My name is Karen Work Richardson.  I live in Virginia with one wonderful husband, three terrific dogs, and eight miscellaneous chickens.  I am working on my doctoral dissertation at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.  I am doing a qualitative study of how teacher plan for the use of technology in their classrooms.

The subject of my dissertation gives some insight into my primary interests: I am an undying advocate for teachers.  I taught public school for 13 years, first as a high school English teacher and then as a middle school language arts and technology teacher.  I worked hard and so did my colleagues.  Sure, I met a few lazy teachers but not many.  Most were committed to providing the best educational experiences they could for the students in their classroom.  The teachers I meet now are constantly grappling with how to make education fun and worthwhile even while they feel the pressure of preparing their students for high stakes testing.

I am still teaching: now, I work with undergraduate and graduate teachers-to-be.  I teach the “educational technology” course at William and Mary.  It is a challenge to balance teaching about the tools with teaching how those tools can support teaching and learning.

I’ve kept some kind of blog since 2003.   My first blog is still around: Virginia’s Community of Learning blog just provides links of interest to educators.  I post sporadically.  My personal blog is called In One Place.  It was supposed to be the one place where I posted but I decided at some point that I needed a blog reserved specifically for professional blogging.

I am still very much figuring out blogging…I use the blog for everything from education to technology to media.  I have also used it as a learning log for an adult learning class I took in 2006.