{"id":4502,"date":"2013-03-31T13:19:28","date_gmt":"2013-03-31T18:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbinnebraska.com\/?p=4502"},"modified":"2013-03-31T13:40:39","modified_gmt":"2013-03-31T18:40:39","slug":"yeah-but-thats-just-barb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/barbinnebraska.com\/yeah-but-thats-just-barb\/","title":{"rendered":"Yeah, but that’s just Barb…."},"content":{"rendered":"

During EdCampOmaha<\/a>, I happened upon a conversation about something I’ve been thinking about lately. I stopped and joined in. That’s one of the beauties of an EdCamp, it’s ok to jump into any session and ask a question, share, or just listen.<\/p>\n

The question was, how do you get other teachers on board with technology. I know that it can be a struggle. I’m very lucky that my principal is on board with all the technology that I have incorporated into my classroom. She is encouraging of the other teachers to use it too. My school does a great job, but we can do better!<\/p>\n

That’s the point. We can all do better. We can all learn a new tool to use. Think of a new way to use an application. But it’s important to remember that you have to start somewhere and sometimes it’s hard work.<\/p>\n

Using technology didn’t always come easy to me. Yes. it didn’t! I know when I share what I’m doing in the classroom, sometimes the listener gets a glazed look on their face and I can imagine they are thinking, “Yeah, that’s just Barb…” But wait. You can be Barb too! Here is how I started down the technology path.<\/p>\n

It all started with the Saints!<\/p>\n

I’m a huge fan of the Saints of the Catholic church. I love learning about the Saints. I love sharing the stories of Saints. I think today’s children should look up to these men, women and children, who have been canonized by the Catholic church as heros.<\/p>\n

In the Fall of 2006 I read an article in our local Archdiocesan paper about a brain surgeon who lived in Kansas and had started a podcast about the Saints. I wanted to listen! What did I do? I bought myself an iPod as a Christmas present to myself in January 2007. I was hooked on the idea of a podcast. How cool was it to be able to listen and learn about any topic at a time that was convenient to you.<\/p>\n

Dr. Paul Camarata podcast, The SaintCast<\/a>, was my the first step into technology.<\/p>\n

I quickly realized that I needed to add more podcasts to my iPod. I loved them! I first added Catholic podcasts and added many podcasts that were affiliated with the SQPN<\/a> network. The Star Quest Production Network was perfect for me. They had Catholic podcasts and they were so interesting, informational and fun. I really loved the founder’s podcast The Break<\/a>. Fr. Roderick’s podcast, a priest from the Netherlands, would contain pop culture items, movie reviews, food talk, and a segment on a Catholic topic. He welcomed feedback and questions.<\/p>\n

Fr. Roderick’s and the SPQN network encouraged me to change from being a passive listener to becoming an engaged, contributing listener.<\/p>\n

During this time, as I was trying to figure out how to send in MP3 feedback to the SQPN shows, I had my oldest son to help. He was still in high school and was a wiz at technology. But then I realized that he wouldn’t always be around as he was preparing to go away to college. I needed someone who could help me with my questions in a simple, straight forward way.<\/p>\n

Twitter! Here was the encouragement I needed. People from all across the globe were on Twitter to share and learn. With Fr. Roderick’s encouragement, I joined on May 1, 2007. Yes! I found a great community of Catholic friends to follow on Twitter. Guess who my first follower was, Dr. Paul Camarata<\/a>!<\/p>\n

I gradually began to follow educators on Twitter too. One of the first teacher’s I followed was Patti Harju <\/a>who teaches 2nd grade at a Catholic grade school in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I looked at her tweets. She was blogging with her class! She had a class wiki and she shared her student’s projects. I thought, I have some very similar projects, but she just put a technological spin in sharing it. I could do that!<\/p>\n

Patti was very encouraging and kind whenever I tweeted her a question on Twitter. I had a virtual cheerleader in a fellow Catholic school teacher.<\/p>\n

But inorder to make that jump I still needed a real live person to give me confidence and ask questions in real time. Sometimes I really didn’t know what my question was! I needed to talk through some of my ideas. That’s where my local group of technology teachers and teachers who love technology came in. We have a group called OPUG. It stands for Omaha Private Users Group. We would meet once a month during the school year and share what was working and what we had questions about. When I met Mike Mansour<\/a>, a teacher at Jesuit Academy<\/a>, I knew he would be able to help. He was using technology in his classroom everyday. He was a wealth of information and generously shared his knowledge.<\/p>\n

Mike was my, in real life, encouragement.<\/p>\n

I was taking off using technology in my classroom. I took my normal projects, such as our usual essay on our Summer vacation and used VoiceThread to record my students reading their essays. They weren’t perfect, I usually have 32 students in my classroom and finding quiet time to record could be challenging, but it was worth it! When I shared them on the wiki, I was so excited to hear from parents, that grandparents and aunts and uncles were enjoying it. My students really enjoyed being a part of these projects and I believe put a little extra into them. Knowing that it wasn’t just me listening but a world wide audience.<\/p>\n

My students and their parents encouraged me to continue.<\/p>\n

To expand my knowledge, I began going to our state’s technology meeting. I didn’t really feel like a techy geeky teacher when I first started attending NETA<\/a>. But as I continued going to the conference, listening to the presentations and met more people, I started saving ideas of what they were doing. I thought, I can do that! I became more confident in my knowledge.<\/p>\n

My fellow Nebraska teachers inspired me to continue.<\/p>\n

Then I met Kevin Honeycutt<\/a>. A very talented teacher and speaker from Kansas. I went to his conference in Kansas called Podstock in the summer of 2010. This was a lot of fun but his words spoke to me. He said, “Who’s going to tell your story? If not you, then who?”<\/p>\n

Kevin recharged me to continue what I was doing.<\/p>\n

So, if you read this far, you are probably wondering what is the point of this long blog post. The point is, learning technology is a process. It’s a process of learning, trying it out, tweaking it, deleting, asking, sharing, and telling a story.<\/p>\n

Technology to me is all about relationships. If it wasn’t for Dr. Paul, Fr. Roderick, Patti, Mike, my fellow Nebraska teachers, and Kevin. I wouldn’t be as far along in my use of technology in my classroom.<\/p>\n

So, the next time someone listens to my latest project and gets the glazed over look and thinks, “Oh, that’s just Barb” I say to them, “You can be Barb too!” it just takes time working on your relationships with people who can encourage you to learn and try. Perhaps I have been working with Saints in the making!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During EdCampOmaha, I happened upon a conversation about something I’ve been thinking about lately. I stopped and joined in. That’s one of the beauties of an EdCamp, it’s ok to jump into any session and ask a question, share, or just listen. The question was, how do you get other teachers on board with technology. [Read On] <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[193,192,195],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbinnebraska.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4502"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbinnebraska.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbinnebraska.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbinnebraska.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbinnebraska.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4502"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/barbinnebraska.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4514,"href":"https:\/\/barbinnebraska.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4502\/revisions\/4514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbinnebraska.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbinnebraska.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbinnebraska.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}