INTRODUCTION
I
©️2022 by Solution Tree Press
entered the teaching profession at the age of twenty-two excited to actualize the classroom I had been fantasizing about since I began my credential program at the University of California in Santa Barbara. While studying to become a teacher, I dreamed about my future classroom. I imagined my students bounding through the door, eager and excited to learn. I pictured them sitting in circles, talking animatedly about literature and life. And as you may guess, the reality of my first few years in this profession stood in stark contrast to these elaborate fantasies. Instead of bounding through the door, my students trudged. Instead of engaging in conversation, they slumped in their chairs, avoiding eye contact. They were not excited to be at school generally or in my class specifically. It did not take long for me to become exhausted and disillusioned with teaching. These feelings stemmed from the realization that I was failing. I was failing to create the classroom I had dreamed about. I was failing to engage my students in dynamic learning experiences. I began to worry that I had made a huge mistake by becoming a teacher. My career crisis aligned with my decision to have my first child. I decided to take a year off from my teaching position to be home with my daughter. About six months into my tenure as a stay-at-home mom, I began teaching online college-level writing courses. Before my experience as an online professor, I would not have described myself as interested in technology, much less technology savvy. However, my experience teaching entirely online piqued my interest in the potential benefits of using technology to engage learners. When I returned to my high school classroom, I was determined to give the teaching profession one more year. I decided to treat my classroom like a laboratory and experiment with some of the online learning strategies I’d become familiar with while teaching my online college classes. What did I have to lose? It was 2008, and my public high school was low-tech. However, the emergence of the iPhone in 2007 had set off an explosion of handheld devices and smartphones that began to appear on campus and in my classroom. I had to leverage the handful of devices that came through the door in my students’ pockets. At first, I had maybe four students of thirty-plus who had a smartphone. By 2010, more than half my class had them. In those early
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