Mr Bass Online

As I look out at the faces in my classroom and wandering the halls I often wonder about what makes teachers decide to be teachers.  I have a total of nine years teaching experience.  For two years I took a little hiatus and left the teaching profession to pursue my master’s in Instructional Technology.  I had an opportunity and I took it.  I always thought that at some point I’d return, but one never knows does one…

I had a variety of other jobs during that time and was doing ok… until I had kids.  January of 2004 I had twins and that changed everything (just like everyone says it will).  I reevaluated many things during those sleepless nights and the most important decision I made was that of returning to teaching.  Once back I realized this was what I really should be doing.  School started, everything was going great and I was asked if I wanted to attend the National Council of Teachers of English conference in Indianapolis, IN.  I agreed and have never looked back.

At the NCTE conference I met many people who were looking at the big picture of education.  For the first time in eight years of teaching my outlook had changed.  I was no longer looking at what I needed for my class.  I was looking at how I could make education better.  I now spend the majority of my “free” time pondering educational topics and working towards helping other people in my school become better educators.  With my degree in Instructional Technology it should come as no surprise that I am often called upon when there are computer issues in the surrounding classrooms.  I’m happy to be helpful and I hope to continue to be able to troubleshoot future problems so as to alieviate our already swamped help desk. 

What it all comes down to though is this is my reason for this blog.  Not only do I want to help people in my building use technology effectively, but I want to be part of education on a different level.  I hope through this blog to share ideas, interests and ingenuity not only in my school but on the national level.  It’s amazing how one conference can change the way you look at your entire profession.

I have decided to join the blogging revolution in my classes.  Today my Creative Writing class made the plunge.  I chose this class first because it is smaller, second because they are almost exclusively seniors and are interested in writing.  We are still in our beginning stages and I’m still working out how the whole process will be evaluated and how we will use this over the course of the class.  However, what is exciting is the fact that everyday my students come in excited and wanting to blog.  We are currently in the process of creating a list of guidelines for our blogging.  It seems to be going well so far.  They’re excited and I love it because I’ll be able to log into my bloglines account and see what they have posted making assessment significantly easier than notebooks or typing in 15 different url’s to find their posts.

If you are a teacher interested in getting your students started in the blogging world, here are some resources that I have used. 

Bud the teacher
David Warlick

There are many others out there, but this is a starting point.  Anyone who is interested in trying this in the classroom feel free to contact me.  I’ll help in anyway I can.