639

That's the number of posts I knocked out here on TP in 2009.

639.

Here's a link to the first post I wrote way back when I was still a total newb in the ways of the ed tech community. A year ago, I was a guy bound by the walls of my classroom. I had a bunch of ideas and a bunch of solutions (some good, some not). What I didn't have was a real community with which to share my ideas and from whom to learn. Prof Dev at school wasn't cutting it for me on a personal professional level. I was a bit at sea as a classroom teacher.

All I was sure of was that it could all be done differently.

What a difference a year makes.

I'd like to thank the community that's developed around this blog and around the ed tech PLN on Twitter. Not only do I now realize I'm not alone, I realize that many of the thing I'd thought were weird quirks in the way I was looking at the profession were in fact just a tiny part of the shift going on in the lives and classroom experiences of teachers across this country and throughout the world.

Thanks to the students, teachers, admins, and parents of John Carroll School for giving me the perfect conduit within which to bring many of my paperless dreams into reality; thank you to all of the folks I met in conference this year at NECC, AP/College Board, SocTech in Ed Con, and (soon) at EduCon; thanks to all of the folks who take part in the education discussions and events on Twitter, Elluminate, and Second Life; thanks to the gamers for ruining my 'free time'; thanks to Johns Hopkins for giving me multiple fora in which to present and explore ideas; thanks to the guinea pigs in my first group of paperless/socialtech TFAers; and thanks to all of the readers of this blog.

Hopefully I've lived up to a few of the goals I set out in that first blog post. Here's to 639 more!