I'm not a blogger

I've tried. Three, four entries with increasing timespan between them until the trickle stops completely. I'm not much of one for journaling and that is what blogging has seemed to be to me, although I am fascinated by and follow many bloggers (I'll set that up later). I write all the time, but my words are usually directed somewhere external.

Why a new blog now? It is time for a manifesto of sorts, and none of my Nings seem to be the place to put such a thing. I came close to doing a major edit on a Wiki I am involved with, but I wanted this signed and dated and MINE. I don't want to post these particular ideas on my school hosted site since I'm not limiting myself to discussion of technology there, so here I am.

My latest frustration is that I can't seem to answer the simplest of questions "what do you do?" I am involved with the instructional use of technology to help students learn and teachers teach. Seems straightforward. My non-technology education background includes special education, middle school, science, language arts and reading. It's not as mixed up as it seems, most of those happened in conjunction with one another. My technology education background evolved over the last 15 years as it did for many of us who started with 10 Macs in a makeshift lab in a converted storage closet. So maybe that is my point. If I'm a tech integrationist, then aren't I also a teacher of reading and writing? A teacher of problem-solving? A teacher who uses differentiation? Of course. But recognition of dual functionality is hard to communicate in academia and, apparently, hard to budget. How do I explain the value I add to an educational program? Why is the already excellent classroom in which I've been immersed this year better now than it was before I arrived? That sounds like another post. . .