My Journey

As the son of an "early adopter", I've almost always associated technology with excitement and fun. When I was little, I sat with pride in the living room as my neighbors waited for my father to come on TV in an advertisement for the car dealership he sold for. On long trips, my brother and I fought over who would not bump their knees on my father's vacuum tube transmitter that was placed over the hump of our 1955 Oldsmobile.

In school, this fascination with technology and electronics was not always matched by the discipline to get the grades needed for the science and math classes required to follow a career in technology. As I finished my bachelor's degree in anthropology, I attempted a summer class at UC Berkeley in the computer language Fortran. However, I couldn't get my punch card deck to complete the task of solving a quadratic equation and failed the class.

As the computers became more accessible, I had more friendly encounters with it. As a father, I took my daughter to the Lawrence Hall of Science above UC Berkeley and played a game with the Teletype interface, searching for the Wumpus. "Hunt for the Wumpus" pointed to the capability of the computer to engage learners and challenge them to think. I found myself strategizing and thinking about the best way to beat the computer at the game. Shortly after that, I saw my first personal computer in a store window. The SOL came in a couple of variations. It had a maple case, so that it could fit into the living room decor. It came with a BASIC operating system on a cassette tape--- its only storage device. Compare these specifications and prices with the modern personal computer (and remember we are talking 1975 dollars!):

"There were several models of the SOL-20 system :

• The SOL System I ($1649 in kit or $2129 assembled), with SOL Operating System, 8 KB RAM, a 12" TV/Monitor, and a cassette recorder with BASIC software tape.
• The SOL System II ($1883 in kit or $2283 assembled), is a SOL System I with 16 KB.
• The SOL System III ($4750 in kit or $5450 assembled), is a system II with 32 KB RAM, a video monitor, the HELIOS II Disk Memory System and a DISK BASIC floppy.' " - (Old-Computers.com)

When I saw the computer, I was a seminary student and tried to think of ways I could rationalize its purchase. I could pioneer the creation of electronic concordances that would facilitate Bible study and be a super pastor with intricate indexes of sermon topics created with the aid of a computer. At the time, I was in debt and driving a gas guzzling 1971 Plymouth Fury, selling Fuller Brush door-to-door in affluent Marin County. Buying a SOL computer on time was a leap of faith that I couldn't make and be honest with myself.

The 80's was the decade of the personal computer and I was first a student teacher and then a teacher during that exciting time. At home, we bought a Timex Sinclair computer, with a cassette player as storage. At that time, most of the programs were in books and magazines. You typed the machine code by hand into the computers. We did buy a few games on cassette tape, but there was a lot of satisfaction to typing in your own computers. As I finished my student teaching, Apple Computer had a brilliant idea. Each school in California received one Apple IIe computer, along with a license for MECC (Minnesota Educational Computer Consortium) software. This included hits like Oregon Trail and Lemonade Stand. As a fifth grade student teacher, I volunteered to start a computer club that met after school to learn the wonders of the new machine. At home, we bought a Commodore 64 computer, and soon graduated from cassette storage to an external 5 1/4" floppy drive and bought commercial software that enabled us to word process. My daughters both learned to type at over 50 WPM with the programs and mastered math concepts before they were taught in school. When I moved to teaching high school English, after a couple of years I found that the second floor computer lab was seldom used by other teachers and included MECC software for writing and editing. I regularly took my students to the lab to write with Apple IIe's.

In the 90's I spent four years as a home and hospital teacher. I often found my students had under-utilized home computers. I sometimes found freeware for them to use and used the computer to teach writing and math when I could. At home, we had a foreign exchange student from Chile in our home in 1992-1993. Tania's mother worked on a project at the Univerisdad de Concepcion and had access to "La Red". As a teacher, I had access to CSUNet. Tania's mother insisted that Tania and her could write each other using the CSUNet system, connecting to "La Red". It took a bit of experimenting and fumbling, but the connection was made. ("La Red" is Spanish for "The Net") This led us to explore other jewels of the Internet, like Gopher, information servers run by universities and the government. It felt very powerful to access massive databases of the research universities on the other side of the world, even at 300 and 2400 baud. We found Usenet groups, which allowed you to communicate with similar minded people over the 'Net. When we weren't on the Internet, we contacted local BBS systems to play games and share knowledge. Soon something called the World Wide Web appeared, for which you needed a browser. In the beginning, we used Lynx, a text browser. Soon a graphic browser called Mosaic. Shortly after we started using Mosaic, we learned that the Mosaic developers had started a new company, Netscape. While Netscape was a commercial browser, if you were willing to live at the bleeding edge and download the latest beta version, you could use it for free. So through mid-90's, I would regularly check for updates to Netscape and download it to our IBM PC (We'd made the switch in the late 80's, buying a 16 MHz computer with 16MB of Ram and a 20MB hard drive. It cost $1500.)

