Monday, January 02, 2006

Welcome to '06

Being a teacher, the start of the "new year" has always felt a bit off. Nothing really changes for me on January 1. Semester doesn't even switch until the 20th. My new year is the end of August when the students come back from summer vacation.

Still, this seems like the moment to take stock. This time last year, I was only two or three classes into my Master's Degree. Now I am three from the end.

I had just started learning about weblogs, had only written a few posts, and was reading just two or three weblogs regularly. While I still haven't become a consistent, even every other week, blogger; I certainly have become dependent upon my bloglines feeds.

(As an aside, I just ran blogger's spell check and discovered that it doesn't have "blogger" in its dictionary. Spell checkers amuse me; I wonder if other English teachers get the giggles watching how they behave?)

My goal, now, is to start putting all the theory I have been reading into some form of application. There is plenty of "what" and "why" spinning around; I need to develop the "how".

  • How are these web-based resources going to work for me, my classroom, my students, my school, and my district?

  • How am I going to be part of the solution, part of the answer to the problem of getting these tools used?

  • How do I best use these tools and model their use to others?

Part of the answer is using this space more. I need to push myself more to blog the process. To wrestle with the hows in this public space.

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