If you’ve been following me on Twitter for any substantial length of time, you’ll know that I’ve been searching for, preparing documents for, and applying to graduate schools for the 2009-10 academic year. Well, after returning from a 4-day field trip in the jungle with 66 sixth-graders, I received this email (abridged) from the program director of NYU Steinhardt’s Educational Communication and Technology program:
Dear Adrienne,
The ECT Faculty Admissions Committee is pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the Fall 2009 Master of Arts class in the Program in Educational Communication and Technology. This is our pre-notification to you. You will receive your official acceptance package from the Steinhardt Office of Graduate Admissions within the next week to 10 days.The ECT faculty hope you continue to view the focus of our program — the design of technology-based learning environments, informed by theory in the learning sciences — an excellent match with your professional interests and goals.
Congratulations! I’m so sure you are going to love NYC! Just curious, what made you choose these three programs to apply to?
Thanks, Kim! The process of choosing programs was long. I’ve been contemplating grad school for about 5 years, but only seriously in the last 3 years. I did a lot of research to find schools that I was interested in. Basically, I wanted a program that would allow me to focus on the intersection of literacy and technology, but I knew I didn’t want a standard EdTech Integrationalist credential. Primarily, I want to learn more about how to design learning environments to improve student writing. So, I was looking for programs that were project-based, not thesis-based, AND I wanted a program that would allow me to do an internship, because I’m interested in how “non-educational” settings can influence education. The second interest area has just developed recently — I want to explore further how MYP can integrate learning with technology fully into its program in a standardized way; currently, it’s not standardized at all, and this bothers me somewhat because I think the IBO programs are so forward-thinking and generally would support this kind of movement.
Phew! That was a long reply! But it is actually the short version! For even more detail, you can read my oh-so-engaging (/sarcasm) Statement of Purpose, which I’ve linked to above. There are individuals at each of the three schools that I really would like to learn with, as I think their research is so relevant. (The Statement of Purpose above is only for NYU, though.)
Congrats Adrienne! Great news – exciting times ahead for you. Hope to run into you at EARCOS this week.
Congratulations! You must be very excited.
Adrienne,
Congratulations. I have been reading your blog after Brian Lockwood introduced me to you and spoke so highly of your ideas around technology and education. I was looking for educational and development graduate programmes but of late have been considering a simliar path to yours, but will need to study at least partially from distance perhaps with some summer programmes. Did you consider an on-line or distance approach and did you find any universities that offered anything interesting in the ed tech area?
On a separate path, all of our middle school students at YIS have their own blogs/ digital learning spaces and I am now looking for schools that may want to interact with us. So far most of the comments and interaction has been within the school but with some good posts and projects now on there it would be great to set up some relationships with other schools. We have been experimenting mainly in the English department using this http://yisenglishdept.edublogs.org/ as our hub page and the students’ blogs linked by initial down the side. I know you must now be thinking ahead to next year but might still be possible to set up some links between the schools or even collaborate on future projects…Colin
Colin – thanks so much for your detailed comment and invitation. I will send you an email shortly about both Masters programs and the collaboration possibility. And, know that I have passed on your offer to other members of the English A dept here at UNIS.