In Media Res

Hello. Welcome to my life. You are joining a program that has been in progress for 32 years, so I won’t attempt to get you caught up. In fact, I can’t remember anything from the first three, and the next several are comprised of fond-but-fuzzy memories, with the remaining years containing so many scattered story lines that attempting to bring readers “up to speed” would be as limiting to the potential plot hereafter as it would be exponentially confusing. So I resist the temptation of exposition, intending instead to work backwards to anything that becomes relevant as things unfold.

We’ll begin in media res.

It is a Tuesday night. I just returned from a jog and now sit on my couch, surrounded by technology. I am immediately referring to the two laptops, cell phone, television and iPod that are all within my sight lines as I begin to type, but the words of a colleague in the Technology Education department from two summers ago ring in my ears. As I was about to begin a presentation on technology integration for the district, he pulled me aside and told me that technology was not “just computers,” but the physical world’s entire collection of man-made materials and knowledge. “The lights in this classroom,” he said, “the walls and even the floors” were technology. I thanked him, and continued with my planned presentation, covering Internet safety, effective web searching, and school board policies and regulations concerning the use of technology. In the 14 months since, however, his words have really sunk in. Technology can mean something slightly different to everyone, from the professor of nanotechnology to the teacher who wants to know where his PowerPoint files went when his district computer was reimaged over the summer. Everyone uses technology everyday, but my fellow Academic Integration Coaches and I need to help our teachers find the appropriate forms of technology to best meet the learning objectives they’ve set for their students. This might mean a different “solution” for every teacher, every student, and every individual situation. What an undertaking we’ve embarked upon, the three of us putting ourselves out there to coach 1000+ teachers!

I named this blog Tuesdays with Swindy for several reasons. The title comes from my younger brother Greg, who used to send hilarious weekly e-mails to his friends and family in a play on Mitch Albom’s 1997 non-fiction novel. My brother is secretly creative, though he does his best to keep it in check as the family businessman. Scratch that. He’s not a business man, he’s a business, man (Jay-Z lyrics). In our family, I am more outwardly creative; I’ve always approached writing, music, education, and other endeavors in quick, passionate bursts of creativity. I can’t control when these brief moments of inspiration will come, but they happen frequently enough that others have labeled me “creative,” and I’ve embraced the description as a motivation, challenge, and guide. It’s the least I could do to steal -- pay tribute to – his creative idea.

Another motivating factor for naming this blog comes from the fact that it is Tuesday night. If you’ll notice the timestamp when I hit “post” on this first edition, you’ll probably see that it is close to 11:59 p.m. on a Tuesday. I needed an impetus to write. Today. And as I’m just coming in under the wire, I’m glad I finally gave myself a deadline. I have been in my current position for exactly one month since school began. I have not written a single entry. Of course, we have been incredibly busy. My fellow Academic Integration Coaches, Wendy, Jason and I, have worked with 48 teachers who have requested our help during the school day, and trained more than 200 teachers in after-school flex sessions (my personal total over the past two years as a Learning Coordinator for Technology Integration is approaching 500 unique participants in training sessions I facilitated, or roughly half the teachers in this district. Boy, I sure hope some of them will read my blog!). Being busy, my father would tell you, is not an excuse to put off doing something important, and we all feel that regularly reflecting on our work with teachers and students is an important part of modeling technology integration, and improving upon what we are striving to do. One of our goals as Academic Integration Coaches is to keep a blog to regularly document our experiences working with the more than 1000 educators in North Penn School District.

A creative writing professor in college, herself an incredible poet, once told us of the importance of making oneself sit down and write every day. While I won’t be writing here every day, I am finally taking her words to heart. It is not important that the writing be exceptional, just that it gets done. Nothing great comes from doing nothing. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. You know, I could go on with quotes about getting started, but then I’d miss my self-imposed deadline, defeating the purpose of getting started with Tuesdays with Swindy, so to save precious time, here’s a link to some of my favorite quotes about getting started. :)

The New Bloom’s Taxonomy lists the highest level of learning objectives as “create.” As I work with teachers and students creating their own blogs, podcasts, websites, movies, slide shows (etc., etc., etc.), I want to encourage them to create without worrying if the product will be perfect. Wendy wrote, “Technology is not a noun ... it’s a verb ... an action verb. Just do it.” The important thing in learning is to do it, whatever “it” may be.

My name is Scott Swindells. I am an Academic Integration Coach for North Penn School District.I look forward to helping teachers and students solve problems using the technology at our disposal, and I look forward to sharing my experiences with you here on Tuesdays ... with Swindy.