Introduction to Myself & My EdTech Journey

This being my first blog post, I feel it fitting that I begin with some basic information about myself, my teaching career, etc., before I really dive into this journey with educational technology.

My name is Adam Blazek, and I recently began my ninth year of teaching. My first six years were spent teaching at the 8th-grade level in the Indian Creek school district, which is a small (~50 students per grade level) district out in DeKalb county. During my time at Indian Creek, I taught language arts and social studies, and coached both middle and high school soccer, as well as 8th-grade boys and girls basketball. Following the 2019-20 school year, I accepted a position at Jefferson Junior High School in Naperville District 203; the past two years, I taught sixth-grade language arts and social studies, and then transitioned into a 7th-grade language arts position for this new year. I also coach football and track at Jefferson.

For my own educational background, I attended the University of Illinois in Champaign as an undergrad, and then I just completed my first Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction at Concordia this past summer. I got married in June, and my wife and I currently live in Forest Park with our 7-month-old dog, Moose. In my spare time, I enjoy reading, yoga, taking classes on our Peloton (which was a saving grace during the pandemic), and really just anything that gets me outside-hiking, kayaking, working in the garden, etc. My golf game is a constant work in progress, and I always enjoy trying new recipes when I can.

My wife and I on our wedding day

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Our dog, Moose
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After having finished my last Master’s program, I had a sense of hoping to delve more deeply into some aspect of my career, to become more of an expert in some concept related to the craft of teaching-I felt that curriculum and instruction provided a good base and overview of different things related to being an educator, but I was looking forward to the chance to use what I had learned as a jumping off point to specialize. There were other options that I considered, but in reflecting on the direction I felt my career had taken since I started working in a classroom, and where I could imagine education heading in the future, I kept coming back to technology, and how much it had shaped the changes I was noticing across my years. Just for fun, I put together this list:

Year One	Year Nine
Overhead projector that used transparency sheets Class set of textbooks that were 10+ years old Computer lab in the library that could be signed out for classes to use-all computers were desktops Smart boards in select classrooms (these were the newest purchases in my district) Geography taught using set of pull-down maps	Ceiling-mounted projector with multiple inputs Digital textbooks that update to the newest edition each year 1:1 chromebooks for each student; student Google accounts used almost exclusively for registration to other tech services Smart boards in all classrooms  Geography taught using tools like Google Earth

These changes only begin to describe how much education has been altered by the advancement of technology, to the point where new ideas, applications, and endeavors have become ubiquitous with today’s teaching experience. I would imagine that through history, new technologies have helped shape education in a similar way (after all, the term technology can be used to refer to any time new insights have led to the development of new materials or applications), but the expansion of computers/the internet has greatly accelerated such advancements. In fact, I sometimes forget that technology can be separated from the newest websites or services on computers, because so much of the innovation that I have sought in my classroom has been born out of what students can do/access on their devices.

All of that being said, the expertise in educational technology was something that I could imagine holding a great amount of value to my students, myself, and my colleagues-with how quickly things can seem to change, I feel that it becomes a question of not only understanding how to employ the newest technologies to their greatest potential, but also just knowing how and where to discover new things that teachers can use. Taken in tandem, those can be a daunting challenge, especially since making even small changes to what has been done in the past can seem like a major undertaking. Plus, I feel that part of the question becomes how much is enough, and when does it become too much?

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When it comes to technology in the classroom, a question I often wonder is, how much is enough? How do I balance incorporating the new without completely abandoning other important parts of school?

When my old district first became 1:1, I believe I fell into a trap of ‘technology for the sake of technology’. My students had these brand-new Chromebooks, and my administration made it very clear that they were to be a major tool for students to use. Pretty soon, I found myself starting almost every lesson with students doing something on their devices, modifying every lesson so that there was some component of usage. But as time went on, I began to feel like my students were becoming tech zombies, that many times the technology became more of a crutch, and that areas that school experiences were so impactful upon, such as interpersonal communication, were being neglected in the name of being a ‘21st century educator’. In those days, I would say that it felt much more like technology was using me; since then, I have aimed for more of a balance, implementing technology where it has a clear benefit, but also sticking to some more traditional activities as well. In this way, I feel technology remains a tool to augment curriculum, but it is not a foundational piece around which the curriculum itself is designed.

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Sometimes we need to just...take a break

My current district is also 1:1; we use Canvas as a learning management system, where I house my classes, organize content into modules, collect work submissions, etc. Our students also have Google accounts, which we use as login credentials to almost every other site or service that the district supplies. This I feel is a major benefit of technology, how it can allow for almost everything students will use to ultimately be connected through a single account. For example, in providing resources for students for independent practice, creating a simple Google doc that links practice sets from multiple websites, video reviews, etc. makes things much easier for students to navigate. Similarly, in looking to give students the chance to advance at their own pace, a hyperdoc is something simple that technology offers for easy creation. Personalization in general is something that I look to employ technology for. When it comes to the writing process, for example, technology makes it easier for students to be working through different steps of the process in the same classroom at the same time. Students who require sentence starters, graphic organizers, or a review of what a strong introduction sounds like can have those resources at their fingertips, while other students might be using extensions to aid them in revising, editing, and just improving their general writing clarity and quality. Finally, other students who have advanced through the process more quickly could be using a new resource to publish their writing to a global audience. This is obviously just a hypothetical situation, but I feel it illustrates how I envision technology’s place in the classroom overall. 

That’s basically my story, where I’ve been as a teacher using technology. I’m excited to begin this journey to hopefully gain a much greater understanding of how I can act as a leader in educational technology in my building, and how I can use it to provide my students the best possible educational experience.

References

"Loop GIF" [Digital Image]. (2021). Retrieved from https://giphy.com/gifs/loop-trapped-yana-pdP1jYi6XgXpdBAxAI.

"Throws laptop GIF" [Digital Image]. (2019). Retrieved from https://media4.giphy.com/media/xUKTfpLS9BYUT2vprT/200.gif.