So, I'm in a class that requires me to have an online presence.  I would prefer to stay offline as much as possible, but I'm required to do it, so here goes.

I'm a 43-year-old social sciences education major, which means I'm old enough to be most of these kids parent.  It adds a bit of stress to the process, but honestly, school is an immeasurable amount easier than it was the first time around.  I've come around to teaching as a profession for two main reasons.  First, because I think I can connect with kids fairly well, and enjoy teaching people history, including the little aspects that are missed or ignored by most formal education.  Second, because the foreign language requirement for a history major was killing me, especially because it's an all  (in my case) Spanish classroom, and that just triggered my super anxiety, because I can't keep up, and felt completely lost without time to recover.

I don't have much in the way of using tech in a formal educational setting.  In grade school, computers were not even a thing the schools had.  By high school, we had a computer lab, with about six computers, that were mainly used for typing classes.  In college the first time, there really was no online, aside from America On-Line, and no self-respecting professor would have used that so again, the computer was a glorified typewriter.  Since I've returned after a 20-year hiatus, things have changed a little.  Everything is online now, and I have to write a blog.  In fact, I think this might be a sign of the coming apocalypse.   There are a lot of things the world has but would be better without, and a blog (and a TWITTER account <shock/horror>) from me is pretty high on the list.

I expect that we're going to learn about online networks for teachers and how to maximize your online abilities to increase your learning curve and ceiling as a teacher.  What we should probably learn is how to avoid being found by your students, because you know a lot of these teachers have things in their past that the kids will find and use against them.  They're digging up tweets from years ago on some of these people.  Anything you've put out there in your online time will eventually be found, and that's frightening.  Like in most other things, the internet is a great tool, but it's also a horrible and terrible thing that can ruin you and your entire bloodline's future forevermore, and with the complete lack of filter some people have, that is a real problem for someone putting anything out there to be found later.