Travlyn Russell

My daughter slaving a hard drive.

She calls herself "nerd-spawn."

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of myself.

However, she is cuter anyway!

I am thrilled to part of this year's KCI Merit Program. As I enter my tenth year teaching, it will be nice to have the time develop curriculum that integrates technology in a mindful way, rather than in an accidentially useful way--which always seems to happen to me.

My background: I was born in Chapel Hill, NC, but moved to the Bay Area with my parents when I was six months old. I grew up in Oakland with my techno-phobe father. However, I was always fascinated by technology, because my mother was always on the cutting edge. We had a Wang Word Processesor, for crying out loud! When I went to college (back before the World Wide Web), my mother took me down to the basement of the Computer Science building at Davis and forced me to get a Unix account so I could "email" her. It was 1989, so that was pretty cutting edge at the time. When I got a 14,400 baud modem, my neighbors thought I was crazy; "you'll never need that kind of speed!" How the world has changed...what hasn't changed is my love of technology and my desire to keep my skills current.

I spent most of my professional life teaching underserved populations in Dorchester, MA and Richmond, CA, so there really wasn't much emphasis on technology--just getting books was a challenge! However, I demanded than my students learn some basic computer skills--other than using the web to design sneakers. Now that I am in Fremont, it's great to have students who know how to use PowerPoint, Excel, webcams, you name it! It's exciting to be close to silicon valley in a community that values cutting edge technology and high quality education.

I look forward to expanding my use of all sorts of technology this summer--see you then!