I wrote this for my PhD application to University of Virginia Curry School of Education’s Instructional Technology Program in 2006. For personal reasons, I had to leave Charlottesville but am considering submitting this application again.
When reflecting upon my career since earning my Master of Science in the Geographic and Cartographic Sciences from George Mason University’s Department of Geography in 1998, there is a commonality in the diverse positions I have held. That is, my favorite role in each position has been one who explains things. Whether it be how to make a map, how to interpret the results of statistical analysis, how to explain a methodology or merely explaining the technical capabilities and limitation of a new technology, in many ways I have always been a teacher. The teaching position at Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC) has formalized that role.
With this in mind, I am applying to the Instructional Technology program at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education at the doctoral level. This program fits with my interests and would enable my goals for a career in education.
I am particularly interested in teaching current and future educators the importance of Geography and the technologies that enable geographic inquiry. My strategy is to teach Geography alongside Geographic Information Science (GIS) as an Instructional Technology. Coupled with accessible data via GoogleEarth and open-source content such as Wikipedia, academic Geography lends itself to capitalizing on the principles of Instructional Technology.
Additionally, primary and secondary Teacher education in Geography is a growing need in Virginia. Of all my PVCC students, well over half were establishing teaching credentials. According to them, some programs require at least nine credit hours of Geography. However, there is little access to Geography coursework in Central Virginia. To address this problem, I propose the development of a sequence of online courses.
I am also interested in online tools and thier use in the classroom. Student developed content should have value beyond the requirements for class. In my class, a student’s work is reviewed by the entire class and is accessible to the entire world. They are required they follow a simple editorial process. Credit for each post is awarded on a pass/fail basis, but students can submit the same post as many times as needed to get it right. This encourages students to improve their writing skills or face the consequences of a re-write or no credit. In addition, they can receive credit for submitting content to Wikipedia. This reinforcing the idea that they should view themselves not as students, but as contributors.
In summary, I am entrepreneurial, have many ideas and love teaching. My passion for learning would quickly remediate my lack of formal education coursework. I am also excited in learning formal evaluation techniques for assessing whether students are learning from my teaching strategies and the educational value of my ideas.
