Introduction

           Hello there!  My name is Robin Ingstrup.  I teach 4th grade in D181.  I started my career in as an educator, teaching 4th grade in Plainfield District 202 in 1997.  After that, I moved on to teach 2nd grade in Butler District 53.  My have a wonderfully supportive husband Joe, 2 daughters, and one dog that gets more attention than rightfully deserved.
           My journey with technology was jump started, and then thrust into high gear, after going back to the classroom after being at home with my kids for 7 years.  I left my job teaching second grade after the birth of my daughter.  At this time teachers were lucky to have phones in their rooms and one desktop computer.  We had TV screens hooked up to VCR players and email was a brand new concept.  That was 2005.  I remember being on the yearbook committee and the process still included having volunteers take photos of the various school events, have them developed, and then glue them onto card stock - lol!
           At that time in my career, I really felt that I was at the top of my game.  I was a younger teacher but with enough experience and a Master's Degree to be taken seriously.  When I started teaching at Oak, not only did I have to prove myself all over again, I also needed to figure out all this new techie stuff.   To make matters worse, I was a IBM user through and through, and we were an all Apple school.  Simple computer commands were foreign to me and it was a learning curve I had about 30 seconds to master.  Everything from report cards to attendance was on the computer, and did I mention that I took over for a teacher who left in October.  Let's just say I was walking into a classroom of students desperate for a teacher, parents angry at a teacher, and a world moving faster than I could process.  That was year one.  Year two, our school adopted one-to-one iPads donated by our PTO in grades four and five.  We were the only school in the district to have them.  Need I say more?
            Since then, I've grown tremendously as an educator.  I've embraced our iPads and really can't imagine teaching in a classroom without them.  However, with technology at every one's fingertips is also a greater need to educate our students in ways I would have never imagined 15 years ago.  That's what led me to this class.  I'm not afraid to try new things in technology.  I learned that the first time it will probably be a disaster but when I get the courage to try it again, this time letting my students help me, it's always better.  I'm not a fan of social media, but am I realizing that my students are.  Therefore, I not only want to learn how to use technology in the classroom effectively with my students, but also teach them to be good digital citizens.