Past learning, new learning and how this learning will impact your future lifelong learning…that is a huge order. Past learning, well to begin with, I guess I’ll have to give away my age; I graduated from high school in 1980. There wasn’t a computer in our school in any way shape or form. Actually, we were so excited to have electric typewriters for our typing class! My teachers lectured, I took notes, read the book, and regurgitated what I knew. Time came for college, what did I want to be when “I grow up.” I read somewhere how data input operators were going to be in high demand in the future, my future, I wanted to do that. I applied for college as a Data Processing major. I worked with shoeboxes full of punch cards that I carried to a processing window where some guy fed them into a computer larger than my house and in 3 or 4 days I picked up a printout of my data. In hindsight, I was actually a computer programming major. Family circumstances forced me to quit school. About 10 years later, in a much different world, I decided to finish my degree. Once again I wanted to be a computer science major with a math minor. Computers are everywhere; I bought one for my family with a 20 mg HD. I remember thinking, “We’ll never use ALL that space!” My professors still lectured, I still took notes, read the book and regurgitated information. Not much had changed in the classroom. Soon computers became more and more important to everyone everywhere even education, and not just in the high school offices where I worked while working on my degree. I wanted to teach! I quit work and went back to college full time in 1997, but they did not have the degree that I wanted, maybe I was ahead of my time, I wanted to teach people how to use the computer, I did not want to be a programmer, my professor laughed, I wish he could see me now! My family jokingly said that I was on “the twenty year plan” when I received my BA in History, long story…in 2000. I wanted to teach using technology but most schools didn’t have it. However, God had plans for me, and due to a TIE4 grant, and a forward looking school superintendent, my first teaching job was Technology Integrator. My job description was to teach teachers how to use technology in the classroom, really! My goal was to convince teachers that a “student centered” classroom was more effective than and “teach centered” classroom. All of our teachers had a computer in the classroom but other than that, not much had changed even after twenty years and change was certainly going to be--a challenge to say the least, but I loved it! I have never looked back, oh along the way I’ve taught U.S. History, and Multimedia to students, but for the most part, my teaching career has been to assist teachers with technology in the classroom. Today I’m earning my Masters completely online! I AM a life long learner, and I will continue to learn, and I will continue to enjoy sharing what I learn with others.
