Katie Blunt is an Educational Technology Specialist in the Canyons School District in Sandy, Utah. In 2009 Canyons became a brand-new school district, serving over 33,000 students in 45 schools. Katie was an original member of the Canyons District Elementary Ed Tech team, playing an important role in the formation and mobilization of the District and the creation of its educational technology vision.
Katie was born and raised in Escondido, California. She moved to Provo, Utah in 1995 to attend college at Brigham Young University where she majored in Elementary Education. She completed her student teaching at Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary in southeast Washington, DC as a participant in the BYU Urban Student Teaching program. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree from BYU in 2000 and in 2009 earned her Master’s Degree in Instructional Design and Educational Technology from the University of Utah. She has teaching endorsements in ESL, Educational Technology, Multimedia, and Keyboarding. Katie taught sixth grade for eight years in the Jordan School District in Sandy, Utah. During those years she also worked as the building tech, K-6 computer lab teacher, computer-based testing coordinator, sixth grade team leader, and Student Council advisor. Some of her favorite teaching projects included producing and directing various music, dance, and drama productions and student-created newscasts. As an Ed Tech Specialist, Katie supports teachers in their use of educational technology by connecting technology tools to core curriculum, modeling lessons, training teachers, working with students, and developing professional development curriculum. Katie has been assigned to work on a variety of District and school-based projects including developing and implementing the District’s elementary keyboarding program, film festival, professional development courses, iPad, iPod, and Netbook pilots, podcast production, Ed Tech Endorsement program, and iOS 1:1 plan. Katie served as the 2015-16 president of the Utah Coalition for Educational Technology (UCET). During her many years on the UCET board and executive committee she helped with projects including the annual UCET conference, EdCamp Utah, and the UCET blog, newsletter, and Twitter chat. She has been a presenter at the UCET conference as well as the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference, of which UCET is an affiliate. In 2011 Katie was named UCET's very first Outstanding Young Educator of the year. In 2017 Katie was nominated as a Utah American Graduate Teacher Champion. She was the 2016 Education Support Professional of the Year at the Canyons School District APEX awards. In January 2012 she was spotlighted in the Utah Education Network (UEN) monthly “Teacher Feature". She has represented Canyons School District in several newspaper and TV news interviews, has been awarded several grants to help purchase technology for her schools, was a winner in the National Energy Foundation’s “Igniting Creative Energy” short film contest in 2005 and 2006, and in 2002 represented the BYU Urban Student Teaching program at a dinner honoring former Secretary of Education Ron Paige. |
Ed Tech ProjectsEducational WebsitePodcastiOS Apps |