Learning is a natural part of life. I try to teach my students and my children that everyday. Sometimes it's important content, sometimes it's social cues, sometimes it's just a random fact that for some reason sticks with you forever. I also try to teach them that the most important thing isn't the idea that you are constantly learning, it's what you do with that new knowledge that is important. I know that learning was important in my days as a student but now when I am no longer taking classes. I am always going to be a student of living, learning, and discovery. The important part for me though is to make sure I know what I am doing with this newly learned content. I hope to focus my learning into three areas to help me better myself, my students, and my career.

Too many times I hear people tell me, “I hated history in school, now it’s my favorite thing to learn about.” I don’t think that it is a huge problem that people eventually become interested in history, but I know that history is fun, exciting, and can take you into a whole new level of critical thinking and empathy in your own life. I want to learn how I can make students want to become historians at a young age, teach them how to delve into subjects that interest them and really learn how to comprehend and investigate that topic. I always felt that if I could help student’s become historians at a young age it would only increase their desire to become lifelong learners. One way of helping me do this is by staying up to date with teachinghistory.org. This is a web source of lessons, articles, blog posts, and content that helps teachers increase their knowledge and familiarity with certain history and teaching topics. This site should help me stay connected with new ideas that will help me turn students into historians.

Technology, learning, and teaching are forever changing. There will never be a point where someone can say, “this is it, we are done, there is nothing more to do on this” for any of these three subjects. I look around and I see all the great new technologies and applications that are being created and I think "how can this be used in the classroom?" How can I take the technologies that exists and the new ones that have not yet been created and use them to help create fun and excitement for learning and sharing ideas. I plan on trying to stay on top of different collaborative sites like WordPress, edutopia, and many other personal blogs to keep me up to date on other ideas that are being used by other teachers. I attend different conferences like the MACUL conference, FLIP-CON and other opportunities to hear from other educators who are working on expanding our abilities with technology. I hope that I can continue my own thought process on these new ideas and learn new ways of using technology in the classroom.

One of my greatest resources for learning has always been my peers. One thing that I will benefit the most from is the experience of my peers. I have always been connected through social media but even when I try not to be, I tend to be more of a lurker than an active participant. My goal for future learning is to become more active in collaborating and discussing with my peers in the online platforms such as twitter, Facebook groups, Instagram, and blog posts. I have always felt that these social platforms are a phenomenal way to spread and share ideas and hold discussions. I need to put myself out there and begin to work with other teachers all over the globe through discussion on topics and ideas about my classroom, my content, and new teaching ideologies.

Overall my basic idea for future learning is to make sure that I am open and flexible when it comes to new ideas. That I am constantly exploring the things that are out there and available to me as a person and as an educator, while striving to make them useful for teaching and learning. I also want to make sure that I stay connected with what is available and keep myself in the loop for new better ways to help create understanding of content for myself, the students, and education in general.