Be of Use

My wife will tell you I'm a Mac snob and she's right. For the last seven years I've been an avid Mac user and all-things-Apple proponent. I'm a veteran of platform battles. XP drove me nuts. Back then I felt people wanted it because it was easier for network folks to manage and it allowed users not to have to think about much. "Computing for Dummies" I thought in my younger, more smug days. I argued with folks up and down about why we needed the Mac OS, how important iLife was to creating things that register on meaningful parts of Bloom's Taxonomy. I still believe those things are important, I'm just realizing it can be done a couple of different ways. For seven years I lived in a 90% Mac district. We were early adopters of all things iOS as well. Then I moved out of the Apple Orchard on to new adventures this past month. More than one former colleague thought it was pretty funny I'd be moving onto a Windows district that ran a Novell network...

I didn't have much of a chance to perform on my own growing up, but attempted to play sports. These past few weeks I was reminded of what pre-game jitters are all about. As we wrapped up new staff inservice on day two I thought I was going to puke. I had literally just walked out of my old district that week, left all I knew professionally for the better part of a decade behind, all my sick leave (we have two young kids) behind in Sheboygan. The person who hired me had left the district the week prior. Sharing time with my new colleagues was over, now it was time to start things up. My mentors are fantastic people who know what they're doing, but not much would settle my stomach down that afternoon. If you're a classroom teacher or library media specialist you go and start setting stuff up, getting grade books, things like that. I'm starting a new position with no direct boss. Time to coordinate data and integrate technology...1,2,3 go! No log-ins to access data, no ...