Ten Years of Edtech Elixirs

Welcome, and thank you for checking out my blog!  I have been involved in education since 2005, but never seriously tried to blog before.  My "About Me" profile sums up my educational background succinctly, but I will add that becoming the first District Technology Integration Coach of Shelby County is definitely the motivation to begin blogging now. Therefore, I am committed to making meaningful and ongoing posts, but most importantly, making my blog a useful resource for others.

That's how I started my first Edtech Elixirs blog entry exactly ten years ago, on August 1, 2014.  It was a time of transition.  I had thought I would be a classroom teacher forever, but an opportunity beckoned in another county and I began a district position that summer.  I had the humblest of ambitions for the blog.  It would be a place for me to collect resources for Shelby County Public Schools staff, perhaps opine here and there on education, and frankly, save time: when I thought a tool or strategy might help someone, I could simply drop a link to the appropriate blog entry in an email and click send.

But to my endless astonishment and appreciation, the audience for Edtech Elixirs kept growing and growing outside of Shelby, continuing into my newest job with OVEC that started in 2022.  Along the way, I have blogged about some educational highs (like getting mentioned in Star Wars Insider!) and some lows (like when thousands of Kentucky educators got sent home in the middle of a conference to begin sheltering in place).  It also has led to other writing opportunities.  I've had my entries republished (thank you Aurora Institute's Laurie Gagnon and Eliot Levine!), but Edtech Elixirs has also opened doors to writing original articles (again, thanks to Laurie and Eliot, as well as Kristen Vogt from Next Generation Learning Challenges, and others).

Some milestones from 2024 to share:

• I published my 200th blog entry on February 24, 2024 ("KyEdRPG Spotlight: Chad Collins and 'The Academy'").  (The entry you are currently reading is number 205.) However, I'm apparently slowing way down; I wrote my first 100 blog entries by 2016!
• As this entry goes live, the blog is at 298,193 lifetime views. To put that in perspective, I hit 100,000 views in 2017 and 200,000 views last year.  
• Combined with my YouTube Channel, I crossed over a half million overall views in March 2024.

Lest anyone feel this entry is merely for vanity and bravado, I want to make my two purposes clear. I won't deny I'm proud (and surprised!) to still be writing Edtech Elixirs after a decade, and want to celebrate that fact, but capturing some of the numbers above is just a chance at statistical reflection; years ago, I was shocked when I hit a thousand views, and never thought writing even a hundred entries was possible.  It's been an amazing, humbling journey!  That leads to the second (and main) purpose of this entry, which is to give thanks. When I hit "Publish" for the first time ten years ago, I never could have dreamed this journey would still be continuing in 2024 -- and it is a journey only possible because of YOU.  Every reader out there who ever took a few minutes to read my words, or shared/reposted a blog entry, I cannot express enough gratitude.   

There are some announcements I'll be excited to share very soon on what's next on my horizon.  For now, I'll simply repeat my thanks for all the edtech tools I've been able to play with, for all the learning partners I've made, for all the fascinating books I've read, for all the people I've had the good fortune to meet and be able to celebrate their stories, and once again, for all the readers.  Here's to the next decade, in which I hope to remain "meaningful," "ongoing," and above all, "useful."  Stay tuned!