Technological Surprises

I had planned to start my blog while on a plane tomorrow morning en route to Washington D.C. for a symposium as part of the Teachers for Global Classrooms program. However, two things happened today that I feel compelled to mention tonight.

The first is that I get to be the pilot teacher in both my own school and Area 6 of my district for EDMODO. My school district has about 125 schools so each "area" is about 20 schools. I am beyond thrilled at implementing this "controlled" social media medium with various colleagues and shortly my students. The ideal is for me to be conversing securely with my students before I travel to Ukraine on April 14th.

Secondly, when my new principal arrived in August he immediately implemented a fundraiser to acquire Smartboards for about ten classrooms. They were installed in the teachers' classrooms whose homeroom students sold the most magazines during the fundraising initiative. While my homeroom sold magazines, we were not one of the top sellers. My former principal did not assign subject area coordinators a homeroom, so this is the first time in five years I've had a homeroom. That being said, in August I was doing good to conquer all the homeroom paperwork much less aggressively promote magazine sales.

Fast-forward to about two weeks ago. My principal notified us that there was enough money to purchase and install one additional Smartboard. Any interested teachers were to submit their names. So I did along with 10-15 other teachers. A faculty-wide e-mail came from Dr. Downs late this afternoon....today was the drawing, and my name was the one pulled!! I've gone from having no document camera to having both a nice document camera AND Smartboard in about three months!!! One of my dear friends and colleagues sent me an e-mail this evening that meant a lot and made me smile. It began: "Congratulations on your new toy.  I can only imagine the places you will go! :)"

These two happenstances are intertwined with my TGC experience. That might seem odd to many at first, but the connections will be evident when I do my "setting the stage" post tomorrow while soaring across the skies to D.C. ;-)

Until tomorrow.....