In 1982 I attended Roosevelt elementary school in Tulsa Ok. I remember going to the computer lab once a week and typing in the basic code from the back of the math textbook. If I got all the lines of text entered correctly I could get this little “turtle” to go around the perimeter of a square. I didn’t know why it too so much typing to get this square and triangle combination to move.

Throughout my school years, I move between Oklahoma and Michigan attending twelve different schools before graduating from a private school in Tulsa in 1993. Each school I attended had all levels of technology available to it’s students. I remember the Apple //e in elementary school, IBMs with DOS in my typing class my junior year and I remember buying my very first Packard Bell computer my freshman year of college. The system cost around $1200 and was running Windows 3.1.

Each year brought a new UI and more processing power. I never really thought the old system wasn’t fast, but there was always room for improvement. By time I graduated from college and started teaching I was able to order a new Packard Bell computer for myself at home and my school computer was a Macintosh PowerPC. Both systems were huge in volume but tiny in specs.

After graduating from Oral Roberts University in December 1997, I started teaching earth science at Sequoyah Middle School in Broken Arrow. Macintosh was still dominate in K12 schools and my class included a beige computer that looked like an IBM, but was running MAC OS. From day one, I found different ways to integrate technology into my classroom. I recreated all my overheads on the computer. I already knew that technology was the application of science and that technology is a tool to be used to enhance our everyday lives.

Throughout my sixteen years of teaching eighth grade science, I was asked to teach many computer classes and head up the technology committees at the three school sites I taught at. As my last site principal stated “I just get technology.”  Over the years the technology has improved and I have always enjoyed finding ways for it to make my life better. This was not different in my professional life as an educator. I would push the technology in my classroom to it’s limits and continually annoy my administrator for the new educational technology.

In the spring of 2013, I was at my wits end about how my school district was purchasing, training and implementing technology. The technology wasn’t reliable, it was more frustrating than enhancing and I couldn’t take it anymore. After some prompting from my site principal, I wrote up a job description on what I felt the school district needed. On the last day of school that semester I met with the superintendent and presented the job description and my resume. Two months later, I was offered the position of Director of Instructional Technology for Jenks Public Schools.

This past year has been a whirlwind of research, purchasing, trainings, and instructional coaching. The best thing about the EDTEC program at OSU is how well it fits into my new position. Each class before this year, helped me present my case with the superintendent and every class this year, has fit perfectly into my current position.