Lonely Nights in Education

I'm sitting in our computer lab waiting for parents that aren't coming. I'm supposed to be sharing our online parent resource and our online course management system as part of our curriculum kick-off. It's sort of an SOL kick off, but we don't use the anachronym SOL anymore ;).

I don't blame them. There aren't that many of them to start with. Part of the issue is lack of involvement. Don't get me wrong, we love that there are probably 25-40 parents with their kids here tonight. Awesome. But what about the others?

But necessity is the mother of invention, or so I've been told. I need parents, I need communication, therefore I need something different. I think that for the next night (which would be a parent conference night) we should do something related to internet literacy. I'd also like to get the kids involved somehow. It's all doable...but it doesn't make the next fifty minutes of my life any less lonely or any more enjoyable!

Education Makes me Tired

My job from day to day could include everything from showing a teacher that the reason their monitor doesn't work is because their monitor isn't plugged in to deciding whether or not a site visit should include one, two or more representatives and how to best broach that with my potential host...It can be exhausting. What can sometimes be deceiving about what I do is that it does sometimes require sitting at my desk. I spent a few hours today on a newsletter and on a distance learning initiative. I had an online meeting using Communicator where it may have looked like I was talking to myself to the average passerby. Work (thankfully) requires that I be out and about but on days like this I struggle with understanding why I'm so tired after spending so much time in one place.

It's a different kind of teaching in what we do as ITRTs and it requires planning, just as planning in the classroom does. But today I felt the zeal start to seep back into my fingertips. I was multi-tasking and keeping it all together. I managed to finish a few things I set out to finish and I created goals to finish other items in the next few days ahead of me. It is a lot like being a classroom teacher, there are just different types of items to juggle.

I also have to apologize for the blatant sarcasm in the previous post. I felt it, I meant it and please note that I did include Education in the title of this post. Oh-somebody called me a socialist today for my political tendencies...hmph. I wonder if they'll still want help with their SMART Board tomorrow? :) LOL

Education Education Education

Perhaps if I throw the word education in the title and sporadically throughout the posting then I will escape the filter for a few more days. Education is the reason for the season. Education spurs off fun words like educators and educational and even edutopia. Perhaps the remainder of my postings will be more conscious of the use of the word education. I wouldn't want any of my readers to miss out on the connections between my thoughts and education. They are almost all about EDUCATION even if the title hasn't included the word in the past. I will carefully consider each title in the future to make sure that I reference education. I wouldn't want to stray too far away from the purpose of this educator's blog. Perhaps I should change the title to Something about Education to Share!

But most importantly, perhaps I shouldn't rant and just be okay with the fact that my educational blog has been unblocked. I'm thrilled. Now if I only had more time to share my educational thoughts in my blog...

My Blog is Blocked

Today my blog is blocked at school. GRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!