My favorite teacher and why

At the start of every year, I like to think about what type of educator I want to be. When I think of the perfect teacher, I think of Char Manchen, my beautiful, rambunctious music teacher from 3rd-8th at Ascension in Oak Park. She was the first teacher to really make a difference in my life and show me the kind of teacher I wanted to be. She made me feel special, like I mattered, during a very difficult time in my life. I will never forget her frizzy red hair, her infectious smile and the wire rimmed glasses she would peer over when you earned her 'look". She was a sassy small bit of a woman who could knock the biggest bully down a peg. I loved this woman!

Are you the type of teacher that kids talk about (in a good way) when they leave your classroom? Do you stand up for the quiet, shy and insecure kids who just can’t stand up for themselves yet? I hope so. This is the type of teacher I always strive to be. This is the type of teacher I want for my own kids.

Ms. Manchen was crazy funny and never took herself too seriously. Her class was the one where you never knew what would happen next. Once when the “boys” were causing problems in the back of the room and not paying attention...she did a quick handstand on the floor. It happened so quickly that the boys who weren’t paying attention missed the whole thing. We were all sworn to secrecy and couldn’t tell. It was awesome!

What will you do to set yourself apart from everyone else? Several people are making videos, which is awesome, but what’s next? How do you keep the momentum going? I love the Fish Philosophy and think it fits really well in school.

1. Be There
2. Play
3. Make their Day
4. Choose your Attitude

I think by following these 4 rules, we can all be amazing teachers like Ms. Manchen was and I always strive to be. How can you “Be There” for your students? How will you “play” today? What can you say or do that will “make their day”? What “attitude” will you choose today?

My Summer Adventure...now that everyone is back to school.

Today I wanted to share a little bit about my summer journey. Don’t worry this isn’t all about me again! (Still sharing resources)

I began this summer by attending the ISTE 2016 conference in Denver, this is where I ran into Kevin Honeycutt on the street in front of my hotel on the last day. He told me that I should try and take one of his Launch Me Academies for Presenters. Through a whole lot of luck, I was able to attend one right after ISTE. It was a life changing experience! I can’t give too much away but if you are considering going out on your own or trying to get yourself on the keynote circuit, this was a great “launch pad”!

After the academy, I was determined to turn in my Google Certified Trainer application. I had gone down this road once before but never actually turned it in! As part of my preparation, I decided to take the Level 1 and Level 2 Google Educator tests, they weren’t required at this time, but I wanted to experience them. The tests were actually fun to take! I enjoyed the application based nature of the tests and the “testing environment”, not so much the leaving on of my webcam...no testing in my PJs but the test itself was well done. I didn’t have any problems with Level 1, but Level 2 is quite a bit trickier! I ran through the Google Center courses and passed the first time. The video was a struggle but is now posted on youtube. Feel free to check it out! Now my application is turned in and I am biting my nails until Sept 21st.

A few days after that I was invited to a Microsoft Train the Trainer workshop. I spent several hours watching their courses on the website to help prepare me for the workshop. I really like the way Microsoft has set up their online training. You should check it out! Earning badges is fun! Thanks Carlos Fernandez for encouraging me take a walk on a different side of the street. I have to say I really like OneNote Learning Tools. (Even if you are a Google user check out OneNote Learning Tools)

After all of that training, learning and collaborating, it was time to recreate myself. I jumped on Legal Zoom to create my LLC and in just a few weeks….PRESTO! I am a business owner! Wait...I am a business owner?!?!?

Stay tuned!

I'm Baaack!

Welcome to my new adventure! I haven’t blogged regularly in years, but I am going to do my best to share something at least once a week. Blogging has always been a difficult thing for me to do. I never think anyone really wants to read what I write. My writing isn’t always grammatically correct and I don’t feel like I have very exciting or revolutionary ideas. After discarding the idea of writing just to write, I go and read other people’s posts and realize that I had the same thought and just wasn’t brave enough to publish it!

Writing and sharing my thoughts is a push out of my comfort zone, isn’t that what they say helps drive true change? Stepping out of your comfort zone?

Today I am leaping out of my comfort zone and it is terrifying. Earlier this month I decided to establish my own LLC called Truger Tech Talk. Of course right after I bought the name, people starting giving me their opinion of the name and all of the reasons it was the wrong name. Mind you I asked several people before choosing the name and everyone was supportive, until after the fact. Sigh. That is just the way things go. People don’t believe you really want their opinion when you ask and then you get the after thoughts, when it is too late to change anything.

Truger Tech Talk has been around since the first time I started a wikispace and blogged. I just felt that it made sense to go back to my roots. This LLC thing is much more difficult than I had expected, but I am not giving up yet! If your school district could use some professional development from a crazy, upbeat, energetic and passionate educational innovation specialist let me know!

