The Teaching Box

What is a Teaching Box?

I’m sure that many are wondering what kind of name for a Blog is “The Teaching Box”?
After my introduction I will follow with some more background information, then we can get into the items relevant to the modern Education Professional.
Actually quite a bit of thought went into my choice of names.  My blogging spot here on Today.com is an extension of my own domain that I have registered:  http://www.theteachingbox.com
While I was taking the classes necessary for my certification in Post Secondary Teaching it turned out that the majority of the coursework was done online.  The University provided web space, but it was at a very Non user friendly URL.  Plus we needed to create a teaching portfolio as our final project.  Well, the easiest way to do it all was register my own domain.  That way I could put the course material up and even after the class ended it would be available.  (the university provided webspace ended after course completion)  But I digress…

So I was tasked with deciding on a domain name.  I wanted it to be meaningful and useful into the future.  I traveled back to my days in grade school, 8th grade to be exact.  I had a teacher that during science class (my favorite of course) would bring out a worn cardboard box.  Inside the box were wonderful things that he used to teach us.  There were many such boxes each one had such interesting items inside.  Every box was filled with treasures specific to the topic of the week.  To this day I remember the one filled with fascinating fossils of fish and dinosaur bones.  Needless to say at the time I did not know that he was using a tried and true pedagogical method called the Teaching Box.  I don’t know if he actually knew it either, but he was such a great teacher it didn’t matter.

So here I am 30 years later trying to think of a domain name.  It was an easy decision as I looked back to the worn old boxes filled with treasures.
The Teaching Box was born.

I believe that this is enough background.  Now I will start filling the teaching box with treasures.

Welcome to TheTeachingBox!

This is my first post, so let me introduce myself.  Actually the easiest way is to click on the About Tab located above.

I am a manufacturing engineer by day, and I enjoy my job tremendously.  As an engineer I live for all things technical and strive to understand WHY things work.  My other love is education.  A large part of my job as a manufacturing engineer is to train and educate people.  This is the basis of my writing, and this blog.  A year or so ago I took on the challenge to increase my writing skill.  At the time I was doing a certification class for PostSecondary Teaching at a local University.  A very good professor in this program told me that the best way to get better at writing was to DO IT.  After making this decision a number of pieces fell into place and the challenge to improve my writing skills appeared.

I was at a conference and chatted with a guy manning a booth for a trade magazine.  It turned out that this was a new publication and they were looking for contributors.  After a few minutes of telling him what I do as an engineer he asked me if I would be interested in writing an article. I was taken aback, but nevertheless excited about this prospect.  In the realm of the Education World being published is a big deal, and here was my chance.

The publication is called Micro Manufacturing and in the last year I have had two articles.

• Silicone Moulding in the Biomedical World - The Game Has Changed

• A Manufacturing Engineer’s Perspective on Staying Competitive in Today’s Global Market

This work has been a fantastic experience and my relationship with the editor has been outstanding.  In the process of submitting my work I made the comment that I should keep the editors busy correcting my “Engineering Grammar”.  He responded with a comment that my writing was better than alot of engineer submitted articles.  I took this as a great compliment and it has fueled my efforts.

So in short this is how I have gotten here.  I have since completed the certification and now am officially a Certified Post Secondary Teacher.  In the quest to increase my writing skills I will continue to use this format as my proving ground.   As time passes I will continue to collect my thoughts and post them.  I will focus on education and technology issues as I strive to increase my ability as an Engineer who is a part time Education Professional.  Feel free to comment on any of my posts and provide feedback.  I believe that Education is a process and everything is a work in progress.  As stated in my tagline at the top of the blog, this blog is “An Engineer’s Perspective on Education and Technology”.

We are in this together, so lets get started.