And first, a funny story:
I took my kids downtown today to give my wife a break. We were gonna chill at Better World Books for a while, then I was going to take them down to Olympia Candy Kitchen for a piece of pre-lunch candy - a treat they never get. Well, as we're walking into BWB I see this kid wearing a Spiderman costume. "Huh..." I thought... "Must be getting an early start..." And nothing clicked as I walked into BWB and the staff were all wearing costumes as well. Turns out I was taking my costume-less kids on a walk through downtown Goshen during the designated "Downtown Trick-or-Treat" time. I had just told them I was taking them to Olympia, so they were really excited to go. But we had to walk past all these other stores with candy to buy a piece of candy. Not only that, but we were getting tons of disapproving looks from store owners and parents who took the time to dress up their kids. Looks like, "what'd you dress your kids up as this year? Kids?"
"Yep buddy, I did. Now back off."
Actually, the store owners were really nice about it, but I felt like I had to explain to each one, "No, we're not actually trick-or-treating... we just want to go buy a piece of candy... Yes I know it sounds dumb, but... well, ok... thank you... don't mind if I do..." *glares from other parents as the three of us reach our hands in the bowl.*
Speaking of candy, in discussing the intellectually worded question, "How can you encourage your professional colleagues to engage in ongoing development in terms of technology integration?" Teacher Talk With a Thompson mentioned bribing teachers with candy in order to get them hooked on technology. Not a bad idea, says I.
Before reading her blog, I could only think of emailing the entire school my ideas or using some passive aggressive/ guilt-tripping tactics... "Ohhhh.... you don't use technology in your classroom? ... ... Huh..." *raises eyebrows*
I'll say that most of my idea sharing between colleagues happens either at block lunch, or social studies lunch. Social studies lunches are the best. We all help each other out. We all received SMARTboards this year and we'll tell each other new tricks we've learned. Man, one guy made a version of Settlers of Catan for the SMARTboard. It utilized all sorts of features that I could only bring forth in dreams. His kids were learning about civilizations, trading/economics, etc... Awesome.
So, I'll share stuff in there as well. I'm excited to learn more about Edmodo. That will be my next techno-lunch-share.
As for being a teacher leader, that shouldn't be too difficult since I don't see anybody else paving the way. What I mean is, we've got a lot of teachers sharing a lot of great ideas, but nobody has really come forward and said, "You guys got a question about something techy - come see me." Of course, now that I see that in writing I'm not sure I want to be any more of a teacher leader than I already am. I could be our team leader again, but I dropped that so I could focus on my master's work. I like the system we have now. We've got many leaders, blazing different technological paths.
Lets make this a little chaistic here, beginning and ending with something off topic:
If you haven't watched this yet, watch it. If you have, watch it again. It's pretty funny. October Light's a bunch of Christian Croatians who formed a band. It's a nice little tribute to their country.
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