Technology and Me

My name is Caroline Forster and I am originally from the great state of Iowa. I was born and raised in Bettendorf, which is part of the Quad Cities located on the Mississippi River. Upon graduation from high school I attended the University of Iowa where I made many life long friends who share my passion for anything Hawkeye related. The year after college I served in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and worked in an inner-city grade school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While I loved my job I was not the biggest fan of Milwaukee, so after my tenure was up I packed my bags and moved to Chicago with many of my college friends. Once in Chicago I gained employment in event planning and media sales, and went to Loyola University Chicago where I graduated with my MBA. Currently I am engaged to a wonderful guy who I met during my business career and thankfully he shares my passion for both domestic and international travel. We will be married on June 18th and will continue to make Chicago our home.

Both of my grandmothers, one of my grandfathers, my mother and all of her sisters are teachers, so I grew up in a family highly focused on education. In high school I coached junior high volleyball and was always actively involved with children of all ages, but I suppressed my teacher urges in college and followed the money making business path. I loved my year of teaching with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, but felt compelled to use my business degree and pursue a line of work suitable to my studies. My best friend and former roommate is an inner-city high school teacher in Chicago and I have spent countless hours over the past six years listening to the joys, trials and tribulations of her teaching career. I have also spent a lot of time mentoring her students for different projects, assisting with her swim team and being a field trip chaperone. Although she has faced a lot of challenges in her career, the joy and passion that she feels towards her students was what I was lacking in the business world. I have had a lot of success, but I know that I was not in the right place, or serving where I am needed, which is in the classroom. My favorite part of my sales career was mentoring and training the new employees, which I feel is a huge sign that teaching is truly my calling and I am finally where I belong.

I have taken numerous technology courses both in my undergraduate and graduate studies, and technology has always been a vital part of my career. I am constantly browsing the Internet, sharing photos, or music, social networking, exchanging email, and finding daily deals. My most recent career was in Media Sales, so I am certified to sell both Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization products. Other aspects of my job involved virtual presentations, designing banner and top placement advertisements, creating content for website designers and working with graphic designers designing print advertisements. I made e-presentations daily and coached new sales representatives on how to tie technology into their presentations and jobs. I feel that I am technologically proficient, but as technology is constantly changing there is always more to learn.

I am very excited to take this course and learn more about tying technology and teaching together. I want to learn how to make engaging presentations for elementary school children and how to actively involve technology in the classroom, so that the students have hands on experience. Our world is now global and technology creates so many experiences that children were not able to have before. I am hoping you can show us how to fully take advantage of all of the resources available to make our classrooms advanced and in step with the twenty-first century.