Official first post

There’s a song by Semi-sonic that has a great line in it – Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end. The other beginnings end has already been posted. It is, therefore, time to talk about this new beginning.

My writing over the past few years has focused primarily on the topic of educational technology, teaching, learning and education. I’m hoping that in this blog I can widen the scope of my writing. I am sure I’ll still be writing about ed-tech stuff but that won’t be the focus. I suppose the reason that I have written so much about ed-tech is that it has been occupying an inordinately high portion of my brain over the past five years as I’ve been working on my M.Ed. in Educational Communication and Curriculum. My blogging was, for the most part, an extension of conversations I was having about topics in my coursework and research.

But that’s not the main thing on my mind these days. It’s still there, of course, since my job is partially to be the educational technologist in the school where I work. There are also many other things on my mind – truth and knowledge (for the Theory of Knowledge class that I teach), technology, Macintosh, web applications, my family, a desire to seek purpose in my existence, teaching, ecology, politics, open source, open content, open thinking, yardwork, literature, pop culture, photography and on and on and on. If you were generous, you might say that I’m a bit of a polymath. Mentally scattered and disorganized might be another way to describe it.

I’d like to write some moderate sized posts instead of small, meme of the moment types of entries (although I’m sure those will come up too). I’d like to take the chance to reflect and think about ideas more thoroughly before I post them, so don’t expect multiple entries per day, or perhaps even per week. I’ll try my best to write when I have something to say, and to keep my notions to myself when I don’t. If in doubt, I will err on the side of silence.

As I pointed out, a substantial quantity of my blogging has been extensions of conversations around my academic pursuits. Now that those pursuits are over, I have to be responsible for picking my own topics and writing on them so I will essentially be talking to myself when I write. (Isn’t that what most blogs are anyway?) I will be grateful if anyone else is taking the time to read, even more so if anyone bothers to comment. For the most part, though, I am hoping to do a lot of thinking out loud in a public forum. Feel free to listen in and participate in my open monologue.