Jason Schrage and Richard Byrne
| In the spring of
2008 I had an idea to test the power of my PLN. I wanted to see if it was
possible for a regular classroom teacher from Nebraska to leverage the power of
Twitter to accomplish a goal. My goal was
to see if my PLN could work together to raise $1500 to send a teacher to NECC. I wanted to send someone
who had a proven track record of using technology successfully in the
classroom, but who had not yet attended NECC. After taking a close look at the
people in my PLN there was one person who kept floating to the top.
Richard
Byrne was who I selected to be the first Newbie. Richard became part of my
PLN in the fall of 2008. His blog was one of the few that I tried to keep up
with and check daily. There was not a day that went by that I wondered how he
was able to generate so much new content and the fact he was willing to share
it blew me away. In April, I sent out the first request for donations. Since so
many people were familiar with Richard’s blog, FreeTech4Teachers, the donations
started coming in right away. Within two weeks we had made it halfway to the
goal. Exactly two weeks after I posted the original request, the cofounders of VoiceThread, Ben Pappel and Steve Muth,
made an incredibly generous donation of $700. My new friend, Lee Kolbert, was responsible for
helping connect VoiceThread to the Newbie project. Thanks, Lee!
It did not surprise me at
all that so many people found the project to be worthwhile, but what I did not
expect was all of the publicity that it received. Diana Fingal of Learning and Leading with Technology, the ISTE
membership publication, interviewed me about the project recently. The complete story will appear in the
September issue. One of the questions she asked was if I was planning on doing
the project again this year. I knew right away what my answer was, but I was
not sure of the direction I wanted the project to go. After selecting Jason Schrage to be the Newbie for ISTE10, it was much easier
for me to envision the course that I wanted the project to take. Jason is an
8th grade social studies teacher in upstate New York. He is not afraid to try
different tools and applications with his students. He has some fantastic ideas
for projects that he wants to do with his students. However, what strikes me
most about Jason is his complete lack of fear of failing. Fear of failure
paralyzes most teachers in their tracks, but it seems to push Jason to work to
find a different solution. He is a problem solver in the true sense of the
word.
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