Hi there! My name is Sara Brand and I’m a 1st grade teacher in Lilburn, GA. I have been teaching for 10 years and have taught all over the Atlanta area. I live in Stone Mountain with my partner, Van, and our 16 year old, Ian. Van is a retired Army SFC and is currently in graduate school at Georgia State studying Andean archaeology. Our oldest, Ayden, just joined the Army and married his beautiful wife, Jatari. They are in the process of moving to his first duty station in Fairbanks, Alaska. In addition to teaching, I am also a food blogger at Biscuit & Burlap, a Southern food blog I write with my mom.
The first goal I have this semester in the Information Fluency & Inquiry class is to develop a personal learning network to learn from and grow with as I embark on this new journey in instructional technology. I have worked hard to develop a network as it relates to my online business (a food blog, recipe developments, and food photography company I began several years ago), but not as it relates to my career in education.
Another goal I have is to find ways to use my knowledge and experience in technology to help other educators. Last year when students and teachers were forced out of the classroom and online, I was at an advantage because I was already accustomed to using technology in my other job, so the transition was not a difficult one. However, my coworkers were “out of sight, out of mind” and I did not use my knowledge to make their transitions seamless as well. In the future, I’d like to find ways to use what I know to help others in education.
My final goal for this course, and for the program overall, is to begin to form a plan for what I want to do with my instructional technology degree once it is obtained. Do I want to remain in the classroom, using my education to benefit my students? Do I want to pursue a career on the administrative or county level tp develop and improve the instructional technology use within the schools? Or do I want to move out of the school environment and work with a curriculum company or something similar to make their content more accessible to students and educators?
Ms. Brand's IT Learning Portfolio 