I felt like such a techie dude the first day I walked into my classroom and saw a Smart board. I thought, I can reach so many young minds with this wonderful piece of magic! You touch it, and it does stuff! WOW!
Then I sat down at my desk, and looked at my wonderful desktop computer, a (semi-) new Mac, all the components built in, all shiny and white. I thought, wow, someone is trusting me with a publicly-owned computer!
Then I saw my document camera, and thought, I bet that's incredibly useful!
Then I was given a school-issued iPad. I thought, how do I rate, to receive such a gift? I am truly a lucky, lucky teacher.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, my teaching and my grasp on technology are not mutually exclusive. I was lucky enough to step into a technology-rich environment, and I use it at every turn. I have access to such a variety of tools that to attempt to name them here would be foolhardy, since I haven't done an inventory on Evernote, which has effectively taken the place of my memory. I really don't know what kind of teacher I would be without the technology that surrounds me.
And yet, in many ways, I am already behind. I have an intense desire (one endlessly fueled by taking a technology in teaching course) to keep up with all the latest devices and trends, but I also have an intense desire to maintain my sanity. I still need to learn how to filter the vast amount of information and tools available, to choose what I'm going to keep and what I'm going to trash.
So, in short, technology is such a part of my teaching, that, not to doubt my adaptability, I don't know how effective of a teacher I would be without it.
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