How did I get here?

Wow! I did it, my very own blog. If you would have asked me who bloggers were I would not have expected myself to be included. I am a middle school modern language exploratory teacher who lives in a very small town kind of in the middle of Iowa. I am not a guru or expert on anything and definitely not a technology wiz. So how did I end up here? Let’s blame it on Vegas and my Australian pen pal.

Did I get your attention there? You see when I was in my middle school French class things were still running old school. We paid a dollar and got a pen pal from the country we selected. I started with five pen pals from all over the world and Andrew from Australia is the one that stuck. We have written each other for twenty-five years and I consider our relationship’s evolution to coincide with the evolution of Web 2.0. We started with snail mail, which we still occasionally use, and phone calls. That was all we had from junior high to high school, but when I was in college email came along. I can remember telling Andrew we could email anyone on our campus, and he responded with how cool it would be if we could someday email between our countries. It wasn’t long and we were doing just that. Last year he coerced me into creating a Facebook account because we could keep up better. Andrew and his daughter were my very first friends and truly I didn’t expect many more. Within days I had requests coming in like mad from high school and college friends, other teachers, and my daughter’s friends. I found out my 20th class reunion was being done almost entirely on Facebook.

So how did Vegas play in? Andrew had to come to the states in March for work and since we had never met, we decided it was time and we picked Vegas. I took a couple of personal days and my husband and I met Andrew along with three other of his American pen pals for a long weekend. Right before I left, our principal had offered an opportunity for teams of teachers to write up a tech proposal and the administration would select teams to pilot new technology and then train others. The perk was we could ask for whatever we needed for the project. Several of us talked about it over lunch and thought it sounded like a good deal and decided on net books and flip video cameras. Because I was leaving for Vegas, my great colleagues wrote the proposal and sent it to me to look over. After a few times back and forth we submitted it and found out we were selected. That’s when it hit me. Now I have to learn how to do this stuff and quickly, so of course I went in search of a class. So that’s how I ended up with my very own blog. Blogging is one of the assignments in the technology course I am taking, Web 2.0 for the 21st Century Classroom.

I was hit with another curve ball when I ended up with a surgery scheduled for the first day of the on-line course. I once again went the old school route and contacted the teacher via email and she allowed me to work ahead before the surgery. So now I am asked to reflect on how things are going with the class. I am seeing the advantages of technology first hand. I would have missed a week off a traditional class since I can’t drive. I can also only sit up for short periods of time, so I work 10-15 minutes and then lay down for awhile. When I start again everything is still in the same place it was before. I can re-watch the video clips if the pain killers had me in too much off a fog the first time. Before the web, I probably would have dropped the course. With the technology, I am still right on track.

So here I go, jumping in to the unknown with my copy of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson. I also read his article, Becoming Network-Wise(Educational Leadership, March 2009) and I am sold that technology is the way to go. In the article, Richardson states "we can use our own networks to connect to other classrooms to co-create and collaborate on projects and content, and we can give those works real, global audiences by publishing them on-line."(pg.31, Educational Leadership, March 2009) I teach French and Spanish to middle school students. One of the biggest battles I fight is getting the students to see the people in other countries as real people. What better way then having them work together? The students also want to know when they will use languages in "real" life, so perhaps a blog or on-line survery of some sort with area leaders and businesses.

Finally, the Joy of Blogging by Davis and McGrail(Educational Leadership, March 2009) states, "Brain research indicates that growth is enhanced when students move beyond their comfort zones, and into the unknown."(Brooks & Brooks 1994;Jensen1993) I am not sure where it will all go, but I will get over my fear of the unknown and dive right in. I can always use a little more brain growth. If you need anymore encouragement, check out this video, Technology Fear Factor in Education. I had to watch it twice before I could read the text message spellings so I consider it tech training as well.