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Inspired by ISTE

Four years ago, I had no idea what ISTE was. Or TCEA. I had barely used an iPad or Twitter. I was preparing to enter Trinity's MAT program and was fearful of technology. That fall, I was placed in a second grade classroom with eleven iPads and two SMARTboards with a phenomenal veteran mentor teacher who I still consider a friend. She inspired my educational technology journey. Fast forward to the end of the year. I'm doing my presentation the night before receiving my Masters on how I used technology during my student teaching year. I loved using technology and it became a cornerstone of my teaching, as much as integrating the arts. Before receiving my Masters, I earned my BA in Theatre and spent summers as an intern at The Magik Children's Theatre. I will always fight for arts education in schools. (I'm currently listening to Hamilton's "Satisfied" as I write this post.)

Three months after I graduated, I was hired by the district I went to elementary school in. Teaching sixth grade Language Arts was a challenge after teaching second grade for sure. One of my favorite parts about this role was getting to incorporate fun writing projects using the iPads and blogging, as well as growing my love of teaching writing. I used the iPads as much as I could. In my final blog post of the year, I asked the students what their favorite project from the year was. Almost everyone said blogging and other tech projects. Over the course of that year, I was chosen to be on the Tech Team and attend TCEA in February 2015, which was a huge honor. My former mentor also encouraged me to submit a presentation proposal for iPadpalooza. I was shocked when I got the acceptance email on February 27th. I was in my first year and incredibly nervous. That summer I played around with the idea of creating a teacher blog, but never executed it. A couple months later, I decided to leave teaching temporarily.

Fast forward to June 2017. After spending the last 19 months on my church's children's ministry team, substitute teaching in a number of schools in Northside ISD and private schools and working with kids of all ages from 2-18, I attended Pre-K 4 SA's inaugural EdCamp at Region 20. After this edcamp my enthusiasm for teaching came back completely, as well as my confidence. I was so excited! Fast forward two weeks to June 24th, 2017 when I attended HackEd at ISTE. My mentor student teaching had talked about ISTE a lot when I was working with her and after attending a day of iPadpalooza in 2014, my Twitter PLN started growing. After tweeting all day long and further expanding my network from one day of ISTE 2017 and seeing a Twitter post that every teacher should blog, I realized that I had all this technology knowledge that I wanted to share with my teacher friends and others who are reluctant to embrace educational technology. It finally gave me the push I needed to create this blog.

I'm still in transition to my next teaching role, but professional development is something I don't want to give up and personally enjoy; I love learning and knowing what is going on in the ed tech world. I love learning from other educators on Twitter, finding new apps and websites and staying connected.

-Elle


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