Meme: Passion Quilt
Last week I was tagged by an ITRT from Roanoke with a meme quilt. At first, although I was honored that Meg selected me, I panicked so much that I decided to push this to a back burner. Blogging is pretty new to me so I was not sure that i would have much to say.
To participate with the tag, I was to find or upload a picture that demonstrates what makes me so passionate about teaching with technology. There are so many things that make me passionate about teaching with technology but as I stopped to reflect, I have to say that the picture below best represents it for me.
If you watch television at all, you will recognize the traveling Gnome. Technology takes us out of our classrooms and gives us a chance to allow our students to see parts of the world they would never experience and interact with other learners that they would never meet otherwise.
The first time I attempted a technology based lesson was after I attended a TTI conference, then known as NTTI. Prior to this conference, I had only dismal experiences working with a computer and I was not sold on the idea that this would be a useful educational tool. The first session I sat in was run by a kindergarten teacher named Betsy Weaver. She had the most AWESOME lesson I had ever seen, and integrated into it was technology. She made it seem so easy. I was sure that I could do what she was doing. I took her lesson back the next Monday to my classroom and with a few modifications, pulled off a technology based lesson. My principal was very impressed. Even more impressed than my principal was me. My kids were actually engaged and learning. And they LOVED it!
The school I was working with then had a large low-income population, and high Title I numbers so was considered an “at risk” school. As I began to look for ways to use technology to support my instruction, I saw my students’ achievement levels rising higher and higher. Today, as an ITRT I push for teachers to collaborate with others outside the four walls of the classroom. In fact, I just wrote and was awarded a grant which will allow me to place web cams in all our elementary schools. The best education can be obtained by interacting with as many other learners as possible! It use to take a village to raise a child; now it takes the entire world and technology makes this happen!
I am suppose to now continue the meme. The problem is, I am the only one in my division that blogs, and like I said, I just started. Most of the techie gurus I interact with on the web have micro blogs or Tumblr sites. However, I do have a few blogs that I want to toss to. These people are giants in our field and don’t know me so I hope they accept.
The rules are simple:
The Meme toss goes to:
Jen Wagner
Tech Ice Breaker
Jeff Utecht from The Thinking Stick
http://www.thethinkingstick.com/?p=641
Sharon Peters
http://www.mtl-peters.net/blog/?page_id=21
Silvia Tolsano
http://www.langwitches.org/blog/