I want to give a few shout outs to people who have helped me get started: Lea Anne Daughirity - working on my website, Ginger Lewman - created my logo, Carrie Baughcom - gave me my tagline, Kimberly Wright - my instant sister, Kevin Honeycutt- believing that I have what it takes to make it,  Phil Hintz - trusting me, and the most important Lee Truger - my amazing husband who never wavers in his faith in me.

I promise that in my future posts there will be all sorts of resources and links to click on, but today I just needed to write.

Waking up from a Learning Coma

This will be my last post here at blogger.com. My own district is blocking it which makes it difficult to post here. From now on I will be posting at Discovery Education site.
Please join me there to continue our learning journey together.

~Anne

FETC Bound

I am so excited. I have been on a roller coaster of a ride lately at work. Getting really excited about all of the proposed changes and then slamming back to Earth when I hear about budget deficits. *SIGH*
This week I am about to get ramped back up to running on adrenalin as I was lucky enough to be allowed to travel to Florida for the Florida Educational Tech Conference. I am so pumped up because of all the learning that I know will be taking place. This is the first conference in years that I am "going" to and not "presenting" at. I am also supercharged because I get to meet up in person with several of my DEN buddies that I have not seen since the DEN Academic Excursion I went on last summer. I can't wait to share all of the amazing things I will learn! Florida here I come!

~Anne

A Healing Wound

Two years ago my grandmother hurt her leg, since then she has had an open wound. The healing process has taken a very long time and was finally achieved in baby steps, but not without a lot of heartache and back steps.
This long healing process feels a lot like the battle with technology in my district. For a long time, things have not changed. Everyone has done their own thing with budgeting, purchasing and inventory. We now have a new dynamic tech leader who sees the big picture. He is not concerned with the politics as much as he is the learning in the classroom and the differences the appropriate tech could make in our classes.
We have had many "band-aid" solutions through out the years but every time we think things may be "healing" more "blood"seeps through the bandage, just like my Gram's leg wound.
I just want to jump ahead in our tech plan and heal everything already, but I am starting to realize that it will take many baby steps and lots of setbacks before things will be good. The speed at which technology changes adds so many challenges. This month we have been dealing with a virus that attacks Symantec (sp?) which was our AVS of choice. We have been cleaning up for 3 weeks solid. Just this week our district's network was attacked by an outside source, and our admin team had to make the decision to cut off the network to try and protect our information. This meant no internet, no servers, no email, no printers, no electronic IEP. In a special ed district especially this was simply a disaster. We are still in the process of cleaning up the mess. The only good thing to come out of this, is that the admin team is now considering the option of Macs across the board when we do updates next year.
We are taking small baby steps and as frustrating as this is to me as the tech integration specialist at least we are moving in the right direction. Three steps forward and two steps back, it doesn't feel like we are getting anywhere at all, but I must be patient. We will get there just like my Gram did.

~Anne

My 2007 in Review - Part 3 (Final)

October sent me to the Closing the Gap conference where again I was reminded of the power of Twitter. One of my friends on Twitter noticed that I was at CTG and so was someone else she followed so we set up a meet at the "top of the stairs" in the hotel. Which is when I met Karen Jankowski. We had so much in common and we never would have met if it wasn't for Twitter. I was also introduced to several new blogs which I now follow: Free resources from the Net (for Spec Ed) being my favorite. During this conference I was also blown away my some assistive tech devices and software I saw. I joined my first ning: Assistive Tech. Shortly after that I joined a couple of other nings: Il-TCE, and SL in Education. The other tool I finally started using was del.icio.us. It finally became clear to me as I sat in session at CTG how I could use this tool to benefit my district and colleagues. I created an account and tagged all of the sites I was introduced to in sessions as CTG, so my colleagues could benefit from my account.

November led me to the discovery of Google Groups. Now I realize that this is old technology but it was the first time that I tried to use them in my school district. They worked very well for what we needed and showed the admin what we could do if we were able to collaborate more.

December was a mash up of so many tools. Every time something new comes across Twitter, I feel compelled to check it out. My friends there seem to have a lot more time than I do to surf and find the "cool stuff". My newest discovery via friends on Twitter is twhirl. Twhirl is a twitter interface that sits as a separate application on your computer. It runs in both Mac and PC. I like this much better than TwitterFox or Twitterific, both of which I have tried and discarded in the last year.

This brings me back to January. It's hard to believe another year is behind me. Apparently I can't even catch my breath before my next adventure begins. It is January 1 and I am already starting to learn new things!

Thanks for taking this trip down memory lane with me...see you again soon.