I am ashamed to admit this, but this blog was created about a week and a half ago. Yes, this is my first post.

I don’t understand my reluctance to begin blogging. I love dabbling in technology, new things, cool geeky stuff. So why the dragging of the techno-feet? Perhaps it the perfectionist in me. I want to get it all exactly right the first time. I don’t want it to be messy and disorganized and awkward.

In truth, I can’t remember the last time I was so excited, chomping at the bit, to incorporate something new in my teaching. It started at the end of the school year when I picked up a copy of Will Richardson’s book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. It’s a dangerous book–practical tools and tips mixed with a boatload of tough-to-refute arguments for using this relatively new medium in the classroom. Next thing I know, I’m creating a blog, then a wiki (there’s nothing on it yet, of course!), then I’m talking to the tech guy at school and swapping ideas and concerns. Then I’m determined to use my summer school English class as a group of guinea pigs to test out the awesome power of blogs in the classroom.

Yet, I write this late at night at the end of the first week of summer school, having yet to even mention blogging to my students, let alone getting them up-and-running.

Again, why the reluctance? Fear of failure? Perhaps. That is certainly the roadblock in non-technology areas of my life. But this just isn’t me. I usually embrace new technology when some other colleagues panic.

I have to come to grips with the fact that the art (or whatever it is) of blogging will require me to push the edges of my comfort zone. It’s a process where I can not wait until it’s all nice and neat and boxed-up before I bring it in to the classroom. It may be messy, and that’s part of the charm. I realize that it’s ongoing, continual, a process.

Which is why I can more easily force myself to stop this post in mid-thought, without a clean and perfect ending, and go to bed.