I'm Vicki Davis, full time teacher, blogger, Tweeter, Tumblr, Facebook-er, and passionate advocate for inspiring and informing teachers, parents, and professionals about how to reach this generation of learners. Visit my website and see what people are saying.
Remember your noble calling, teacher.
My Story
Hi, my name is Vicki Davis author behind the Cool Cat Teacher blog. The purpose of this blog is to inspire, encourage, and inform the teachers, parents, and professionals working to educate this wonderful generation of students. I am a full time teacher and mother of three living in Camilla, Georgia.
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| At Edubloggercon with Friends Julie Lindsay & Jon Pederson |
Back in 2005, I was at an educational technology conference and heard about blogging. I jumped in because I knew it was important and that my students and children needed to understand one of the biggest fundamental shifts in society that the world has ever known.
You see, I already understood the social power of the web. In 2000 on February 14, my tiny hometown was torn to shreds by two terrible tornadoes. My husband and I led the recovery efforts. I built a website and a database that mobilized volunteers in ways that hadn't been seen before and resulted in Kip and I receiving an award from the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, a district Rotary club award and to be inducted in the Leadership Georgia Class of 2001.
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| Presenting for ISTE in Second Life. My students and I were named an Open Sim Pioneer in 2009. |
Back home, I knew that the social power of the web had just been made easy and brainstormed with my students and family about what to call this blog. We're the Westwood Wildcats, so some students told me
"You're pretty cool and we're the Wildcats, so why don't you be the Cool Cat Teacher, Mrs. Vicki."
The name stuck and I've been blogging and connecting my students to the world ever since.
I am a country girl with a background in business so I didn't get into teaching through the traditional route. Graduating first in my management class from Georgia Tech, I moved up through the corporate ladder as a market analyst and then a General Manager of a cellphone company. I was a stay at home Mom for a while and then an entrepreneur who developed websites and technology integration courses for businesses and school systems in the 1990's. When my children's school called an asked me to come teach, I couldn't resist. I threw myself into taking every local educational PD course I could get into --hundreds of hours of learning about teaching best practices. That was in 2002.
After I started blogging a chance meeting of Julie Lindsay (now in Beijing, China) at the K12 Online conference led to our co-creating of many award winning global collaborative educational projects that have connected hundreds of teachers and thousands of students worldwide.
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| I Skype in to conferences whenever I can. |
The next step was to transform professional development. Julie and I created the nonprofit that runs the Flat Classroom Conference where students and educators get together in a flattened environment.
Our first conference in Doha, Qatar birthed the Eracism Project™ a global debate project linking middle school students. We've since traveled to Mumbai, India, and Beijing China and will be back in Mumbai in February 2012 again.
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| Keynoting in North Carolina (just before losing 40 pounds when I decided to take up running ;-) |
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| With my friend Suzie from Microsoft at the Microsoft Innovative Educators Forum in South Africa in October 2010. |
I must say that speaking for companies like Google, Discovery and the state and international educational technology conferences has been a joy and the response has been great.
I'm a Discovery STAR Educator, Google Certified Teacher, Adobe Education leader, served as a judge for the US competition for Microsoft Innovative Educators forum and a blogger for Lifetime Channel's morning show, the Balancing Act.
Yes, the awards have been nice, and the film crews from Edutopia, Pearson, and Laureate were exciting for my students (the blurb on NPR was cool too and the many books, newspapers and blogs but you can read about that on my bio and below.)I think it is cool that a full time classroom teacher like me can stay in the classroom and continue to promote positive change.
Your comments and feedback are always welcome. The best way to contact me is to fill out the form on my website.
Thank you for stopping by and for reading all the way through my story,
Vicki
Read more at ... www.coolcatteacher.com
Now for the "marketing" stuff...
What Some People are saying...
Included in Thomas Friedman's 3rd edition of The World is Flat and
- Featured ISTE's Reinventing Project Based Learning: Your field guide to real-world projects in the digital age by Suzie Boss and Jane Krauss
- Featured ISTE's Global Education: Using Technology to Bring the World to Your Students' by Laurence Peters
- Featured in the book by Curtis Bonk ‘The World is Open: How Web technology is Revolutionizing Education
- Named as a top edublogger by the London Times - July 2008.
- Wikispaces Wiki of the Month December 2005;
- Edublog Finalist for Best Teacher Blog 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010
- Edublog Winner for Best Teacher Blog 2008
- Finalist Edutopia's Totally Wired teacher Award 2007
- SIGTel ISTE Online Learning Award, 2007
- Taking IT Global Online Learning Award, 2007
- Best Wiki in Education, 2006, 2008
- Finalist Best Wiki in Education, 2007, 2009, 2010
- 2008 Finalist for the Leaders in Learning Award
- Flat Classroom Project Shortlisted. World Innovation Summit for Education award in the pluralism section. http://www.wise-qatar.org/
- and more...
There's more but hopefully you know by now that being excellent and sharing is part of what I do. I want to be good but more than that, I'd like to be helpful.
