Deb's Introduction

My brother was the one who sneaked off from Junior High during the school day to program punch cards at the University computer lab with his equally nerdy friends. I was the wordsmith who wrote for the paper and hovered a bit forlornly on the outskirts of theater nerd-dom. Worse, I wanted to work with kids. I had little hope of being "techie," nor of breaking into the burgeoning tech industry that might have made me into the soon-to-be generation of smart, rich nerds. Alas.

But I was considered at the forefront of technology as a beginning teacher, and in fact, had two pre-service jobs running computer labs at schools (one in Davenport and one in Chinatown in San Francisco) teaching LOGO, how to make simple pictures in Basic, and writing with Bank Street Writer on Apple IIe's.

Now I'm the "technology liaison" for my small alternative program which really just means I'm one of the technology geeks on the staff who's on a steep learning curve, willing to tinker, tinker, tinker with technology (alone, alongside kids, with my colleagues...) despite being "way behind" many of my students, not to mention my own teenage sons. I now have three iPods, but nothing with the moniker "touch," and my phone is not smart. I use what I have hard, even when it's hard, and when I make the jump to something new I'm stoked and a pretty good learner. Technology is about excitement, frustration, and resilience. It's about learning, unlearning, and relearning. It's about access, creation, and equity.

The technology (and the conversation, teaching, and connection) we got to tinker with at the California League of Schools tech conference in Monterey last weekend makes my fingers itch and my brain sizzle. It's getting easier and easier to use, to connect, to transform, and technology fits the way I want to be as an educator.

One small grant, in combination with a small, dedicated staff, and we are all off and running together, even when we run in different directions or at different speeds. I've done loads of professional growth, but this grant means that for the first time in my career I am doing it with my staff in a way that meets our unique needs. Not to mention we found a matching grant of a sort: Two of us won door prizes comping us another tech conference! I'm off to the CUE conference in Palm Springs in March. If we can each win something else, we can keep leveraging one grant into more and more. And this is only year one of a three year grant. Yippee!