Wednesday, January 15, 2014

So Much Gratitude

As most people do when January comes around, we have spent some time reflecting on the past year and how it unfolded. Wow, are we ever blessed! The fruits of our nearly two years of laboring paid off, and we saw our first book published!
Integrating technology into our classrooms is something we both truly love doing--what teacher doesn't love to see their students motivated and invested in their learning?!  We are beyond grateful that Scholastic gave us the opportunity to share our ideas with other educators.

We have received so much support from our family, friends, and colleagues as well.  It has truly been overwhelming and heart-warming.  There were facebook posts, tweets, and newspaper articles.  We were even featured in an interview on mySuburbanLife.com.  Plus there have been an abundance of emails, texts, and phone calls. THANK YOU from the bottom of our humbled hearts.  It means so much to know there are so many people, both near and far, supporting us.

It is our hope that, in time, all teachers will see first hand the benefits of meaningfully infusing technology into their classrooms.  They too will hear the excitement in their students' voices as they realize their first blog post is getting more views than there are students in the class ("There are other people reading what I wrote!?").  They will see the awe in their students eyes as they see their podcast posted on iTunes.  That they will see students grow and thrive beyond their wildest dreams because of the opportunities technology provides to gather, create, and share knowledge.

If you are one of those teachers just getting started with using technology in your classroom, check out our feature in Instructor Magazine to access some lesson ideas and free resources from our book.  If you are one of those teachers already using technology, let us know what your favorite tech-related classroom activity has been recently!

Happy New Years, everyone.  May the year ahead bring us all exciting new endeavors in the classroom and beyond!