When I left home almost ten years ago to attend a state university for secondary education, I knew next to nothing about computers. I had an AOL account, and that was about the extent of my Internet footprint. This was before Web 2.0, blogging, wikis, and all the other popular buzzwords of today.

While earning my undergraduate degree, I only had to take one education course focusing on technology. It included using Excel as a grade book, and how to set up a personal web page (I got an A – the professor admitted later that I knew more HTML than she). During my senior year, my methods professor encouraged us to incorporate technology into our lessons, but by this he meant word processing software and PowerPoint.

As teachers, we are always looking for creative and innovative ideas to make our lessons more meaningful and memorable. I left college with the feeling that technology was the lock, and I needed to find the key.

This month, I received a Masters degree in Educational Computing. My, how things have changed…

So now, I spend much of my free time surfing the Internet, looking for the next thing that will spark my students’ interest and help them understand reading and writing – two things no middle schooler will ever admit to loving. This blog is my attempt to document these findings and help share them with a world of teachers also searching for that ever-elusive key.