"Technology Specialist"

Specialist. Technology Specialist. I went to the monthly Kansas Technology Integrators Group meeting today, which is failry casual, so I didn't wear a tie. Rather than skip the blog for tonight (which will happen too often soon enough), I thought I would share the shirt I wore instead. This is a "super shirt" -that blog comes later.

One of the reasons I got into teaching was to work with kids. That seemed to be one of my strengths. It was a major concern of mine when I took the job as Technology Coordinator. I would now be working with adults. Turns out it wasn't too bad.

Adults know how to show their appreciation, kids struggle. I do feel appreciated at school and am glad to be needed. My job now is to serve the teachers and support what they think is the best way to reach their students with technology. One particular teacher has been using technology for years. Mrs. Brant is our Family and Consumer Science teacher. It's hard to recognize, but when I think about it, it's pretty amazing the technology she has to deal with. Sewing machines, stoves, microwaves, mixers. On top of that, in one room she has a mobile computer lab of Macbooks, LCD projector, MacBook Pro, Flat Screen TV, DVD/VCR player, Apple airport access point, color printer, black and white network printer, scanner, and a PC with card reader for her automatic embroidery sewing machine. That's a lot of technology in one room and it is not uncommon to have trouble. I spent quite a bit of time at the beginning of this year in her room working on issues that seemed to keep popping up. Mrs. Brant was very appreciative each time something was back in working order. She made me a plate of cookies, gave me one of her experimental cheesecakes, etc. Wonderful, amazing, stuff, but I told her she had to quit doing those for me. Did you notice the last picture where the tie is pretty much convex? Yeah, there's a reason it rounds out towards the camera. Anyway, I asked Mrs. Brant about the possibility of using the sewing machine to put a design on a few of my shirts. Mr. McPherson found us a t-bird and Mrs. Brant put the rest together. This picture shows the end result. I was afraid that "Technology Specialist" was a bit arrogant, but Mrs. Brant insisted and convinced me it was alright. I think it turned out and she made me a couple more. That proved the sewing machine card reader worked and I got a nice benefit from it. I'm pretty proud of my shirts and they look pretty spiffy with a tie.