Ramping Up!

Whew! It's official. I start an in-district sabbatical at the close of the current academic year. In the coming months, I'll be working closely with students, faculty, staff, and administration as a technology integration specialist with a primary focus on technology for instruction.

I am thankful for the opportunity to learn and serve in such a capacity, and wish to recognize the foresight of Superintendent Erinakes for encouraging me to apply, and the school committee for recognizing the need for a technology integration specialist. Former colleagues like Norm Leveillee, standouts like Doc McArdle, who mentored me throughout the nineties, Marc Hamlin, Ron Rounds, others, and I had a dream several decades ago that we could better serve the school community inside the classrooms of content area teachers much more effectively than we could by contriving projects in isolated computer application classes. Happily, the dream and reality are converging.

What's on my mind lately? We are ramping up for one to one computing! That is what keeps me thinking into the evening. One year ago, the whisper of one to one computing in EWG would have elicited chortles and snorts of derision. How far we have travelled in one year! We might not yet be in technology Nirvana, but we are in a far better place and rapidly evolving! Amen!

Another pressing issue is that I need to write about my experience. I need to tell this story of what I imagine to be purposeful transformation. I need a platform to highlight and brag about excellence in your classroom, and to be, perhaps, a mouth piece for model classrooms and exemplary practices. And, Richard Byrne (author of FreeTech4Teachers.com, a blog you should subscribe to right now) repeats that teachers should blog here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and in probably a dozen other places. So, here it goes. If you're reading, awesome! And if I'm writing into the void of space, it sure feels good to be shouting.

Until next time...

Kind regards.