The Adventure Begins...

As I've said on Twitter lately, I've been hanging around in the tech and education blogospheres so long that I finally feel really to participate and contribute rather than just lurk and learn. I've been hesitant because A) I don't have lots of free time (I'm sure none of you out there have that issue?!) and B) I am not convinced I have anything new to add or say. It's a waste of time and space to blog about nothing, right? I have a long way to grow.

Well, this year I am teaching my students to start blogging so I will definitely get serious about doing some reflection on my life, my students, my teaching, and my writing. Tomorrow will be our 8th day of school this year and it's time to get started. We are going to wiki this year, too!

I'm excited to be involved in a few global projects and collaborations in the near future. More to come on that.

You'll perhaps get a laugh out of the fact that my IT department only just decided the other day to allow me to install Flash, Java and Quicktime on my student machines after I plead with them for a couple of years. Don't think we don' t have lots of fun in other ways, though: visit us at www.d11.org/mann/computerliteracy (beta).

This year for the first time I've installed a wifi network in my classroom lab (33 desktops) and have purchased my own tablet PC. Others in the building are getting SmartBoards but I'm not, so I hope to use the tablet in the same ways you might use the SmartBoard. Mostly I do not want to be stuck up at my "presentation station" to teach, so wireless should give me the freedom to move a lot more. Oh, but don't get too excited yet -- the wifi doesn't let me into the network or the internet -- security concerns (and a bit of paranoia if you ask me), plus a backlog at the IT department, mean that I have to wait until my higher-ups decide how to configure my network before I can actually use it. The help request has been gathering dust for 2 weeks. Sigh.

My interests: teaching, mentoring, coaching, professional development, amateur web design, green housing, reading, blogs, cooking, mountain biking, weight lifting, gadgets, my 20-year-old son and his fiance', dancing, health & fitness (including weight loss, of course), podiobooks, podcasts, science fiction, personal growth (a must!), coffee, gardening, and of course, spending as much time as possible with family and friends instead of living in front of this screen.

This first post is a test; I'm not even sure yet that my students and I can get into Classroom 2.0 at school because of my district's internet filter. We shall see. Right now I have a teaching web site, several Think.com web sites, a personal web site, this page, and a few other social networking pages I just don't have time to do anything with, and I'm subscribed to about 185 blogs, so my experiment may be short-lived.