Stefanie Brimacomb: EDTECH Learning Log

It is ironical that life’s constants are chaos and strife. We humans must constantly adapt to change in an attempt to better future generations. In the past two weeks I attended a state-level competitive event for a student organization with six energetic adolescents, replaced a server, and analyzed volumes of raw data for errors in an attempt to improve our state’s reporting system. Not to mention the myriad activities performed at home as a week-end wife of my studious husband who is attending nursing school in a brick-and-mortar institution two hours north, and week-long mother of my ambitious high school freshman. It’s no small wonder clichés such as “pushing through walls” and “climbing ladders of success” pepper our vernacular.

Amid that race, I had the opportunity to stop, regroup, and refocus with what I thought would be a routine assignment. I haven’t performed an annotated bibliography since I earned my first master’s degree a dozen years’ past.  What topic to select? I stewed on it until the due date loomed like a house rock in the middle of the boiling rapids.  Of course! My reasoning behind this degree is to be able to help others in their struggle to change. As a professional technical educator with multiple academic endorsements and an accidental tourist in the IT department, I know a lot about educational theory, teaching in a classroom, IT issues, and design techniques but I don’t know much about the unique climate of the very population I want to serve.

I spent all afternoon with my research, growing more excited with my topic as I read and summarized. Ideas poured forth and began to pool together. Before I knew it, the project was complete. Despite a ten hour stretch of reading, I felt refreshed and motivated. I’m ready to take on the adventure of a research project on this topic and change my world.