The Inaugural Post: Keeping Apace of Change

Thanks for stopping by. I’ll start this blog off with a brief introduction and statement of purpose:

FACT: The period between June 2007 and June 2008 will be one of major change in my personal and professional lives. In this year-long time frame, I will:

1. Turn 30
2. Become a father for the second time
3. Finish my eighth year of teaching high school English
4. Complete my graduate degree (Ed.S. in School Psychology)
5. Likely end my career as a teacher and start anew in the field of school psychology

I’m sure this will turn out to be only a partial list, but it’s all I’m prepared for at the moment. I am starting this blog for a few reasons, not the least of which is to act as some kind of self-therapy. More directly, however, I want to engage with other educators – not just teachers, but administrators, psychologists, LDTCs, and others in the education field – as to uses for much of the technology that is available to us.

In the last year and a half, I’ve reviewed a lot of technological tools for potential use in my classroom. Some of it I felt could serve a strong purpose in my teaching; others, not so much. For better or for worse, though, that evaluation began and ended with me. I don’t feel as though I’ve had many people I could talk to at length about the applications of these tools, simply because I’m the only one in the immediate area who knew anything about them. That’s absolutely not a shot at my colleagues; I respect them highly. However, it doesn’t take a mind reader to know when people in the workroom are sick of you blabbing about wiki-this and podcast-that.

I’ve titled my blog “Apace of Change” because it so precisely sums up my life situation: trying to keep abreast of ever-changing technology while also dealing with significant changes in my personal and professional lives. This is going to be something of a transition year for me, and as I prepare to leave one career behind to start another, I’m hoping to use my awareness of the educational applications of technology like wikis, weblogs, podcasts, IM, etc., to bridge the gap between teaching and psychology.

That’s where you come in. I invite you to leave comments, pose questions, call me out, tell me what you do, anything. I’m really doing this for the collaborative aspect – I need to talk about these issues with people, and where else other than Edublogs am I likely to find such folks?

Besides, talk is cheap. Therapy’s expensive.