Catching Up

I want to bring myself and my teaching into the world of Web 2.0. I plan to chronicle my journey in this blog.

I left teaching in 1998 to start a family. I returned to teaching with a half-time English position in August, 2006. I will be a full-time English teacher this year. I teach at the School of Inquiry and Life Sciences at Asheville (SILSA). I am incredibly proud of my school district, my school, and my administrators and colleagues. SILSA begins its third year next month. We are in the first cohort of redesigned high schools with the North Carolina New Schools Project. I feel incredibly lucky to have this position.

Last year my students and I shared a wireless, mobile laptop lab with six other classes. This year, we are adding two teachers and another mobile lab, so only four classes will share a lab. Last year our faculty talked about Web 2.0, but safety issues prevented us from implementing any tools. This summer I am studying how other schools are using Web 2.0. I still have concerns, but I am asking for help creating wikis, blogs, and podcasts. I would like to begin with publishing only to our classmates within our secure school network.

I have created a very simple website for my students and their families. You can find it at http://www.mrsrudd.net/. In the classroom, we used the website as a starting point when we accessed specific sites for specific units. I also posted information about long-term projects and uploaded pdf's of my handouts there. I linked to sites I thought my students might find helpful.

I teach some students who are immersed in technology wherever they are. I teach other students who have little access to personal technology outside of our school. I must help prepare every one of them for a future I can't even imagine. Daunting? Yes. Exciting? Incredibly!!