Prior to the age of 27, I lived and attended school in Baltimore, Maryland. Growing up with a younger (3 years) brother and living with my Aunt and Uncle, gave me a slightly different outlook on life. Bob (my brother) was into cars and I was into magic.
After graduation from college, a friend and I decided that we wanted to start a small business for the summer. We narrowed our ideas to a silent movie theater (The Marquee) to be operated on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. The project was successful and repeated a second summer. The friend liked the island so much, he now owns a summer home there and intends to use it for retirement.
When the second summer ended, I packed my bags and moved to
Vermont where I took a job as a waite at an Inn in Woodstock. Skiing
all day and working evenings was great but I felt I needed to find a
"real" job and enrolled in an Intensive Teacher Education program at
the University of Vermont. After teaching for four years, I moved to
Yuma, Arizona (1976) where I became the district Career Education
Coordinator. During the ensuing 21 years of life in the great
southwest, I have also been an ESL teacher and computer lab
coordinator. I am presently on educational leave seeking the
certificate in Educational Technology at SDSU.
When a local school acquired a computer (4k TRs-80) in 1981 and didn't know what to do with it, I decided to withdraw my teacher retirement funds to start another business. The SoftShoppe was opened with six Radio Shack 16K tape drive computers and enough students to keep the business going year-round for the next five years. The business expanded into retail sales of software, books and magazines, as well as some hardware. Another teacher had joined forces with me and when the local schools started to purchase computers of their own, we decided to retire.
I have presented in-service workshops for my district on using computers in the classroom at all levels. I lugged the six TRS-80s from school to school to introduce students to computer using careers. Apple Computer gave me (my school) a QuickTake camera for doing some community computer education classes. I have attended MEC conferences for 15 years and owned Atari, Commadore, and Apple computers. Last year I returned to the classroom as a sixth grade teacher of 35 Virtual Voyageurs who traveled from Venice to Hong Kong by bicycle, sailed aboard the Mimi seeking whales and ancient Maya,produced a newspaper, and went into the Indonesian rainforests to examine exotic fruit.
Yes, I am convinced that technology will change education ...but
racquettball...now there is a passion.
Bicycle from Venice to Hong Kong (or Rio de Janeiro) http://www.globalearn.org
Return to either the Defense Conversion Program or the Defense Conversion Students page.