About Me
“Country roads, take me home. To the place I belong, West Virginia.” – John Denver
Located along the majestic Ohio River, Parkersburg, West Virginia is the place I will forever call home. Growing up in The River City on the western edge of The Mountain State, I have always enjoyed the slow pace and personal feel of small towns and cities. But as a member of the MTV Generation (born in 1975), media, music, and video have always had a major influence on my life as well. It is this fast-paced, high-tech, global economy balanced by the slowed, high-touch, local experience that has helped to make me who I am today.
There have also been many great coaches and teachers in my life who have helped shape and mold me. One person in particular was my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Deem. I only had Mr. Deem once per day for Social Studies, but I remember how he made history come alive in his classroom. He made it fun. He integrated music, movie clips, posters, games, field trips, role playing and more: The technologies of 1986. Add to that his passion for learning, and it was around this time that I decided to be a teacher. Ten years later I enrolled in the nearby university to pursue a degree in Elementary Education.
Some of my fondest memories as a child revolve around listening to a new cassette tape, messing around on my cousin’s Tandy computer, and playing with my Atari 2600. As I got older, my desire for the newest gadget did not fade with age. Instead, it simply turned to CD players, software applications, and newer computers and gaming systems. I can remember registering for my first computer class in college where I had to create a website on Geocities and open an email account at hotmail.com. Within the first two weeks of the class, I was so motivated that I finished all the assignments and spent the rest of the class periods helping my classmates. It was around this time I really started getting interested in web technologies and imagining how they could be used in the K-12 classroom.
I continued to grow in my knowledge and skills in technology and education and in 2000 graduated with my BA in Elementary Education. I soon moved to Virginia and took a kindergarten teaching job for a year before moving into a middle school math position. By this time (2003), the internet had exploded, and I was using it daily in my professional and personal life. I was one of only a few teachers using Excel for my grade book and Word for my lesson plans, and I was using a website to display student work and useful web resources.
After my first child was born and my wife was due with our second, I started thinking about my future and knew I wanted to do more with my career. As I was deciding on a possible career change, I started searching the internet. During this time, I was also coaching high school football and had earned a pretty good reputation for myself. I wanted to use my education degree and thought about pursuing college coaching, but with a family now I did not want to put them through the tough process of climbing up the college coaching ranks. That’s when my wife suggested I try to combine my love for technology with my passion for education. I soon discovered San Diego State University’s Masters in Educational Technology program and am thankful now that I did.
The education I have received at SDSU has grounded me in data and theory, expanded my skill set, and reignited my passion for teaching. There is a need today in our high-tech “flat” world to provide instruction that is personalized and student-centered. Much like my experience growing up in a small town. The appropriate use of technology will help to achieve this type of individualized instruction, and I am thankful that my experience at SDSU has placed me on the top of the wave that is transforming education. With the changes occurring in education and the reforms needed for the future, I am excited about where I stand and looking forward to where the Country Roads will lead me.
Click here here to view my online resumé. Click here to view my Standards Matrix page.