This phrase was just driven into the ground by at old high school coach of mine, someone who really worked hard to not only teach us football, but life lessons too.

 

This is the phrase that popped into my head as I did my first podcast with Jeff at Teachercast (@Teachercast).  I’d been asked previous to jump into the podcasts and just never had the time to do it.  Well, a couple of weeks ago, time was there and so was the opportunity so I jumped in feet first.  My podcast partners were Toby Prince (@teachersharetp) and Mark Quinn (@Mark_Quinn), both outstanding teachers and whom I would readily recommend for Twitter follows.

 

Our topic for the night was technology toys, and it became evident to me that I didn’t know what I didn’t know.  Each “tech toy” someone would mention I’d be searching as they were talking about it and think “wow, that’s awesome!”  Their applications of these programs and web 2.0 tools were excellent as well.  The problem with this of course, I start thinking “dang, I don’t know squat!”  Now that’s not true, I do know a little bit, it just struck me how much it out there that I’ve not heard of.

 

Educators, myself included, get into that mindset of “expert” on things.  I’m the teacher people come to in my hallway if they are looking for a web site, some tool, or just to help troubleshoot.  I feel like a jack of all trades, master of none when it comes to educational technology, knowing enough to make myself fairly dangerous, but never enough really be out there.  This podcast showed that there’s so much out there I don’t know, haven’t explored, or even heard of that it’s quite overwhelming.  As I’ve reflected on this, that’s ok.  We can’t know everything, we can’t do everything no matter how much we think we can.  I know a bunch of great new resources thanks to Jeff, Mark, and Toby!  Stuff I’m experimenting with, showing other teachers, or have bookmarked for later use. And that’s ok because I know a little more now then I did then which is what we should be striving for each and ever day.  Am I an expert?  Hardly.  But do we do good work with the tools we know about right now?  Absolutely?  Am I being pushed to learn more? Certainly.  And that’s the way it should be.