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Herbert Dunbar
Summer 2016
Personal Technology 2
INTRODUCTION
I am currently a business education teacher with Clayton County Public Schools where I
have worked for the last eleven years. During most of my time here, I have taught MS Office and
Introduction to business. In regards to MS office, the majority of my class time is spent on Word,
Excel and Power Point. This is mostly due to the fact that the district puts an emphasis on having
STRENGTHS
I believe that one of my biggest strengths is the ability to quickly analyze a situation and
make a decision or come up with a solution. In education situations constantly change and things
come at you pretty fast. I believe that as an educator the ability to adopt quickly and find
solutions is a huge asset. Another strength of mine is my years of experience in my subject area.
I have seen pretty much everything over the years from my students, the county and the state. I
have relationships with other veteran teacher who I can pull from when I need help.
and what I view as basic computer skills from teaching it for so many years. My experience
allows me to quickly and easily walk my kids through exercises/projects and provide help as
needed. I usually have 28 kids per class all working on different parts of an assignment so being
able to quickly figure out their individual issues is a huge asset for me. Another strength is my
understanding how the MS Office programs are designed to work. This allows me to quickly
understand the differences in new versions that are often released and teach it to my kids. Last
year we started 1st semester working in one version of MS Office and by 2nd semester we had
updated to another. I had to figure out how to teach and explain a newer version of MS Office
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and teach it from the older book. I am also a quick learner. This is key in allowing me to find
new programs and trends, learn them and then teach it to my students.
WEAKNESSES
Growing up I went to schools in both the U.S and West Africa and there are times my
West African stricter views on education take over. During these times I am less worried about
fun and more task oriented and I know that affects how student feel about learning. Another
weakness of mine is that I have little to no knowledge of computer repair. I don’t have the ability
to fix computers that go down in my room and sometimes I might have to wait several days to
get it fixed. I am also limited in my understanding of networking related issues which prevents
me from solving issues and helping student who are experiencing network related problem. In
addition, I am not at all familiar with programming/coding and that is a skill that I wish I could
one day be able to teach my students. Another area I am weak in is the website building. I am
familiar with and can easily use sites like Wix and etc. but I am no longer familiar with building
a site from start to finishes using software. I am not very skilled with Photoshop. I would love for
my students and I to be able to create some of our own content to use on projects.
There are also times when I have trouble sticking to the lesson plan. Often times my class
lecture and discussion is directed by student interaction and questions. Those question sometime
lead to a very different day than what is written on my lesson plan. As a result, there are times
where I feel that lesson plans are a waste of time. The issue of sticking to the letter of my plans
makes it hard for me to properly explain to my assistant principal exactly what is going on in my
class. Last but not least I struggle with communicating how I differentiate in my classes. I often
have students working on assignments at various stages all at once in every class. I always hear,
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“how are you differentiating for each student?” and I find it challenging to adequately or easily
convey the fact that every single kid is helped differently at the level and stage they are at.
Opportunities
The ability to come back to school to strengthen myself as a teacher and as an individual
is a huge opportunity for me. During the time I will spend in the Instructional Technology Ed.S
program at West Georgia I hope to learn how to better use technology in the classroom to
become a better teacher. I feel that I will be able to strengthen some of my weakness. I can learn
some networking by taking MEDT 7471, Data Networks for Instruction. I will learn how to
design technology-enhanced instruction by taking MEDT 7464. I have never designed anything
The state offers on-going workshops that allow teachers to come in a learn some of the
new and upcoming trends in my field. Some workshops allow you to works on instructional
strategies with colleagues from various counties around the state. I would use these workshops to
Threats
There are several threats when it comes to effectively implementing technology in the
classroom. One of the biggest treats would be funding. Whether it’s funding for upgrading and
staying current with equipment and trends or funding for network upgrades and repairs. A treat
that I face every semester with funding is the amount of CTAE techs we have available in our
county. Another threat is the amount emphasis that Administrators put on implementing
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technology. If for example they focus all their energies of the school on testing then as a teacher
I would probably lose time needed to implement any new educational technologies.
My goal for this up coming year is to learn enough new technologies and strategies to be
able to turn some of my weaknesses in to strengths. I want to eventually be able to handle basic
hardware, software and network issues in my classroom. I want to be able to teach my student at
least a basic level of coding. Another of my goals for this year is to improve my use of
Photoshop and share that knowledge with my kids. Over all this year I want to integrate
My Plan to accomplish these goals is to learn as much as I can in my classes this summer.
I also plan to attend a couple of workshops on the integration of various technologies in the