You know you're a techy teacher when . . .

Reposted from Ask A Tech Teacher - I am well on my way!

You Know You’re a Techy Teacher When…

1. You can’t remember the last time you printed a classroom document.
2. Plurking, tweeting, and playing with your wiki in public are acceptable behaviors.
3. Your Notebook isn’t spiral bound – it plugs into the wall.
4. Forget the garden…you spend more time on the weekend weeding out your Inbox.
5. You can recite your school’s Acceptable Use Policy by heart.
6. On parent/teacher night, instead of exchanging business cards, you Bump.
7. You express yourself with emoticons.
8. You no longer consider it graffiti to write on someone’s wall.
9. Your significant other gets jealous of your PLN.
10. It’s not creepy to have lots of followers.
11. You’re in a constant battle to be Mayor of your school.
12. Your students call you the “cool” teacher.
13. The other teachers are jealous of your Prezi.
14. YouTube is blocked in your school, and you know how to get around it and still use the content.
15. The Tech Department is sick of your constant requests to unblock Twitter.
16. You’ve Googled your principal.
17. You know that TweetDeck is not a patio with a lot of birds.
18. You correct your friends’ grammar when they text you.
19. Never mind the fruit, you want a real Apple for Christmas.
20. “Casual Fridays” means logging into the EdTech UNconference in your bunny slippers.
21. You wear your “I Heart EdTech” button everywhere you go.
22. You read this blog post then tweet it, like it, and pass it on to a friend

What to do when you're stuck in a web?

So what will you, asks the spider to me?

Where will you go, and what will you see?

Web 2.0, there's so much to explore,

Come take a look, I'll go open the door.

The possibilites are endless when looking for Web 2.0 applications to explore. I am fairly comfortable working and learning online and would consider myself an “intermediate” technology user. I am the “go-to” tech person at our school, yet I have much to learn.

As I travel into this web, learning and teaching have changed. No longer is the teacher imparting information on students.

It is time for top-down approaches to schooling to give way to the active, engaged, and collaborative teaching and learning relationships made possible by new educational technologies. Teaching in a Participatory Digital World

Teachers are now guides to assist students in creating knowledge and meaning from the vast amount of information they are immersed in.

In order to work with students in this new learning world, teachers must become connected and engaged themselves. In 5 Reasons Why Educators Need to Embrace Internet Technologies, K. Walsh suggests these technologies are important for:

• professional development
• the power to engage
• students use them already
• it's not going away (it will only grow)
• businesses want to hire workers who understand the internet

I have kept these ideas in mind as I walk along the web, exploring Web 2.0 tools.

What took so long?

What took so long, she said to me, I've been waiting here so long.

Spiders have been making webs for forever and a song!

I took my time along the path, to see my way so clear,

To try so many other things before I made it here.

My technological journey has been long and complicated as well. Take a look!