Greetings, family.
You can call me Ray – because I am a junior, and my dad was called Alan. I am married with six children (aged 5 to 17 – 3 boys/3 girls). We currently live in San Antonio, Texas where I work as a manager in Information Technology (IT) for the US Air Force.
I am pursuing an M.Ed in Teaching & Learning with an emphasis on Leadership. This sub-term, I am only taking this course. I am not particularly pursuing credentials or a new job. I plan to retire from my military career in a few years, so I will have to eventually figure out what I am going to do when I grow up. In the meantime, I was recently selected to lead my unit’s professional learning team as we transitioned from in-person to virtual activities.
I have a love/hate relationship with so-called technology because I have worked with and supported IT for practically my entire life. I am well-versed in most Microsoft products and especially use PowerPoint to build charts and figures to operationalize learning and other concepts. I have developed and used content management systems (CMS) and learning management systems (LMS) since the Web 1.0 days. I plan to continue to use existing and emerging technologies to enhance and transform learning supports.
My undergraduate degree was in Biblical Studies & Theology. My primary passions include urging toward complete (spiritual, physical, mental, social, etc.) formation and learning or what I often describe simply as “family-making.” These days, I am looking at this stuff from the perspective of overcoming systemic oppression and increasing learning supports (i.e. communal discipleship and ecclesiastical revolution). Therefore, you can expect much of that passion to flow into my interactions in this class. I hope to learn from and interact with the study materials and then to practice expressing contrasting precepts in this pseudo-anonymous “safe” environment. Since the typed monologue risks removing the body language, emotion, and much of the relationship of face-to-face dialogue, I beg your patience, your grace, and your mercy.
Thanks for reading my introduction and have a great day.
– Ray