Ok, it has been a long journey. I have learned more than I can put into words and I hope and pray that the learning continues! It has not all been easy but I can say it has been worth it. Even if I don't ever get a position as a technology coach, I feel I am more prepared than most to handle what is "coming down the pike" of education. We need to be willing to be taught, both by teachers and students. The role of the teacher is changing to more of a facilitator of learning, than a giver of knowledge. When we recognize our strengths and weaknesses and use both to the best of our ability, that is when we become true educators for the future.
It has been a very fine line for me, as I have 2 children of my own now in college. They would not even think of taking a class without access to a computer or the internet. However, when I went to college, my first computer class was problem solving with FORTRAN, which dealt with writing code so that it could be punched on cards and then fed into another machine for the program to work. Boy, have we come a long way! Microsoft Office did not even exist, I had a typewriter and white-out for mistakes, and I only had one copy of the paper I wrote.
I don't think I will ever be able to keep up with the growing demands of technology or how quickly children of today catch on, but maybe I am the link between the past and the future. I am that teacher who has a foot in both worlds. I recognize where I came from and where today's generation is, and I am trying to find a way to merge the two worlds. I hope that people from my time will have the desire to learn what I have learned and that the up and coming generation will be patient enough to listen to those who learned a different way. Just because we learn differently does not mean we don't share the same knowledge. I do hope I can make a difference.
