Ok, 20 minutes trying to think of an appropriate title, and all I can come up with is ‘title?’ Ridiculous. By the end of this post, if I haven’t been able to change it to something better, I apologize. I look forward to two weeks from now when I am used to the new schedule my body will have to endure until next June (late to bed, early to rise), used to the rhythm of teaching, used to squeezing it all in successfully. Once I have acclimated, I’ll be much more adept at writing weekly entries. I loved it in 474, and, reading over my posts from that class, am excited to re-discover the fluidity I felt when writing weekly reflections. For now, though, I’ll appreciate this jumpy, disjointed feeling as representative of my life in education right now.

First days. Jumpy and disjointed is, I think, pretty appropriate. My dad (who taught for 35 years) tells me every summer about how it was always a little tiny drag that teachers spend a whole year shaping their students and classes, and as soon as the relationship is solid, the culture established, and the machine is well-oiled, the school year ends and the process must begin anew (he also always  tells me how much he loved getting new students, new personalities). Last week, when I met my new classes for the first time, I was more strongly reminded of my dad’s tale than ever before. Last year was a hard year for me. With an interesting group of sophomores and a co-teacher with juniors (and a new son and grad classes), building that relationship was much harder, and ultimately more gratifying, than ever before. And as I see many similar challenges with my new classes, I get a little exhausted thinking about it. Though, seeing my former students in the hall and the lunchroom, I am constantly reminded that, like my dad, I love getting new students and building that relationship with them.

And this brings me to education. As I meander briefly through my first few days of school, I think about how this really is a metaphor of our lives as educators. Isn’t it? Isn’t this how we work? Don’t we work so so hard for an academic year, and then come back, somehow, to near square one? Thankfully, every year, we keep the knowledge we earned and we get better at what we do, but somehow it seems that we get restarted every August. Thinking about technology, there is a similar thing happening. However, instead of going back to that same old place every year, it is constantly growing and changing and using the former iteration of itself to guide and change and make better future versions. Maybe this is the disconnect that schools and technology are struggling through right now. Maybe this is why data driven instruction is on the list of buzzwords that are being thrown around our district right now.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in education and I believe in technology in education–even more so because of CTER. But I think that right now, education is like Neo in the first Matrix movie, when he goes to see the Oracle. Regarding his doubt as to whether or not he’s ‘the One’ she quotes Latin and then tells Neo something like, “You’ve got the gift, but it seems like you’re waiting for something.” That’s the future of education to me. We’ve got the gift (or the means to make something huge happen), but it seems like we’re waiting for something until we decide to commit. Maybe–and yes, I’m still smitten with Clay Shirkey’s talk from the last year’s Web 2.0 expo–we are waiting for the collective body of education to ‘wake up’ from the overwhelming potential of technology. Maybe we’re waiting until the digital natives replace the digital immigrants so we don’t feel like we’re always playing catch up. Maybe we’re waiting until enough data is collected that proves, in fact, that technology actually is good for education. Maybe, with the constant flux of trends online, we just don’t know where to start. Whatever the case may be, when we are finally done waiting, and we’ve figured out how to embrace technology the way we embraced the chalkboard and the overhead projector, education, like Neo, will realize and use our potential.

I do want to be careful not to compare technology to a savior, as Neo was in the Matrix. I just think Neo and Education share a similar hurdle in their evolutions. But as we’ve talked about loads in this program, technology alone isn’t the answer, I hope that the future of education will find a large body of teachers who are trained in educational technology, and can help us stop waiting and start teaching.