Self Introduction

Hello! My name is Jennifer Styron. I am a higher education administration doctoral student at The University of Southern Mississippi. I am in my first year of course work and have just started my minor courses in instructional technology. My second technology course, IT 645, Computers in Education, requires my colleagues and myself to create a blog where we will reflect weekly on our lessons, videos, discussions we have in our online course.

I graduated with my undergraduate degree in 2003. Post graduation I worked for my sorority, Alpha Sigma Alpha as a national leadership consultant. I was responsible for the mid-west and Alaska chapters and really enjoyed working with student leaders and members of our chapters. After traveling for a year I moved to Portland, Oregon and worked as a national admissions advisor for an online university. It was through this position that I discovered my passion for technology. I enrolled into the College Student Personnel Program at Southern Miss in 2006, received my Master’s and started my pursuit of a doctoral degree.

In my undergraduate coursework I took one fully online course and one hybrid course. In my graduate coursework I have taken three hybrid classes and start my first three fully online courses this summer. I am an avid supporter of Apple and have recently started preparing for their certification tests in the support and server modules. I am proficient in iWork and iLife and love teaching faculty and students how to utilize such softwares. I have created multiple recruitment and marketing materials within this software and prepare almost every presentation in iWork’s Keynote (what I like to consider Powerpoint on steroids). I also am proficient in Microsoft Office and SPSS on the PC platform using these tools almost daily within my educational program for papers and research projects. I also have beginner/intermediate experience in Adobe Suite and Promethean board technologies. Last year I developed the College Student Personnel website as well as our Southern Miss Online web pages. My first IT course trained us on Flash and Photoshop enabling me to create a course related website and electronic portfolio for my professional development. I love learning new software and enjoy technology immensely.

In regards to my experience with electronic communication tools I have experience in email, discussion boards, and listservs. Live chats and chat rooms are a component that I have never used so I look forward to the opportunity to utilize these tools this summer. My initial experience with electronic communications, especially discussion boards is that it is extremely time consuming. I understand the benefits of an engaged discussion however in my previous experiences discussion board has been a requirement instead of a general area for students to discuss course related issues, ideas, etc.

I created a blog last year which never received any feedback so I am eagerly looking forward to having colleagues review and comment on issues presented on my blog! I have also created personal and course related podcasts and videos so I feel very comfortable with these technologies and welcome projects that allow us the ability to incorporate them. I have never used a WIKI before and hope to gain some experience within this tool this semester.

My overall expectation is to learn how to utilize educational technologies in both teaching and learning environments. I believe that I will gain a lot from our self-guided lessons as well as my colleagues in the class, some of which already having years of experience with incorporating such tools. I hope at the end of the semester I will have a better understanding of how to assess, build, and maintain such technologies providing me the opportunity to incorporate them into my future teaching endeavors. I hope you enjoy my site and look forward to any discussions, questions or comments you may have!