Introduction

Greetings my name is Mike and my goal for this blog is to express my thoughts and experiences on technology and education.

I have always viewed technology and education as having an interdependent relationship to each other. One could not exist without the other. While technology allows us to explore and communicate our existence, we still require education to use it.

I have worked on the “front lines” of supporting and using informational technologies for almost seven years now.  I currently work for a community college, in their technical support help group. I recently completed my undergraduate degree in professional communications and have begun a graduate certificate program with the intentions of entering a master’s program in Educational Technology.

I have a two year old daughter, soon to be three. I enjoy spending time with her and sharing in her new experiences with learning and technology. My personal philosophy encourages exposure to technology to children. I feel my father’s choice to invest in a computer for us kids at a young age (in the mid eighties) was a pivotal point in my early development. So I have tried to make similar opportunities for my daughter.

She seems to enjoy the experiences and learning from the technologies I have acquired. Our current technology of choice is the iPad. I chose to get an iPad because of her interest in my smart phone apps, and I had a discussion with a like minded friend who has had great success with his child’s learning with the apps for the iPad. It is a bit costly for all the apps, but we are slowly working through the free ones, and really just enjoy learning to use our fingers to make things happen. She has also begun to memorize her letters and numbers, shapes and colors, and even some Spanish.

There have been some costly mistakes, like dropping my cell phone on the concrete, but I made the choice to not get made at her, when I decided to start letting her play with my phone. I have already caught her dragging the iPad around in a pillow case all throughout the apartment, but we are learning respect for the technology as well as what it can teach.

Anyway I plan on making regular updates, and to share my findings, and thanks for reading.

Mike