we have introduced the idea of educational gaming to give students
the opportunity to learn concepts through a fast paced virtual environment. I have been
teaming with Learning Games Network and several parents and teachers to design educational
games in both our mathematics and science departments (Learning Games Network, 2009).
Squire et al states that when it comes to educational technology, especially educational gaming,
it is vital that members of the community (i.e teachers and parents) are reshaping the curricula
to meet the needs of students (2002). There is an increasing amount of empirical evidence that
shows that dynamic technological changes in curricula has a positive effect on student learning
and we have designed our model of adding educational gaming according to this research
(Squire et al, 2002).

Once I began our educational gaming program we realized the importance of social networking
for the purpose of gaining insight to best practices and design. Social networking led me to an
understanding of open source software and how well the idea of open source aligns with the
Jesuit ideals of social justice. Open source gaps the digital divide by allowing low income
schools to keep up with the ever changing technological world. Open source also allows more
of our students to get an emersion experience with other cultures that we were only able to
offer to 40 students per year previously (K12opensource.com, 2009). I have been finding
programs that are available in open source and implementing them in our classrooms, allowing
students to not only learn to use a programming source code to make software more
appropriate for their classroom experience but to see the improvements made by a global
community and what is appropriate for their classroom.

Once our students were able to experience other cultures through open source they thought it
would be a really great idea to come up with improvements to core curriculum open source
software programs and implement them in classrooms at our sister school in Belize. 10 years
ago handheld computer devices were around $100 a piece if you buy in bulk, now we can get
them for about $35 (StresingTEchNewsWorld, 2003). Through donations we were able to
purchase one handheld device for each of the students at our sister school, and the school now
owns 12 donated laptops. I have headed this project which includes teaching students how to
change open source code and they in turn take an immersion trip to Belize and show their
students how to change the code so that the software is being utilized to the best meet the
needs of the students in Belize.

Hopefully in the future we can continue to expand our open source program for low income
schools in foreign countries. This program is just one of many technological advances that
Regis Jesuit continues to make to advance student learning both at home and far away.

Reflection:
When I started this assignment I was really quite frustrated. I was thinking “how am I supposed
to know what technologies will be prevalent in 5 years”? It took me a while to find some
information that actually applied to the setting I thought I would be working in, but once I
found some good info my imagination really started to go. There are so many trends that are
so new they are a bit complicated to grasp, but with a little guidance I see them having a huge
impact on what I will be doing in 5 years. The Jesuit view of social justice hasn’t changed in 500
years and it is exciting to me to see that my passions in technology can merge with my passion
for justice to potentially bring better education to not only my students but to many other less
fortunate learners.
References
About the Learning Games Network | Learning Games Network. (n.d.). Retrieved October 29,
2009, from http://www.learninggamesnetwork.org/content/about

Squire, K., MaKinster, J., Barnett, M., Leuhmann, A., & Barab, S. (2002, May 4). Designed
Curriculum and Local Culture:Acknowledging the primacy of classroom culture. Retrieved
October 28, 2009, from website.education.wisc.edu/kdsquire/manuscripts/squire-sci-ed.pdf

StresingTechNewsWorld, D. (n.d.). Technology News: Future Tech: Education and Technology:

The Future of Handheld Learning. Retrieved October 28, 2009, from
http://www.technewsworld.com

Why are they important?. (n.d.). Retrieved October 28, 2009, from wiki.k12opensource.com