2011 - "Something else happened instead."

Another year has arrived.  Where does the time go?  As I look back on the past year and reflect on it's events it's difficult to account for the time.  It's like a busy day at work - you're busy all the time but sometimes you walk out trying to figure out what you've actually done.  It's not that you haven't been doing anything, or that there was nothing to do, or even that you haven't done anything important - just that you didn't accomplish what was on your agenda because things kept popping up - the kinds of things that need to be dealt with "right now."

While I'm a little bit disappointed about where I ended 2011 in terms of professional goals and personal professional development, I certainly know that I have been busy and, that though I've not necessarily learned the things I wanted to learn, I've learned many things I never anticipated knowing.  I can't be disappointed in the amount of professional growth I've experienced, only in it's unintended content.  I had a plan but, "something else happened instead."

Last week, thanks to Conrad Warner @ Teacher Reflections, I watched this TED video.  (While my reflections on this video were more personal than education related, consider what it means for education too!!  Being wrong is key.  Maybe I'll talk about that more next time.)



So, 2011 did not go as I had planned.  I made some mistakes.  I was wrong.  I learned some unexpected things - some of them the hard way.  And where did my time go?  What happened to all the time I used to spend pursuing my geeky, EdTech ambitions and conquering the world of Web 2.0?  Between the school day and 8 PM, a time when I used to be at home reading, researching, and studying my time went right here instead:


and that is something I do not regret.