Jumping in

When Jen Simon told me for probably the millionth time I needed to be blogging about what I was teaching my students, it finally sunk in.  That was about a month ago and here I sit with three blog post partially written and none published.

Today during my taxi ride into school I thought about this blog and made a conscious decision to come in today and get my blog officially up, running and shared with the world. But how? What was the best way to introduce my blog to the world? As I drove past a local public school seeing balloons dotting the courtyard I decided I need a proper launch if you will, I need this post right here. To announce to the world, my school and myself that I was really doing this.

I am currently a K-5 Technology Teacher in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. I love what I do and the kids for the most part are like kids anywhere in the world.  They are eager to learn and just a eager to do and share what they are doing with others. They want to do a good job and be complimented for it. They have good days and bad days.  They sometimes listens and follow instructions but often get distracted or simply don't have enough English yet to fully grasp and comprehend what their tasks are.  I model and demonstrate and talk a lot more then I would like during my lessons, but such is the life of a teacher, especially when teaching students whose native language is not their learning language.

At the Elementary Campus where I spend most of my days, I have a small lab with a Promethean Board which, often gets unplugged because of PE classes on the other side of the wall.  I have a printer and 20 student-use computers operating Windows 8. That's it, there's nothing more.  No tablets, no laptops, no bee-bots, nothing.  We do have a fairly well parent-supported BYOD program in grades 4 and 5, but I am not overly involved in that, at this campus.

I also teach part time at the new Nha Be campus, over there I currently teacher grades 1-5. There I have a large computer lab inside the school library.  It has 20 student-use computers, Dell all in ones, complete with touch screens. There is also a projector so I can model for students, but no printer.  Nha Be also does the BYOD in grades 4 and 5.  Grade 5 is in full swing, the grade 4 here is just getting started.  Oddly at this new location some of the parents I am told (by administration) are against the use of technology, that's a whole different set of issues I get to help teachers try to deal with.

As as school we are in the process of acquiring MinecraftEDU for use with grade 3-5 and everyone is all a buzz about that at the moment, but that's for another day.

I love my job, despite not having all the cool tech toys other schools have. I am hopeful to get many of those things in years to come, but for now I work with what we have and make the most of it.