Little Miss Geek

For a long time I have felt like I am at the edge of greatness. I try to surround myself with really smart people and big thinkers, hoping to soak up just a little of their awesome. I was around greatness, but just far enough away from the epicenter of greatness to not consider myself great (maybe just good-ish). I haven't really felt like anyone would care what I had to say or care about what I was doing. I currently have no less than 10 draft posts that I have written over the past couple months. Most of them are completely finished just waiting for me to hit the publish button. But something has been holding me back from sending them out for the whole world to see. For a while I had convinced myself that these posts that I had written weren't good enough or would not be well received. I spent today at #EdCampLdr Chicago, again surrounding myself with greatness. Overall it was a good day filled with thought provoking conversations. I started my afternoon in a session call...

This summer I taught Video Game Design and Crazy for Coding classes to fourth and fifth graders. As I was helping some of my Coding students create in Scratch I had the crazy idea of creating a Google Teacher Academy video game. I spent some time playing with the idea. I found some images online (that were Creative Commons licensed of course) and started to piece them together in Scratch. I hated it and decided to scratch the idea of creating a GTA game all together.  A little known fact about me ... I LOVE Google Draw! I use it on pretty much a daily basis for a wide variety of things. To me the possibilities are nearly endless. Right before leaving for Atlanta in ISTE I even used Google Draw to create my business cards. Later in the summer I was at the CPS Googlepalooza sitting in a Google Draw session led by the very awesome Jennie Magiera, and like a ton of bricks it hit me ... why was I looking for images online when I could create my own!  I started with making t...

In the words of the (very wise) Rolling Stones... "You can't always get what you want, But if you try sometimes, well you might find, You get what you need." I definitely wanted to get in to the Google Teacher Academy, like I really (REALLY) wanted it. And, ok, maybe I didn't "need" to get rejected, but... it's a good song. In all seriousness, going through the application process has helped me reflect and set goals that are helping me to grow and be better.  I am always talking to teachers about the importance of reflection. Reflection on what we have tried, reflection on the new tools and strategies we have worked on, and reflection for students. By going through the GTA application I was forced to practice what I preach. I set time aside to think about the positive changes that I am making in my learning community, to think about how I deal with difficult situations, and to realize how important it is to share and learn with a community. ...