RAFAEL'S PORTFOLIO

            Growing up, technology played a very relevant role in my life. For a variety of reasons, I spent a huge portion of my time online, and I was presented with a wide range of opportunities to make friends from distant locations and different cultures, both from my native Brazil and elsewhere. Such social interactions allowed for valuable learning experiences that helped directly in my identity development: from a young age, I could not see where I fit in my immediate context of southern Brazil. I viewed myself as a collection of distinct experiences and different discourses, and that perception persists to this day.

            My previous professional experiences, however, had little to do with technology. Even though I grew up connected to the internet, and considering that my virtual life contributed greatly to my linguistic development in English, my undergraduate studies in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) did not have technology as a focus. I did have an online teaching experience during an internship, but that experience did not present an opportunity to investigate linguistic gains facilitated by online environments. That said, I was certain that I was on my way to becoming a skilled English teacher, but that did not satisfy my personal curiosity about my own linguistic development in that language, which had come mainly through virtual interactions, and video games, one of my great passions.

            As a researcher, both as a Masters student in Applied Linguistics at the State University of Londrina, Brazil, and as a Fulbright Portuguese Teaching Assistant at the University of Georgia, I was able to experiment and connect my teaching experiences to my love for video games. Both the practical and theoretical work that I have carried out in those contexts helped me to realize that I wanted to be a student of Learning, Design, and Technology at the University of Georgia in order to acquire a stronger foundation of knowledge in this field..

            I first joined the Learning, Design, and Technology program at UGA to develop my knowledge about technology integration in Education. Having in mind my previous academic and professional experiences in Language Teaching (English and Portuguese) and Literacy Development, I also aimed to learn about ways to improve language and literacy instruction with assistance of technological tools. Fortunately, the program has helped me to develop such thinking, and other experiences during the Research Masters, both curricular and extracurricular, have led me to new directions and objectives. After graduation, I would like to continue investigating the connection between literacy development and technologies in practice and research as a PhD student in Learning, Design, and Technology, actively using the extensive knowledge on the topic that I have acquired during the program and expanding on it. 

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