Shift to the Future

Along with about 20,000 others last week, I was learning at the pace of tweets.  ISTE puts on a pretty amazing conference each year where educators involved with educational technology gather en mass.  This year ISTE hailed from San Antonio, Texas home of the famous Alamo where the Texan’s and Mexicans had their standoff in 1836.  The temperature was a balmy 38 degrees Celsius with a “feels like” of 46.  Prior to heading down, I noticed via Twitter that a colleague I only knew through tweets and blogs was there so we arranged to meet Saturday evening for dinner.  After enjoying some amazing Texan ribs, we wandered over to the Alamo – it was closed so could only see the outside. This was pretty exciting for me as I had read about the Alamo battle in a historical fiction novel recently.  It was cool to experience a piece of history in person I only knew through a book.  San Antonio has a river, well “creek” might better describe it, that meanders through the down town with restaurants

I continue to marvel at how much our world has changed since I was in school over 30 years ago.  I remember Physics 12 classes where the teacher would dim (turn off) the lights, fire up the reel to reel projector, and we’d sit back, relax, and enjoy a scintillating monotonic black and white moving picture film of some guy describing velocity, acceleration, and friction by moving an object down an inclined plain.  Okay, I often fell asleep… it was just too overwhelmingly exciting…  There was one computer in the school, actually the entire District, and it was in my Math class.  It wasn’t wireless.  Education was completely paper based, chalk board, and lecture oriented.  I learned, I became successful, I continue to learn.  I suspect that many of you reading this are also products of the old non-technology education world and are also successful in your chosen field.  Seems the old system worked pretty good.  So why is it those of us engaged in educational technology pursuits advocate f

I am the type of person who pursues big ideas, big problems, and adrenaline charged activities.  For many years I engaged in somewhat extreme (not according to today’s crazy riders but…) downhill mountain biking.  There’s something invigorating about facing down a laddered launch about 10-12 feet high 15 feet out over a gulf to the other side.  I loved the adrenaline rush caused by fear and accomplishment.  The key to success is total commitment, any hesitation and things can go horribly wrong as they did numerous times for me – broken bones, torn ligaments, and for quite some time afterward, apprehension and fear.  I still ride hard but have switched to all mountain / cross country – high speed and flowee but much safer (getting older and wiser). Last week Saturday two of my sons, one of their friends, and I went skydiving for the first time to celebrate my 50th birthday.  Wow!  What a rush that was.  I am afraid of heights so expected to be quite nervous – that didn’t happen though