In 1996 I went back to school to get an M.A. in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). At the same time, I got a part-time job at Natomas Charter School, working homeschooling families. At CSUS, I worked in the Learning Center Skills Center. I helped students compose, using Microsoft Word and Macintosh computers. Students in the program discussed topics using an e-mail list and I discovered the communities that are available through listservs. At Natomas, I helped build the technology base by scrounging from government surplus and good buys at Fry's Electronics. I supervised computer labs and helped homeschooling families learn about computers, using computers that I'd obtained from surplus. My wife provided the physical labor to upgrade some of the machines and helped us develop our intranet. When I finished my program in 1999, I was offered a full-time job working with high school students. With Internet connected computers, I researched resources and set up the school's first website, using Adobe PageMill (I'd done our family's website with Netscape's Composer when my middle daughter said we should do something with the webspace our ISP provided us with.) I created a collection of resources that parents could use with their children, as well as pages that explained school policies and presented the latest news.

In 2000, I learned that the school was eligible for a Digital High School grant, but no one was doing anything about it. I offered to work on the grant. During the summer, I attended workshops to learn about how to write the grant. In the fall, I worked with my CTAP coordinator, Laura Bailey, to write the grant. I presented the grant to the California Department of Education in December and in February the school received $117,300. The grant included computers for graphics arts lab, as well as two WiFi carts of iBooks that could be rolled throughout the school. We also got digital cameras, a scanner, and video cameras to use in our independent study program, as well as an iMac with iMovie. In addition to the CTAP grant, a former colleague had moved on to work at IBM with Bay Area schools and encouraged me to write a grant for our program. We received ten IBM PC's that students could use in the our learning lab.

When I entered the IMET program in 2003, it was as an independent study teacher with a PC on my desktop and an Internet connection throughout the day. I was writing units that utilized all facets of the Internet. For a couple of years, I'd participated in the PT3 program and had learned much more about integrating technology. I'd also attended a couple of Project Based Learning Conferences in San Francisco and was very excited about developing projects for students that crossed and blended curriculum. My first work in IMET reflected that vision. However, at the end of 2003, the direction of the independent study program at Natomas Charter School changed and the staff changed with it. I was looking for work. I had a degree in TESOL that I'd never used and felt it was the right time to see how I might fit teaching English to adults into my life. While it doesn't offer the security of a full-time K-12 job, I have the satisfaction of making a difference in students with a strong to desire to learn English.

In my current part-time positions with Folsom-Cordova and Sacramento City Unified School District Adult Education programs, I use technology when I have the opportunity. My beginning students at Folsom-Cordova use Rosetta Stone and other language learning programs. When I have classes with a locking cabinet, my Sacramento City Unified School District students use ELLIS and Oxford Interactive Picture Dictionary, sophisticated multimedia ESL programs. I also help my students who are ready learn to use the Internet, and have developed a website using Moodle for their use. I hope to get an adult ESL site for teachers developed when I finish my project. However, I have sometimes found my site blocked by school software because I had the bright idea of getting the web address, AdultESL. Although I've since gotten another domain, CapitalESL, I still have problems with it being blocked, perhaps because of the word, adult, on the the pages. That's a battle for another day...

IMET gave me the opportunity to refine my technology skills, but it was especially helpful in putting me in situations where I had to rely on others to complete projects. I'm a very independent person and usually find it easiest to do things myself rather than depend on others. The structure of IMET repeatedly puts you in teams of people that work together to accomplish tasks. When successful, the final products are much more than one could accomplish alone and you get the opportunity to utilize each other's strengths. When the process falls apart, you learn about human nature and can reflect on what could be done next time to lead to success.

IMET also offered the opportunity to examine the theoretical bases of education and technology use. Reflecting on the theory and practice in the interactive environments of the forum BBS and Tapped In gave me insight into facets and perspectives that I would not have had just reading and reflecting alone. This was a very valuable that made IMET an important experience in my life