Setting future goals or planning for future learning experiences is rather complex because there is a lot of uncertainty in the world of technology and education: the exponentially advancing digital technologies have led to exponential growth in innovation, essentially making the predictability of the future nearly impossible or at least hard to plan for. For example, remember when everyone tried to plan for Y2K? … and then it was a bust? No one wanted to be “that guy” who had horded years worth of food and water in their basement. Similarly, since we can’t begin to fathom the technological advancements that will be available to us in the years to come, trying to create a plan that guides us towards a more sustainable future using tools that don’t exist yet can be scary. As an educator, I must train my students for jobs that may not even exist yet. I must instill the qualities of a creative problem solver and innovative thinker to help my students prepare for a world of unknowns. And, while uncertainty often causes fear, it opens the door to opportunity, creativity, and an abundance of new resources.

As I reflect on my future learning and the endless possibilities that lie ahead of me, I have established goals to guide my learning along the way. My overarching goal is to stay current in my teaching and learning practices to ensure that I am meeting the needs of my students and preparing them for the unknown future. This is clearly an evolutionary goal; that is, it will change with learners’ needs and classes. More specifically, I have established three goals for moving forward after my Master’s in Educational Technology. They are as follows: to stay up to date in best practices, to continue to grow, expand and interact with my professional learning community, and to implement tools and resources that I learned about over the course of this program to improve and organize my instructional practice.