My official, full name is Mary Jayne Coon-Kitt, but I like to be called MJ. I’m originally from Meadville, located in northwest PA. I moved to State College in 1969 as a freshman at Penn State and never left the area. My master’s degree is also from Penn State in Curriculum and Instruction.
I play the violin in the Nittany Valley Symphony (www.nvs.org/). We have a concert coming up this month on the 28th. If anyone is interested, student tickets are only $5. I also play percussion in the Bellefonte Community Band, which is a growing group of local musicians. We currently have over 50 members (bellefonteband.net) in our band. Other interests include cooking, biking and cross country skiing. We have an adorable 3 year old dog named Ozziemae. She’s a cross between a golden retriever and black lab/mix. My husband’s name is Bernie. He owns and operates Kitt Accounting in downtown Bellefonte. We’ve been happily married for 25 years.
I’m taking this class because it was highly recommended to me by Becci Burns. I also am interested in teacher learning and obviously this course takes a close look at a very important component of teacher learning.
Something interesting about myself is that I have walked the Susan G Komen 60 mile Walk for the Cure twice, once this past September in Washington DC and four years ago in Philadelphia. Our team raised over $15K each time we walked. (the3day.org/)
I would say my comfort level with technology is “average”. I am willing to take risks with new technologies as long as I have someone to help answer questions for me when I get stuck. I’m part of the PDA group using iPads for supervision. I’m also on a committee that is exploring ways to motivate classroom teachers in SCASD to use Studio Code to study their own practice. I’m not, however, familiar with a lot of the social networks that we are going to be using in this course.
I think technology plays a huge role in teaching and learning. I supervise interns in sixth grade at the middle school and I am amazed at what the students do on a daily basis with technology. They work extensively in google.docs, using laptop carts. I was in two classrooms just last week in which students were either setting up or adding to their own website through google. (I’m learning a lot while I’m there.) There is a definite need for meaningful professional development for teachers in using the latest technologies that are available. Although I think the district does an admirable job providing pd, the needs are continuously changing and new pd is always needed.
SCOTT P MCDONALD says
I think you are right MJ, that teacher learning is a key part of what we have to think about when it comes to technology and learning. There have been claims about the way technology will transform teaching and they have mostly been unrealized. I wonder to what extent the spaces we teach in play a moderating role in allowing technologies to open up pedagogies to new forms? Seems likely, but there have also been lots of experiments in classroom space (open classrooms for example) that seem to have little impact as well. Well, something to explore this semester.