About

Welcome to my digital desk–the place I collect my ideas and resources, reflect on my professional teaching practice, and share tips, success stories, and sometimes disasters. I hope you enjoy my teaching portfolio, the teacher resources I’m collecting to share with my students and with other teachers, and my perspectives on teaching and technology integration. Please, visit often or even subscribe to receive automatic updates. Thanks for visiting. Leave me a comment or contact me. 

A little History…
Over the past couple years I’ve been experimenting with Web 2.0, dabbling with creating web content, mainly in blogs and wikis. As a result, I’ve littered the web with a string of wikis and blogs, most of them lacking focus and out-growing their original purpose.

My first wiki, which I’m still using, I created for my English 11 and AP English Language students and parents as a classroom hub where I could post hand-outs and slideshows, keep a calendar of assignments, post useful links and resources, have students recommend their favorite books or blogs. The wiki allows me to create “wikified” assignments (a modification of a term I first heard used by Karl Fisch)-multimedia ones rich with photos, videos, rubrics, student models, detailed explanations and links. Students can even upload their assignments. 

When my students created blogs, I realized I needed to be blogging as well, so I created Diggin’ Onions. In the beginning I used the blog to post blogging assignments and blogging how-to’s aimed at teaching my students the nuances of blogging.

Soon however, I wanted to blog about educational technology, my real passion. I began devouring the ideas of other edubloggers-like Will Richardson, Karl Fisch, Bud Hunt,  subscribing to their blogs, scanning their links in delicious. Naturally, I wanted to enter the conversation, to apply their ideas to my little world and perhaps offer a some new insight. My class blog (it’s not really a class blog since my students have their own individual blogs) didn’t seem the appropriate place.

Excited about what I was learning, I wanted to share with other teachers. I started designing and teaching workshops at my local educational coop, joined the TIE Cadre (TIE= Technology Infused Education), a team of educators across the state of Arkansas working to design modules to teach teachers how to infuse their pedagogy with technology. I created a wiki to house workshop materials, and, on the wiki, I experimented with using a wiki to house my professional portfolio.

So, here I am, creating ANOTHER blog! I hope to make this blog my personal hub: a central location where I can organize my Web 2.0 content and write about topics and issues in education that move me. Hopefully, through trial and error, I’ll discover the best way to organize the myriad of content and sites. At the very least, I’ll gain a better of understanding of the obstacles my students face and will hopefully be able to better guide them through their own Web 2.0 content creation adventures.