As mentioned in several previous posts, learning to code KML was my gateway into programming. While I admit my code often looks like a three-year-old’s coloring book, the growth and learning over the past five years have been both enjoyable and relaxing. Initially, geteach.com was designed and created to allow students to explore one or two spatial distributions (perspectives) of their world more efficiently. There were many factors that influenced the creation of geteach.com, from wanting a hobby that helped me relax and think, to the frustration with ‘education/technology’ companies charging so much for something that a teacher, with a few pots of coffee, could create. I am so pleased that educators around the world can use geteach.com, along with other projects, in their classrooms..

The one thought that never crossed my mind when creating these geo-tools was the amount of teacher cred I would receive from students. My first experience with this teacher cred happened five years ago while teaching summer school. During this session, I encountered many reluctant learners, but one student, in particular, was a classic John Bender from The Breakfast Club. About four days into summer school, I was demonstrating geteach.com when ‘John’ blurted out, ‘You created this?’ John was, in business management terms, a first follower. From that point on, this room of reluctant learners pivoted into ‘just enough’ learners.

Every year since the creation of geteach.com I have had these moments in the classroom. I never know when this moment is going to happen, but each time I get the same half proud half embarrassed feeling. This year I did not tell the students I am the creator of geteach.com. In one class, a student clicked the YouTube icon on the page and figured out I was the creator. Then followed an awesome teachable moment of contagious diffusion from that student’s group in the back-right corner sharing the information until it reached the front left group. Another class figured out it was me when they looked at the page source of the page and found my name somewhere in the code. That group also found one of the easter eggs in the JavaScript which x10’d my teacher cred. (Hint… think Konomi’s Contra)

For the past week and a half, I might have been viewed by many as an absent-minded teacher who can’t take roll, someone who loves to talk about geography as a perspective that transfers across disciplines, and an idealist of lifelong learning. Once students realize that I learned to code through spatial thinking, these qualities—minus the roll-taking part—are no longer just words, but true beliefs that are core to my teaching and learning philosophy. Learning to code and developing the language of technology through a spatial lens has given me a window of credibility to build the relationships necessary to last at least the next 180 days, but hopefully beyond.