In March. '07 our entire staff was required to attend the MACUL Conference at Cobo Center in Detroit. I was more than skeptical. Our school was transitioning to a 1:1 HP Laptop program, and I had the impression that we were just chasing after tech for tech's sake. Nevertheless, the conference changed my professional life. I got excited about Google's apps and decided to explore podcasting as a result of sessions I attended. For the rest of the spring I began to aggressively put mp3s on Moodle for the students. In May I required my first student podcasts.In the '07-'08 year, I decided that I could jettison my American Government text. I also presented a list of tech integration suggestions to our school administration. By the end of the year they had formed a tech integration group for '08-'09. And by that time I was growing very curious about using video (something I knew nothing about) . While serving on the tech integration committee I plunged into tech whole heartedly. I initiated my blogging on vlogs site for AP and began to use wikis and Google Sites. In November I started this blog. By December '08, I was planning my first workshops for staff and had decided to apply for the Apple's Distinguished Educator program. As part of my application, I developed a couple of major Web 2.0 projects.
Of course, the ADE experience greatly expanded my personal learning network and helped to give me the confidence to pursue sharing technology solutions and ideas with other educators. This year I presented to MAME 36 and MAPSA. I led our staff in-service day. But I had the sense of coming full circle when two week's ago I was chosen to be a presenter at the March, 2010 MACUL conference.
A lot has happened in three years.
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"Halo, 22-degree halo, Solar Halo, 22 degree solar halo - aka (incorrectly) Rainbow, Full Circle, 360 Degree, Round, Circular, Whole. Directly overhead. Morro Bay, CA. 12 June 2009. Flickr Creative Commons photo by mikebaird.
2 comments:
Larry, Very interesting story about your experience in Detroit. Thanks for the 23 Nov 2009 Creative Commons use note in your cool tech-oriented blog here by you - high school teacher Larry Baker.
Larry -- Those of us of a certain age--i.e., we didn't grow up with any degree of technological sophistication--are naturally skeptical when it comes to technology.
We know how to do this job without technology, so if we're going to include it, the technology actually needs to be an enhancement, not a distraction or needless piece of fluff.
Thanks for another thoughtful post.
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